ReCollection #4: Breath of Fire III (1998)

 

Here we go with another ReCollection, this time for my favorite entry in the Breath of Fire series!

It was the spring of 1998. I was a little over ten years old and a happy owner of both the Nintendo 64 and Playstation; Pretty much anything I wanted to play was available to me, save for the odd Sega Saturn game that I saw on shelves for rent, like Legend of Oasis. But beyond that, the sky was pretty much the limit. 

I remember going to Super K-Mart one afternoon, my pocket safely housing a $10 bill to buy whatever with. It was early April and a bunch of the newest gaming magazines were hitting store shelves, but the one I knew I wanted had already appeared a bit earlier: The May 1998 issue of Tips & Tricks magazine, the one with Mega Man Legends on the cover and a guide for the upcoming third game in the Breath of Fire series, which I knew I'd want to have on me for when the game finally hit shelves.

Unrelated, but looking through this magazine again made me realize that magazine and strategy publishers back in the day had no chill when it came to spoilers. They'd just casually drop major story beats, images of big events, and story-line bosses like it was nothing

They were also plagued with errors, like this particular one about a specific boss in BoF3:

Imagine my surprise when I eventually made it to the Chimera and found that it wasn't, in fact, a clone of Shroom!

Anyway,

Breath of Fire 3 wasn't going to be my first rodeo with the series. I rented Breath of Fire II several times in 1996-1997, and I bought a used copy of Breath of Fire I from Blowout Video-- The rental store within Super K-Mart, in 1997. I loved those games and so I knew that I was in for a treat with the third game on the Playstation. 

I had first learned of the existence of Breath of Fire III in an earlier magazine from 1998, though I don't recall which, but I do remember the ad and have managed to locate it online:

April had come and gone with no sign of the game anywhere, be it for purchase or rent. Every stop-in at Hollywood Video, K-Mart, and Wal-Mart ended in mild disappointment. But my luck would change when May rolled around! 

It was a Saturday in early May. We were refilling out the above-ground pool for the summer season. The weather had turned pretty hot really fast and so my parents wanted to get it filled as soon as possible. My grandmother had been over the previous day and given us our monthly ten-dollar allowance, so I was chomping at the bit to get out and check the rental store again. So while we were waiting for the pool to fill, we headed out to Walmart to pick up some supplies to keep the pool clean. But man, I wasn't expecting what I saw upon entering the store through the garden area.

You see, 1998 was a huge year in a lot of ways, but for me, in particular, it was about Godzilla! The first American movie from the creators of Independence Day was getting ready to go into theaters later that month and the publicity machine was going full blast. Ads were everywhere, but strangely no merchandise, but for good reason as the studio was trying to keep the final design of Godzilla a secret until the film was closer to release. None of the ads showed him in full, only brief glimpses here and there. This was before the internet became the huge spoiler machine that it is now, so the general public, even those that were hardcore G-Fans such as myself, were still in the dark. 

But on May 9th, 1998, my local Walmart blew the lid off the design by setting up an entire half aisle for the newly released GODZILLA merchandise, plastering not only the look of Godzilla all over but also revealing that there would be baby Godzillas in the film as well.

I remember walking up to the shelf, grabbing one of the six-inch figures from the peg and staring at it, then showing it to my father and excitedly saying, "That's what he looks like!", which I then proceeded to beg my parents for, which surprisingly they obliged and bought it for me despite my having my own money. I still have that very figure on the shelf above me where I write this blog post.

After snooping through the pool goods section and getting a bag of diving coins, we left Walmart and headed for Hollywood Video next. And as if the day couldn't have gotten any better, there was Breath of Fire III sitting on the shelf AND no one had rented it out yet. Score!

Naturally, I started it up within minutes of getting home. Made my way through the intro with Ryu as a dragon whelp, then saved my game and went to get in the pool with my new Godzilla figure.

The week that followed was unforgettable as well, though not for the game itself. You see, I was at that age where I was losing the last of my baby teeth and, unfortunately, had one still hanging onto the flesh in my gum that I refused to or allow anyone else to yank out. Eventually, I bit down on it, tearing my gum up and filling my mouth with blood. It wasn't pretty, yet it didn't hurt like it might sound, oddly enough. The tooth thankfully fell out a day later.

I think I made it as far as the Colosseum during my rental. I struggled with the first round, the fight with the guys in the platforms suspended over lava by big, oiled-up muscle-men... God what a weird world this game takes place in.

Upon a second rental, I made it to the rope-pulling minigame with Garr, right before the Angler boss fight. Couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do it properly, nor would I until later that year.

Now by this point, I had already picked up the Breath of Fire III guide from Prima Games at Toys R Us over the summer, before I even owned the game. I had to have poured over that thing a hundred times or more in the first week, just taking in all that I could before I eventually acquired the game for myself. 

I remember one particular instance of my reading it was the same day the episode of Dragon Ball Z titled 'Showdown in the Past' aired. It was September 14th, 1998 and it was an exceptionally hot and humid late summer day. My parents were taking their monthly trip out of town to the car dealership they had got their van from to make a payment, and since I wasn't yet allowed to stay home by myself yet, I had to go along. I took my guide with me and read on the twenty-minute trip there and back.

October 1998. I'd already played and enjoyed Harvest Moon and was mentally prepping my Christmas list, which would include Harvest Moon GB, Legend of the River King, Pokemon Red (which was also featured in the aforementioned magazine!), and of course, The Legend of Zelda 64, aka Ocarina of Time(But that's a tale for another time...)

My nephew was staying with us again and we were out to buy our Halloween costumes. But I also had some leftover birthday money to spend, so after picking out my ninja costume (Dragon Ball Z was the big new thing and I wanted to be Goku). We headed for the video game section of Walmart and I had them retrieve Breath of Fire III from the locked case. What a great feeling THAT was. 

Once we got home, I immediately jumped back into the game, ready to tackle the rope-pulling minigame once more, this time with a controller that was capable of turbo input. It definitely helped in quickly closing the gaps between pulls, but it was by no means a cheaters' way out.

Now as unbelievable as it may sound, I didn't actually beat the game until the previous year. August 1999. A month prior to my brother's wedding. I was stuck at the final boss for nearly a year with no end in sight. 

In preparation for my brother's wedding, we - including my grandmother - took a trip to Hickory, to Valley Hills Mall. We stopped in at the KB-Toys on the way out where they had discounted Gamesharks for the Playstation on sale. I begged my grandmother for one, thinking it'd be the only possible solution to my problem with the final challenge of Breath of Fire III—Man was I wrong! She relented and did buy it for me, but it played no part in my beating the game, funny enough. For you see, none of the codes I found at the time for the game would work; Not the infinite HP, not the max strength, nothing. So I made another attempt at the boss without the cheat device plugged in and, hilariously, I defeated her and beat the game.

And that pretty much sums up my history with Breath of Fire III. Nowadays, I typically play the game in April/May when the mood hits me, as it has right now. I am currently making a run of it on my Steam Deck with RetroAchievements turned on for extra to-dos. Playing the game in portable form is so nice, and with the added frameskip and save states features available via emulation, playing it is far more comfortable as well.