Sabin: The Prince Who Suplexed a Train

Sabin Figaro grabs a ghost train by the coupling and suplexes it into the ground. This happens in a role-playing game from 1994 — a genre of menus and patience — and the game simply lets it work: the train takes the hit, the battle rolls on, nobody blinks. He is also a prince. The younger of Figaro's twin heirs, and the one who gave up the throne so he'd never have to sit on it.

Sabin's Blitz command turns a turn-based menu into a fighting-game move list; his story turns a rigged coin toss into the kindest thing one brother ever did for another. That combination — royal blood and a pro-wrestling finisher — is the whole of him in one image. Here's how it works, every technique worth the input, and why the man throwing the train was always meant to be free.

The Coin That Was Always Going to Land Heads

The coin was rigged. Ten years before the game opens, the king of Figaro died — poisoned, rumor said, by the Gestahlian Empire, though the court was too busy arguing over who got the crown to look into it. That indifference is what broke something in Sabin. He didn't want the throne; he wanted the people circling it to care that his father was dead. So he proposed the obvious thing to his twin, Edgar: leave together, both of them, and let Figaro sort out its own succession.

Edgar answered with a coin instead of a word. He produced the one their father had given him — heads, Sabin walks free; tails, Edgar does — and tossed it. It came up heads. Sabin left to become a monk; Edgar stayed to be king. What Sabin didn't know, and wouldn't learn for a long time, was that the coin carried his brother's face on one side and his own on the other. Two heads. Edgar had already decided the outcome before the coin ever left his hand.

That toss tells you who both brothers are. Edgar wanted freedom too, but he could see that Sabin wanted it more — and that Figaro would fall if the throne sat empty. So he took the crown and dressed it up as chance, so his brother could leave without guilt. Sabin spends the rest of the game not knowing he was handed a gift.

If it's heads, you win. Tails, I win. The winner chooses whichever path he wants. — Edgar, the coin toss

The training paid off in the worst way first. Sabin studied under Duncan, a martial-arts master living near South Figaro, alongside Duncan's son Vargas. Vargas grew certain his father favored the outsider — that Duncan meant to leave the dojo to Sabin instead of his own blood — and one day he snapped, struck Duncan down, and fled into Mt. Kolts. Sabin went after him, and caught Edgar's party crossing the same mountain. He stepped in front of a brother he hadn't seen in a decade, settled the fight with a single Blitz, spared Vargas, and came back to a war he'd been trying to avoid.

The game bookends all of this at the very end, and most players are moving too fast to catch it. In the collapse of Kefka's Tower, the escaping party hits a locked door; while Edgar picks it, a steel girder drops from the ceiling and Sabin catches it, holding the whole weight up with his hands so his brother can work. He tells Edgar he's sorry he left him to rule alone, but he always knew Edgar could carry the kingdom, so Sabin trained to carry him. The prince who walked away spends the finale holding up the ceiling for the brother who let him go. That is the coin, paid back.

Sabin's Blitz: Fighting-Game Inputs in a Turn-Based RPG

There's no timer on the inputs. Sabin is the only character whose command asks you to enter a direction-and-button sequence — down, down-left, left — the way you'd throw a fireball in a fighting game, but without a fighting game's clock. Take as long as you like; only accuracy counts. The resemblance isn't decorative, either: Raging Fist lifts both its name and its input from the Kyokugenryu karate of Art of Fighting, and Aura Cannon uses the exact quarter-circle motion of Street Fighter's Hadouken. Enter the sequence correctly and Sabin fires the technique. Enter it wrong and he steps forward, does nothing, and the turn is gone.

That risk buys a lot. Every Blitz costs no MP, ignores the back-row damage penalty, and always connects; several ignore the target's Defense outright. Sabin shows up already knowing the first couple and learns the rest as he levels, with one exception you can grab early if you know where to look. Here's the full Blitz list, in the order he learns it.

The order rewards a little planning. Early on, Raging Fist is your reliable single-target hit and Aura Cannon covers anything weak to Holy. Once Rising Phoenix and Razor Gale come online, Sabin becomes a group-clear engine — Fire across the whole enemy line, then Wind when fire won't land. Phantom Rush, his ultimate, normally waits until level 70, but you can learn it far earlier by taking Sabin to Duncan's rebuilt house north of Narshe in the World of Ruin and letting the old master teach it directly. Do that and his best move is online decades of game-levels ahead of schedule.

The Suplex Heard Round the World

The suplex is the famous one. Meteor Strike is a grab-and-throw — Sabin seizes an enemy and drives it into the earth — and the game, for reasons its designers almost certainly never planned, lets him do it to the Phantom Train. The ghost locomotive that ferries the dead is, mechanically, just an enemy that can be picked up. So Sabin picks it up. He suplexes a train, the train takes the damage, and a genre built on polite menu combat produces one of the most gloriously stupid things in any RPG.

It lands in the middle of his best stretch of the game. Swept off a raft down the Lethe River and separated from the others, Sabin runs his own solo scenario: he falls in with the ninja Shadow, stumbles onto an Imperial camp, and watches Kefka poison the entire kingdom of Doma from the far bank, powerless to stop it. Then he boards the Phantom Train alongside Cyan, the last knight of a kingdom that no longer exists, and the two of them ride the dead's own train to the end of the line. Suplexing it is the moment the scenario stops being grim and remembers to have fun. They leap off a waterfall afterward and land near a feral boy named Gau, and the party grows by one.

