PixlBit

Programming Note:  These early posts on the first couple Final Fantasy games are heavy on biography and nostalgia.  I will likely suppplement them with further discussion on the merits of the games themselves at a later date.

 

1.

I was born in 1984. When I was at the tender old age of 5, my parents deigned to buy me a Nintendo Entertainment System, bundled with the ever-present Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. As I opened the box that Christmas morning, I recall a feeling of puzzlement, more than anything else. What was this thing I had opened? Being barred from most regular television programming, there was no chance I had seen the Nintendo commercials (if there even were such things at the time), so I wondered, just what, exactly, had Mom and Dad bought? 

My Dad, being as game as ever, fired up Super Mario Bros. with me. From that day forward, we would play Super Mario almost every night, sometimes because of my whining, or sometimes, at Dad's behest. I learned many a life's lesson from Mario and Dad, lessons I'll revisit later. But the point is, we played Super Mario because it was there, and because it was fun to play together.

Growing up, two of my older cousins, Tim and Luke, lived nearby. Though I didn't understand why at the time, Tim and Luke often came to hang out with me at my house, and I would sometimes visit their house to play with them. I recall their house being a big, strange and wonderful place, with oversized pillows, a Harlem Globetrotters pinball machine (!!!!), foosball; they had it all. And, of course, they had a Nintendo. Luke had a Nintendo in his bedroom! No way my mom would have allowed that...

As the oldest son of three, I looked to Tim and Luke as my older brothers. And nothing held me in such rapt awe as the Nintendo skills of those two. Punch Out!? Mike Tyson was no match for their twitch skills. Excitebike? A chance to compete, with shoves all around, in case you were falling behind. Arch Rivals? Let's not even go there. But nothing prepared me for the day Luke called me into his bedroom and bid me look at his television screen. "See that guy there? I'm going to name him 'Chris' [rendered as 'Cris']. And the leader, that's me, he's 'Luke'." I asked "what about the last two?" "Well... Tim likes a girl named 'Tara', so lets name her 'Tara', and we'll name the last one 'Tim'"...

I sat in awe, as I saw my digital likeness take form. Though I didn't know it at the time, two fighters, a white mage, and a black mage, sallied forth to steal my heart, and a good chunk of my life.

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Why do we game? I won't yet attempt to answer for "we", but I know I started gaming because it offered me the chance to step into my imagination. I had read (and had been read to) about adventurous knights saving princesses, fire-breathing dragons, swords and sorcery. But in Final Fantasy, suddenly, "I" was holding the sword. The sense of empowerment cannot be overstated. Luke, ever-present big brother figure, milked it for all it was worth, too. As he finishes up his degree in teaching (and as I continue to work on my own), I can't help but remember that he would ask me "what sword do you think I should buy?" I was 5 years his junior, and yet, he would ask me what I thought! Such a small thing, but as I study learning theory now, Luke was, without even knowing it, giving me control; giving my opinion merit.

I don't remember much more about our adventures in Final Fantasy. After a short time, I lost track, and life continued on. But the seed had been planted...

Knowing how much I loved playing video games and how much I loved reading, my Mom got me a subscription to Nintendo Power. Something about Luke and I's quick adventure tickled my brain, and I got out an old Nintendo Power, and I found an article about Final Fantasy. The article promised an adventure of your very own! Crystal balls and an island! I desperately wanted to win, but I didn't have Final Fantasy. Only later did I realize that it was far too late by that point.

If you can't read it, that grand prize totally says you get to go on your own adventure!  And you get your own crystal orb!

Despite this, I read everything I could about Final Fantasy. I became an expert in a game I had never even played. I knew what shop sold which equipment, and which spells worked best against which monsters. I read the Nintendo Player's Guide cover to cover, digesting everything I could.

Around this time, Tim and Luke's mom and dad had gone through or were going through a pretty messy divorce. They would often stay at our house, and would often babysit my youngest brother and I. Many days, I would come home to find Tim "sick" and staying at our house. He would go to the school nurse and ask them to call his Aunt Rachel, so he could leave. On the way home, they would rent a video game... And that video game was almost always Final Fantasy. When I would get home from school, Tim would ask me to help him play through Final Fantasy. I was the brain, and he would play the game. I was so juiced on my own self-importance (after all, here was my older cousin, asking for *my* help), I didn't even mind that I never got to play.

I don't remember getting much further than Elfland, but another seed had been planted. I was the informed one. The guy with the answers.

How did you know?

