An Interview with Eric Koziol about the Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta

Every summer sees one of the longer running events of charity gaming- the Final Fantasy Five Four Job Fiesta. Eric Koziol, perhaps better known as revenantkioku, organizes the online event and has been gracious enough to speak with Old School Gamer magazine about the subject. It’s great to have you with us.

1. So, what exactly is the Final Fantasy Five Four Job Fiesta? Let’s start from the gaming perspective. What is it about Final Fantasy Five, in particular, that inspires so many people to play it every year for this event?

Final Fantasy 5 has twenty (twenty-two if you want to be picky, and twenty-six if you include the GBA release) jobs. By the end of the game, you’ll usually pick and choose the best abilities from those Jobs and have four extremely powerful characters.

In 2006 or so, a friend and I split the Jobs 50/50 and did a run with only those as our options. A while later I had the idea to narrow it down even further. This led to me divvying out jobs by hand on a forum. It got popular enough that I decided to use my Computer Science degree for something and made the page. First, it was one job from each of the Four Crystals (Wind, Water, Fire, Earth). Over time, new modes got added to spice things up for people who play again and again. Some people have done over eighty runs in a season. I’m not that young anymore, I usually don’t even finish my one, haha.

2. Now for the technical perspective. How does the Fiesta work as a charity event- how do people pay in, and where does the money go?

The Four Job Fiesta started out as a fundraiser for Child’s Play Charity. 2011 was a different time for these events. I’m not sure when Tiltify opened, but sites like that made it easier to expand what charities we raise money for. This year is for [The PCRF](https://www.pcrf.net), and I don’t think I need to explain why.

3. Now for the social perspective. Could you please describe the community that’s built up around the Fiesta, and the history of how this happened in particular?

It started out on a forum that I won’t name, and then when I made the site and plugged it into Twitter, that let it expand for the world to see. Things change, so I made a subreddit (Which is now closed, please don’t ask to join.) and a [Discord](http://discord.gg/CfdsKk8) server.

Part of the fun is Gilgabot (Who is not Gilgamesh. These are two entirely different characters!), originally only the Twitter bot I made to handle requests, now a personality all of his own, that I use to yell about gaming and other things, and promote the Fiesta.

4. A recent technical alteration is that the Fiesta used to require a Twitter account, although many people just used dummy accounts. Why did you change?

Twitter, for all its problems, is a social network platform. Your friends see you messaging about a game event, posting updates, etc. So, you get curious. You join as well. Without Twitter and Twitch, I doubt the Fiesta would have gotten as big as it has. Twitter changed their API policies, and while there is a free tier, I didn’t want to run into problems and need the $100 or $5000 a month tiers.

Since lots of people were getting tired of Twitter, I made the switch to log in with Google. Most people have Gmail, which made the switch fairly easy. Don’t worry, I don’t send spam or sell your email address. I already don’t want to get email, haha.

5. In general, you seem pretty laid back about how people Fiesta. Strictly speaking, for example, players are only supposed to use official releases, but some use romhacks that say, allow for earlier job access to maximize the possible gameplay variety in the first third of the game. The romhack in particular I’m thinking of replaces the elaborate final boss sprite with a Cactuar, so no one attempt is being made to deceive you, but you still label these as wins. Do you ever wonder whether you should?

I live by my rules but don’t force them on others. It’s just that simple.

6. There are several different official versions of Final Fantasy Five, all with their distinct advantages in terms of technical gameplay. Would you care to lay out what those advantages are, and if you have any particular personal favorite?

The North American PlayStation version is great just for Y-Burn. (The way “Wyvern” was translated.)
Other than that, each newer version has some Quality of Life changes. Some purists will stick to the original Super Famicom version, where you can do things like underflow Berserker’s Magic Stat so you can do massive damage with the Earth Hammer.

Newer ones play a bit faster, as you need a Thief to dash in the original release. There have been so many changes, though, too many to mention here. But we discuss them in Discord regularly.
As for my favorite? Probably my Super Famicom copy signed by Sakaguchi. But that might be cheating.

7. Preregistration starts tomorrow. Would you care to lay out any new changes or options for this year’s Fiesta that longtime players may find interesting?

Nothing big this year. I’m still trying to recoup from the damage Twitter’s API change caused. Last year, Team 375 was restricted to Regular runs. This year it’s open to Typhoon, Volcano, and Meteor runs. Curious what those words mean? Check out the [Help Page](https://www.fourjobfiesta.com/help.php)!

8. In terms of new players, what sort of run would you suggest, and why?

A Regular Run. Bells and whistles sound neat, but there’s so much different about a Fiesta Run compared to a normal play-through of Final Fantasy 5 that you’ll get a lot out of doing a Regular Run, even though it “sounds boring”.

William Schwartz (9 Posts)

William Schwartz is a media writer who specializes in South Korean media, but also writes about a wide variety of popular culture subjects- including retro video games.