Final Fantasy Adventure

Final Fantasy Adventure, known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square for the Game Boy in 1991. Despite the branding used for its Western release, it is the very first entry in what would become the Mana series, and it plays quite differently from the turn-based Final Fantasy games, offering real-time combat in which the player, controlling a young hero, swings a weapon directly at enemies while exploring towns, caves, and a sprawling overworld. The player pursues a quest of tropical fantasy across a large world, gaining companions, magic, and a growing arsenal, with a story that unfolds at the player's own pace. It was notable as one of the more ambitious and fully realized role-playing games on the handheld, packing a real adventure with towns to visit and a plot to follow onto a machine most associated with quick, simple games. Well received, it seeded the mechanics and world that Secret of Mana would expand two years later. It is the handheld you bring for the long haul, the twelve-hour car ride, the flight, or the slow week at the lake, a whole world small enough to fit in your hand and get lost inside.