After Final Fantasy became a breakthrough success in America, Squaresoft started localizing Final Fantasy II. No, not Final Fantasy IV for the Super Nintendo – the Famicom game Final Fantasy II.
Squaresoft made a rough translation of Final Fantasy II and advertised it at CES with the "Dark Shadow over Palakia" on the cover. While Final Fantasy II wasn’t officially released until it was bundled as Final Fantasy Origins, you can own this one of a kind Final Fantasy collectable. Video game historian and Gamasutra news director Frank Cifaldi is selling the only Final Fantasy II pre-production cartridge on eBay.
Cifaldi explained how he obtained the cartridge:
I purchased this cartridge about nine years ago from a private collector in Canada. He advertised it on forums and everyone assumed he was trying to sell a bootleg copy of the amateur ROM translation that’s been online forever…fortunately I took a chance and talked to him, and this turned out to be legit. The ROM was dumped a long, long time ago, and has been on the internet for at least nine years. I know it’s complete because it’s been played through several times over. The translation itself is pretty rough because it’s a work-in-progress, but it’s all there (just kinda funky sometimes).
The Final Fantasy II cart has a high buy it now price of $50,000, but Cifaldi told Kotaku he’s open to offers. If you just want to play the NES version of Final Fantasy II get out your Xtal Rod and download the ROM from Cifaldi’s site, The Lost Levels.
