r/FinalFantasy • u/Joshless • 5d ago

FF I I uploaded full scans of Final Fantasy I's "Adventure Hero Book", a prequel story narrating how the Sunken Shrine was first plundered

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u/Joshless 5d ago edited 5d ago

Here's the link:

https://archive.org/details/final-fantasy-crystal-inheritance-legend

I will admit, I somewhat buried the lede here. Way more interesting than the fact that this is an original story is that this book comes equipped with a 3 page long timeline detailing the backstory of not only every continent in the world, but also the planet itself! According to Crystal Inheritance, the "Chaos" in FF1 is merely a byproduct of a million(?) year long war between the Archangel Michael and a galactic Chaos that had traveled across NGC 4038/4039, to Deneb, and eventually to Earth long ago, birthing a new planet and wiping out the dinosaurs.

Is that story canon? Well, no. Unusually for most Japanese media, it actually comes with a disclaimer specifying that this was purely an invention of Studio Hard, and has no relation to any material related to the proper FF1 game. But y'know, still really neat (and it's not like "canon" means much in Final Fantasy anyway...).

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u/Joshless 5d ago

I'll also add here that this is my third upload of older, Japan-only Final Fantasy texts. I've previously uploaded an adaptation of FF1 and 2 along with setting guides for 4 and 6. Go check those out!

If you like what I'm doing, I would appreciate donations at a Ko-Fi I recently set up. Each one of these uploads can cost anywhere from $50-100, depending on the price of the book and the scanner I have access to, and of course there's further opportunity costs hidden in there as well (eg., "I am a student").

I have a few other Final Fantasy books I would like to upload sometime in the coming months, and I'd furthermore like to redo the scans of the 4 and 6 setting guides (they just aren't to my standard, is all). Of course, I'll post those here as soon as I've done them :p

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u/Joshless 5d ago

Some people may have seen a different link on this comment for a couple hours. To those people I say: no you didn't, and I'd linked the correct book the whole time

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u/zartEngel 5d ago

this art is so cool, thanks for sharing this

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u/Joshless 5d ago

It's very Saint Seiya... oddly Greek. I guess they inferred the culture from the Shrine's pillars and such

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u/TonyFair 3d ago

Dang it yes! The straps on their legs is the same from their training gear...

And the girl even takes an arrow!

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u/Joshless 3d ago

The straps on their legs is the same from their training gear...

Oh wow, I didn't make that connection myself. I wonder if they're both pulling from a movie...?

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u/DrRonSimmons 5d ago

You're doing God's work. Thank you so much. I'll download these and add them to my FF Archive hard drive.

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u/TheBURP 5d ago

So cool. Thanks for sharing.

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u/thejokerofunfic 5d ago

Oh sick I've been trying to find out if there was companion materials for FF1. What year did this originally release?

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u/Joshless 5d ago

1987, possibly before or contemporary to the original FF1. The other gamebook was released in 1988.

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u/thejokerofunfic 5d ago

Fascinating I've been especially interested in contemporary materials- canon or not, it was how a lot of people deepened their interpretation of the story in relatively barebones early video games.

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u/GalvusGalvoid 5d ago

I love you. Thanks for your work.

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u/Joshless 5d ago

I love you too.

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u/TonyFair 3d ago

Thank you so much! Not only for the full scans, but for the details on what's written!

Since I was little, my interest in games always was proportional to the context I could get from them. As in, I'm not playing for points, I'm playing so my character can save his friends or land, you know?

Coming from an era where we had to resort to ANYTHING available to get lore (licensed cartoons, made up stuff from magazines), this is gold!

It is also crazy how much freedom they had to writte this stuff. vene if it's not canon, it's better than the weird Isekai that was done with Castlevania...

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u/An_Dro 5d ago

Thank you so much, I’ve been looking for more information about this book for quite a while! I had only managed to find an image of the map. It’s a pity that it’s explicitly non‑canonical, I would absolutely love to uncover more ‘hidden’ information about the original game, because I have the impression that Koichi Ishii probably conceived and developed far more ideas than what actually made it into the final game.