I heard about people doing that in the VHS days. Avoiding the widescreen version because it added bars on the top and bottom, preferring Pan & Scan. In that case it made sense because crts were smaller and maybe it would be hard to see the image. 0 excuses for dvds on larger 16:9 screens though.

And in some cases where just cropping the image would be too shitty, they would do things like this to cover the black bars (you might need to click the img to see idk). Like what the fuck is wrong with you? Did people think their tvs were broken when it showed black bars? Were people ok back then?

Those black bars on the sides of the screen were so fucking scary for some reason that it was just decided that we would ruin every single piece of 4:3 media ever made until the rest of time. Like it took effort to do that and now we're stuck with shittier versions of everything

Oh yeah just download the SNES rom and emulate it. The pc and ios ports have very ugly looking interfaces, terrible font choice and the time warp effect is fucked. If you feel guilty about it buy it on steam later but emulate it please presentation matters. I think the DS version is ok too

Anyway that's about it. Since today is the game's 30th anniversary I wanted to talk a bit about it, but turned out I talked a lot about it. It's rare for me to completely fall in love with a game nowadays

I recommend reading a walkthrough immediately just to see where to go. Wasting too much time completely lost just increases frustration and animosity towards the game. I dropped this game so many times before because of this. Just try to keep a good relationship with the game and keep moving

My only gripe with the game is that at a couple of points it's not clear where to go to progress the story. For example there is one moment where a new "region" gets unlocked, but actually you are not supposed to go there yet. A bit confusing.

Oh that doesn't mean the game is a cakewalk, just that if you are struggling in a boss fight, the answer is usually a switch in strategy, not grinding or getting better equipment.

I wonder if JRPG fans actually miss these things, grinding, crafting items, fetch quests that get in the way of the main story, deep system mechanics grind the game to a halt. I personally don't, which is why I struggle with the genre, despite loving the stories and aesthetics that come with it

It's amazing how when the game doesn't last an eternity, you actually want to do the side quests, you actually want to talk to everybody, you actually want to get cool gear. I beat the game in around 23h with side-quests, far shorter than other JRPGs that last over 40h just for the main campaign

I think about the relationship between the game and the player a lot. When the game has a lot of bullshit that wastes your time, it's natural to have animosity towards it, not wanting to engage with the story and mechanics, hating the characters, thinking "let's just get it over with"

But by far the most impressive part is how the game moves you along. Each area is just the right length, you don't need to grind at any moment, you naturally find and buy new weapons and characters gain new skills at a rapid pace, skills that are cool and effective that you are excited to try out

At moments it feels more like a indie RPG released today than a 1995 game, because of how ambitious the storytelling can be. Lucca's backstory comes to mind, and of course the Trial scene at the beginning is shining example.

Once I gave up on using HP+HK and started using my pinky things got so much better. It did take a while to get used to it though