"The one that got away".

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Was it ever really explained why this game wasn't released in North America or Europe for the Nintendo or Super Nintendo? It would have been a great release that people would have enjoyed back in the day.

We almost had the game over here. But according to Wikipedia:

"There had been earlier plans to remake the game for Bandai's WonderSwan Color handheld, as had been done with the first, second, and fourth installments of the series, but the game faced several delays and was eventually canceled after the premature cancellation of the platform".

After having played the game, was it just average to you? Was there anything about it that would make you say "Yeah, looking back I could have waited for this". Is this anyones favorite Final Fantasy?

As for myself, this is the only console game in the main series that I haven't gotten around to playing. I plan on getting around to it soon, though.

[Cloudane]

Wondered this myself, same with II and V. All seem like decent games (though I've not actually played through much of III or V) but they just didn't seem to bother with aiming them at the rest of the world. At least until all these remakes!

[Axem Titanium]

"The one that got away" indeed for me too. I've played every main series game to completion except for III. When I finally got it on DS, I think I stopped somewhere around Odin and never picked it up again

[Raistlin]

I can only imagine Square just didn't think they would make enough money off of it in the West to warrant pushing for its release outside of Japan.

It certainly isn't my favorite game in the series, and in modern times I'd be surprised if it was anyone's favorite FF. But it's entertaining enough to be worth playing (despite me never having finished it), especially if you like RPGs with job systems.

[esthero0nie]

They do this to other games too. What about for those who want to play in North America and Europe?! Not fair.

[Lonely Paper Star]

I've wondered that, too...

I've never played this one. I wanted to. I think I have a rom of it somewhere... I know nothing about the game itself, not characters, storyline or anything.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Well the RPG market was niche here until FF7, so that was partly to blame. Square also wasn't really interested in localizing their games then. Around then they had just begun localizing the first FF to the US. (I needed wikipedia to get the exact months but I knew the years ^^) FF3 was released April 27, 1990 in Japan, and FF1 was released in the US on July 12 of that year. (again needed exact date lol) The SNES was released November 21 of that year in Japan and August 23 in the US the following year. From what I remember due to those factors, they decided if they were gonna localise another FF they'd just go to FF4, though they did try to translate FF2 but canceled that. FF1 did pretty good over here, didn't it? So I suppose it could have been successful if it wasn't released too late. Enix on the other hand went all the way to DQ4, but they weren't Square (not yet at least lol) I mean it might have done alright since DQ4 did ok, but yea even die hard FF players are like "I don't wanna go back it's too boring but I'll play FF4 or 6"

[Wolf Kanno]

They did try to localize FFII, but abandoned it not long after for various reasons. Like WKPVII mentioned, III got looked over because of the arrival of the SNES, but there are also some technical issues as well. The game literally filled every part of the cartridge so remakes would actually involve redoing the game in it's entirety. They started on the Wonderswan but by then, ran into other technical issues (rumor was upgrading to posh 16-bit graphics once again made the game too big to fit on the WS cartridge) and scrapped the project. Origins, was basically a port of the Wonder Swan entries which is how they finally got released. After that, III just stayed in limbo. I heard rumors they were going to try and remake the game for the GBA but there was bad blood between Sakaguchi and the CEO of Nintendo at the time so no ports came out until after Sakaguchi left the company and I guess SE felt since the GBA was a mini-SNES, it would be better to skip III and just port the SNES entries cause it wouldn't involve remaking the games from almost scratch.

Finally, SE decided to port the game to the DS and the move to 3D justified actually doing a full remake. Unless they do a PSP 2D remake or Nintendo and SE stop being stupid and just translate the original and release it on Virtual Console (and whatever the Wii U is going to have) we'll probably never see a 2D version of FFIII in the West. SE dragging it's feet has also made it so the game doesn't have the same nostalgia factor outside of Japan either, so it would be harder to justify making a 2D remake and releasing it outside of Japan, cause sales wouldn't be guaranteed like all the other 2D entries that have been released (often multiple times) in America and the PAL regions. Course there is always emulation.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

yea I think the psp version is a port of the DS version. There are I believe two translations floating around on the internet you can get. I think it's ok to mention but not link to, though patches are legal. Acquiring the actual roms are not legal, and probably enforced due to the particular property (FF) and the publisher (SE) who cares about that. You could be crazy like me and track down an original cartridge like I did for FF2 and watch hcbailly's videos to see a translation. If you don't have a famicom you'd need a converter which you can read about elsewhere. I do recommend that actually. It's fun on the original system once you get used to the graphics. Some gameplay fixes were implemented like auto retargeting. The beginning (and frankly the music in the cave) is really boring but it picks up after the cave. I grinded up to level 99 and used that item swap trick to get all onion equipment so I must really be nuts lol. It's hard to grind that high in FF3.

EDIT: one disadvantage to getting the original cartridge is that 22 years later batteries will start dying if a lot haven't died already so you'll have to put a new battery in it. And famicom cartridges don't have screws like NES cartridges do so you need to break it apart ><

[Shauna]

Developers don't like taking too big a risk with something they're not sure they'll make money from it (only worsening these days xD). I'd assume the non-release has something to do with that.

But I can't say I've played much of this one, got it on DS though. Shall probably rage quit another day. :3

[Alpha2099]

It probably had a lot to do with the extreme difficulty. When they brought IV over here and re-named it II, they also dumbed down the difficulty a fair amount. They would have had to do that, but maybe they didn't know how, so they just decided no one would like because it's too hard and scrapped the localization.

[espritduo]

Like others said, it just came too late in the NES's life cycle. Same thing happened with Seiken Densetsu 3. Both absolutely phenomenal games, but they just were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And other bigger and better things were already in the works.

I have no doubt that FFIII would have been very successful if it had been released here originally. It's easily the best and most polished FF on the NES. And who knows? If Square would have released FFIII here and seen that us dumb US gamers can handle a real job class system, they might not have skipped FFV, either. Oh, what could have been...

[Elpizo]

Is this anyones favorite Final Fantasy?

Yes sir! It's mine. ^_^ Hard to choose between III, V and IX, but since V and IX get enough love, it is now my goal and mission in life to love the heck out of III. That it's such a great game doesn't hurt matters either. For a NES game, it was extremely well polished and surprisingly deep, and the NES version still holds up quite well even today. Part of me had hoped that when Nintendo was releasing NES classics on the GBA, III would have been one of them. Sadly, that never came to pass.