I must concede that there are some games in a series that for one reason or another are just absolutely impossible for me to play, or at the very least too expensive to invest in. I can work around RPGs with a translation patch, or a platformer having Japanese text, but Final Fantasy is a series where reading the text of the games is too important to the game’s progression that playing without it is too great a handicap. Since I am not a Japanese speaker, I’m going to have to skip a few games, but I still want to give them a passing mention. This week we’ll be looking at games directly from the Chocobo series that I wasn’t able to play through.
Chocobo’s World for the Pocketstation
This game was released for the Pocketstation along with Final Fantasy VIII, and is basically a novelty Tamagotchi-like toy where the player moves Chocobo around a grid, and gets him into fights. The player then transfer’s Chocobo’s experience into the Chocobo summon in Final Fantasy VIII. This game did eventually see the light of day in the states with the PC release for Final Fantasy VIII, and you can even now play it on steam in the US. I don’t own that version of VIII myself, and I don’t particularly feel like purchasing it for this one addition. Chocobo’s World is an interesting novelty, but barely contains any game in it really worth reviewing.
Chocobo no Fushigi Dungeon for the Playstation
The United States didn’t see the Chocobo’s Dungeon series until the second game, but the first one established pretty much all the elements found in the second game. I’d actually love to play this game, but as far as I’m aware, no translation exist of the game.
Chocobo Collection for the Playstation
This anniversary release for Chocobo containted Chocobo Racing, as well as two other Japanese only released games, Chocobo Stallion and Dice de Chocobo. My understanding of Stallion is that it is a management sim based on the minigame of raising chocobo’s for racing competition in Final Fantasy VII. Dice de Chocobo on the other hand is a board game type of game similar to monopoly.
Chocobo no Fushigi Dungeon for the Wonderswan
Later on Square would decide to port this game over to the Wonderswan. The graphics are simple, but the gameplay has mostly been maintained. Once again, I wasn’t able to find a translation for this one.
Hataraku Chocobo for the Wonderswan Color
Truth be told, I hardly even know what this game is because the information on it out there is pretty hard to find. It looks like a RPG similar to Harvet Moon in which the player completes little daily tasks with their Chocobo to earn money, like farming and mining. Most people have never heard of this game, let alone gone to the trouble of translating it, but I did find a poor quality trailer of the game.
Chocobo Land: A Game of Dice for the Game Boy Advance
This is a port of the Playstation game from Chocobo Collection, Dice de Chocobo to the Game Boy Advance.
We’ve only scratched the surface of Japanese only Chcocobo games, and Japanese only Final Fantasy games in general. We’ll take a look at the rest of the Chocobo games next week.