Final Fantasy III was, for the longest time, simply not available in English at all (once more, the SNES had a game titled “Final Fantasy III”, but that was actually Final Fantasy VI…again, more on that later). Well…you’re not exactly spoiled for choice here. Fun fact: There are actually semi-canonical names for the characters in Final Fantasy! Originating from the Final Fantasy: Memory of Heroes novelization, they are: Zest the Warrior, Sauber the Thief, Floe the White Mage and Daewoo the Black Mage. If you’re gunning for a punishing challenge, it’s the one you want, but…know what you’re getting yourself into. I have no nostalgia goggles regarding Final Fantasy I, so I can say booting it up in the NES Classic Mini and playing that original, unaltered version is an exercise in masochism in this, the year 2020. If you want to really go old-school, try to find yourself a NES Classic Mini it’s available in its OG form there. They’re not quite as good, trading buttons and a D-pad for slightly fiddly software touch controls, but given that few people probably have a PSP sitting around, for ease of access the iOS/Android ports of the PSP version are probably your best bet.

I’d say that one, with its higher resolution and gorgeous redrawn sprites, takes the crown, but it’s inexplicably never been released digitally in North America for the Vita (despite other regions having it), so here in the States, it’s stuck on a defunct system. There was a PlayStation re-release (a two-pack dubbed Final Fantasy Origins) that cleaned up some bugs and translation errors, but the definitive version is the 20th anniversary re-release that first saw the light of day on Sony’s sadly forgotten first handheld, the PlayStation Portable (PSP).

First released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, it and the oft-forgotten second installment are often bundled together. The granddaddy of them all, this 1987 last-ditc h effort from Squaresoft took the world by storm and its progeny number in the dozens. Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition (PSP)

Final fantasy 3 sprites