If you're playing today, you won't find the word "Suplex" anywhere in the menu. The move you've heard about is called Meteor Strike now — the original SNES release used one set of names, and every version since the Game Boy Advance re-translation, the Pixel Remaster included, uses another. Same throw, different label. The whole Blitz list got the same treatment, so here's the map.

The Pixel Remaster kept the suplex — you can still throw the train — but changed how it looks. In the original, the locomotive flipped upside-down mid-throw; in the remaster it didn't, and enough people noticed and complained that Square Enix publicly promised to put the flip back before launch. When a studio patches a twenty-eight-year-old sight gag because fans demand their train be suplexed properly, you learn exactly how much this one animation means to people. One last warning, if you ever see it happen the wrong way: while Confused, Meteor Strike still needs a target and will happily choose Sabin — he can suplex himself.

Build Him Like a Mage, Not a Monk

Build Sabin for Magic. He looks like the least magical character in the game — a barefoot bruiser whose Strength starts at 47 and whose Magic limps in at 28 — and that look has sent players down the wrong path for thirty years. Here's the part the game never tells you: Blitz damage doesn't come from his weapon at all. Whatever you put in his hand is irrelevant to what his techniques hit for. His fists are the weapon, and what sharpens them is a growth stat, not a shop.

Which stat depends on the Blitz, and this is where it turns counterintuitive. His two punching techniques, Raging Fist and Meteor Strike, scale off Strength, exactly as the muscles suggest. But his sweeping Fire and Wind attacks, his Holy bolt, and his ultimate Phantom Rush all scale off Magic. Four of his best offensive options — including the one that ends fights — reward the stat he looks least likely to use. Phantom Rush especially is magical damage wearing a flurry of punches, and it hits so hard it caps at 9,999 without much Magic investment at all. Feed Sabin Magic and his whole late-game kit sharpens; feed him Strength and you've upgraded two moves out of eight.

The practical version: steer his growth toward Magic, hang a pair of Earrings on him for the magic-scaling Blitzes, and stop agonizing over his weapon slot. He's an early bloomer — he carries the party hardest around levels 40 to 50, when his Blitzes outrun what anyone else can do — and his armor options thin out toward the end, so build for output and useful accessories rather than raw defense.

Where he tapers off is worth saying plainly. Sabin's whole pitch is a guaranteed, defense-ignoring hit for no MP, and that's enormous right up until the rest of your party can also reach the damage cap freely — at which point his edge narrows from "exceptional" to "reliable." Late in the game, a Genji Glove that lets a strong attacker swing twice can out-damage a single Blitz on raw numbers, and Aura Cannon's Holy niche fades the moment you pick up the Holy spell from Alexander. None of that makes him bad. It makes him a character who peaks exactly when you need him most, which is a good place for a beginner-friendly powerhouse to peak.

Once you know about the coin, the game hands you a second scene as a reward for paying attention. Much later, when Celes needs to trick the gambler Setzer into a deal, she borrows a coin — and if Edgar is in the party, it's the same two-headed coin, and if Sabin is standing there too, he finally works out what his brother did to him all those years ago. Keep Sabin in the party through the World of Ruin, play him as the magic-scaling powerhouse he actually is, and the game will quietly show you the trick behind the toss. The prince who suplexes trains has the best-hidden heart in the cast — it just waits for you to come looking.

Common Questions

How do you suplex the train in FF6?

Use Meteor Strike — the Blitz the SNES version called Suplex — on the Phantom Train during Sabin's solo scenario. On the Pixel Remaster the input is the on-screen arrows up-right, up-left, down, up; on the SNES it's X, Y, Down, Up; on Game Boy Advance it's R, L, Down, Up. Sabin learns Meteor Strike at level 10, so he'll have it well before the train shows up. Land it and he suplexes the locomotive into the ground.

What is Sabin's best Blitz?

Phantom Rush, for raw damage. It hits a single target for massive magical damage and caps at 9,999 without heavy Magic investment, and you can learn it early by bringing Sabin to Duncan's house in the World of Ruin instead of waiting for level 70. For clearing groups, Rising Phoenix and Razor Gale are the ones you'll lean on most.

Why is Suplex called Meteor Strike now?

The original 1994 SNES translation named Sabin's Blitzes one way — Pummel, AuraBolt, Suplex, Bum Rush — and the Game Boy Advance re-translation renamed them Raging Fist, Aura Cannon, Meteor Strike, and Phantom Rush. Every version since, including the Pixel Remaster, uses the newer names. It's the same throw; only the label changed.

Is Sabin good in FF6?

Yes, and he's easiest to appreciate once you know when. He's an early bloomer who carries hardest around levels 40 to 50, when his guaranteed, MP-free, defense-ignoring Blitzes outpace everyone else. The catch most players miss is that four of his best techniques scale off Magic, not Strength — build him toward Magic and he stays relevant far longer than his bruiser look suggests.