Let's flash back to 1992. Cam and their siblings move into a new house and score a Super Nintendo for Christmas. They also meet their neighbors, who have a Nintendo Entertainment System. And that's where things really take off.
Final Fantasy had an enormous impact on me. The boy next door would chronically rent the original from the in-house video rental section of the grocery store. I'd watch for hours. So when I saw that there were more of these games on the SNES, it was a given that it was my turn to play. In a strange twist of fate, a used Final Fantasy II (IV) was $44.95 and a used Final Fantasy III (VI) was $54.95, and I only had $50 to spend... so FF2 it was. I feel like this is kind of a fork in the road for an impressionable young gamer. Because the battle system of FF2 was so much simpler, the focus for the player had to be the story.
Another big difference between FF2 and other JRPGs was the art. I always liked the cleaner, more streamlined stylings of FF2. (Dragon Warrior IV gets a shoutout here, too.) Other games, like FF3 or Chrono Trigger, then appeared messy or cluttered to my eye. Pixel art is so joyous to me because it forces your imagination to fill in the gaps. What you don't see, you create.
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| The trope of the young waif with a traumatic past always tugged at my heartstrings. |
Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy VIII would also be played into my teen years. There were other big games, of course, from various genres and systems. You had your SimCity, Tetris Attack, Starfox (God, I love Starfox, and I can't even explain why), Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, Goldeneye 64, Diablo, Warcraft II, and many more. A decent spread of genres. But Final Fantasy II was always the crown jewel of my collection, and dearest to my heart.
It was as an adult, and through entirely legal means, that I discovered Earthbound and Harvest Moon for the SNES. (These were obscenely expensive, even in 1996, and practically inaccessible in 2008.) They had a big impact on me as well. I realized that I loved first-person connections with characters, as well as affection mechanics like dialogue options and gift-giving. My social ineptitude probably has a little bit to do with that. And as a kid, I was drenched in fantasy and sci-fi, so to find interest in games set in modern times was bizarre... but welcome. The medieval fantasy genre, in all honesty, can get tiresome with its limitations, even if you do throw in an airship periodically.
I played with RPG Maker here and there, but nothing really stuck... until I had been playing roller derby for about 4 years and really wanted to share the experience with people that either wouldn't or couldn't play themselves. It was only natural to fit that into a Final Fantasy-esque package. With some added social mechanics, of course.
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