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FOMA? And I thought the MSX version was obscure. FOMA stands for Freedom Of Mobile Multimedia Access and it is the OS for the 900i line of cellphones. Yes, there are cellphones in Japan that let you play the original Final Fantasy! (The original Dragon Quest is also available.) The P900i & P900iV by Panasonic come with FF1 preinstalled, but on other models you must pay a monthly fee.
This version of FF1, called "Final Fantasy i", is pretty unique. It's half way between the original and the other remakes. The town and dungeon graphics have the same proportions as the original, but are spiffed up some with more colors. The characters and monsters have the graphics from the remakes. Some features of the remakes like quicksave and auto-target are in this one, and some, like the run button, are not. (There's an option to auto-run, but no button to activate it on the fly.)
Click for screen shots.
Sadly, most of us will never get to play this because, other than some monstrosity like the N-Gage, American cellphones aren't powerful enough to handle a game like this. Import, right? Well, it's pretty damn expensive and you probably won't be able to use it as a phone. (Are Japanese cellphones compatible with American, European, etc. networks?) Then surely, emulation is the answer! Yeah, I wish. It simply isn't popular enough for someone to bother making an emulator for it. I believe this small piece of FF1 history will be lost to the ages.
Character Generation
Final Fantasy EZ:
There's another version of Final Fantasy for phones that use the CDMA 1X WIN operating system. (Code Division Multiple Access 1X Wireless Intelligent Network) It's called Final Fantasy EZ. It should be pretty much the same as the FOMA version, but not only have I never played it, my source of information has never played it.
Thanks a lot to Marcelo X of Warmech's Domain for photos and information.
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