Final Fantasy II Playthrough (Actual SNES Capture) - Part 1

[Note: This video and description were originally posted on Youtube on March 8, 2021.]

This is part 1 of my capture of me playing through Final Fantasy II (aka Final Fantasy IV) for the SNES. This is not an emulator and was not played on the Wii Virtual Console. This footage was recorded directly from my Super Nintendo using an actual Final Fantasy II cartridge.

It has been a while since I’ve posted some retro footage, so here’s a playthrough of Final Fantasy II for the SNES. This is the first playthrough that I’ve recorded with my new Hauppauge HD PVR 2 that I picked up last year, which can record 240p signals natively without the need for signal conversion through a DVD recorder.

I’ve never been a big RPG fan, but around 1993 my brother bought Final Fantasy II for our SNES and played the crap the out of the game, which is surprising since he’s not into video games anywhere near as much as me. Since both of us shared the SNES during that time, I naturally got in on the action, and I ending up playing through the entire game as well. Final Fantasy II ended up being a really good game with excellent music and a pretty good story.

I do remember my brother and I having trouble figuring out how to beat certain bosses such as Asura, but somehow we figured it out. I also managed to max out all of the character stats on at least one save file, but that was several years after we got the game. We were also fond of using my Game Genie to get unlimited mana, but we found that the cheating device sometimes wiped certain save files.

Like a bunch of other people, my brother and I laughed quite a bit at the dialogue in this game, including the spoony bard insult, which my brother repeated all the time. Since I was so young at the time, I actually wondered if the English dialogue was correct and I was just missing something, but it turned out it was just another case of Engrish translation gone hilariously bad.

Around eight years ago I replaced my brother’s original cartridge with a complete copy off eBay, so I don’t have any existing save files from my childhood, although I think all of the original saves were replaced years ago anyway.

I’ll be trying to complete this playthrough somewhat efficiently, but there will be some degree of grinding along the way, as is typical with an RPG. Since this is the original North American version of the game, it’s technically the easy type version with censored content and Engrish dialogue. But anyone looking to watch a playthrough of the original version of this game running on an actual SNES has come to the right place.

In this first part I started a new save file, completed the Misty Cave and delivered the package to Village Mist.

D. Mist boss fight - 28:42

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR 2 and the official SNES S-video cable at 60 frames per second. I'm using a standard SNES controller.