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I don't know if I would call Final Fantasy my favorite game, or my most favorite series, but in many ways, it defines me as a gamer. Before I even knew what an "RPG" was, I was casting my mind into fantasy, taking on roles, living dreams. Between my two cousins and my Dad (who turned me on to The Hobbit as a young child), I was inculcated into the realm of the imagination. These days, my Dad calls it "sending your mind on a walk". You can send your mind on a walk through alternate realities and possible outcomes, or you can send your mind far outside the realm of the plausible. Either way, it's an ability I cherish, and one I've come to realize is not particularly common.

As I embark on my journey through one of my favorite of game series, I find I'm walking forward while facing behind.

And so, as Garland lies vanquished behind us, and as the chip-tune Prologue plays, we set forward into the unknown. We want to turn back and look at what we've left behind, but the future lies ahead, dark and dangerous; begging for our knowledge and mastery.

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At the time of this writing, I've played through the original Final Fantasy more times than I can count. I've played it on NES, I've played Origins on Playstation. I've played it with every character class. I've played it after grinding my party into unstoppable champions, and I've played it as fast as I could possibly manage. In many ways, it is an idiosyncratic game. You queue up your actions, then you and the enemy duke it out. If you targeted one monster with two party members, and the first attack slays the monsters, your second attack will whiff into nothingness (that "Ineffective" message sure does grate). Many a modern gamer (and even some retro ones) could not stomach such a rigid approach.

From where I sit, such rigidity becomes Final Fantasy. In the days before GameFAQs and when even the all-powerful Nintendo Players Guide didn't contain all the answers (and even had some incorrect answers), Final Fantasy was obtuse. It is gaming as siege mission. You reach a new area by the skin of your teeth, and you grind and grind and grind until you can get the best weapons, armor and spells available, then you embark into the unknown, crossing your fingers that you can make it back to safety. In our current times of instant saving, checkpoints, or, at worst, saving at your discretion, Final Fantasy's decision to restrict saving to inns seems quaint, even annoying. But to me, this crystallizes the role-playing experience. After all, we wouldn't abandon our warriors in the middle of the Marsh Cave, would we? We'd leave them with their feet propped up, sipping a nice warm beer.

In many ways, role-playing games are a complex math problem. How likely is it that my character will dish out or repair X damage? How many HP does an enemy have remaining? On average, how many more battles will I have to fight until I have enough money to buy that new sword? As the game pans out, your equation is constantly revamped. Maybe you fought a battle against 4 ogres, and made far more money than you expected... Maybe your White Mage scored a critical hit you never saw coming... Or, conversely, maybe all your best fighters whiffed Astos for the first two rounds. How are you going to proceed?

It's not an exaggeration to say that I can credit Final Fantasy for my ability to solve math problems quickly. In the end, playing Final Fantasy becomes a meta-game of sorts. It's not "do I get the Silver Sword?", it's "which do I think will happen first? A Silver Sword, or a level up?" There are games within the game, and anon and anon...

Speaking of the game itself, and not its impact on my life or its inner workings, I love the artwork. Those big-headed sprites you start with really endeared themselves to me from day one. Though they appear child-like, I think this was the intent of the designers. One of my favorite moments in the game is when you acquire the Tail and are able to upgrade them to adulthood. From a practical perspective, not much changes (until you level up a few times), but you just *feel* empowered. You've got a posse of mean looking mahs, and they're ready to tear up some Fiend butt. (side note: one of my favorite games-within-the-game is seeing how quickly I can upgrade my party to adulthood. After Lich, it's usually number one on my agenda. Kary and the Volcano don't stand a chance with a crew full of badasses that have punished their way through the Ice Cave and the Castle of Ordeals.)

Monsters, too, are drawn with wonderful detail for the NES. The artwork is dark, evocative and colorful. The fiends are a major highlight; Lich with his rib cage and conjuring, Kary with her snake stripes and many swords, Kraken with his regal mantle, and Tiamat with his multiple angry heads.

    

                                                              These guys are wangs if you aren't prepared...

I didn't realize it as a kid, but the music, too, left its impression. Those staccato plinks and plunks that begin the game never fail to send my heart back to childhood... And the rapid-fire sounds of the Marsh Cave always send chills down my spine, even though I know I brought 99 Heals and 40 Pures along for the ride.

In the end, it's not possible and not enough to judge Final Fantasy on its merits. Its merits have outlived the game itself, and have been honed to diamond-perfection by Square, by Enix (and later Square Enix), by Atlus, by any favored RPG developer you have in mind. To modern eyes, it may be rigid, it may be ugly, it may be quaint, it may even be boring. But to one small boy, it was once permission to imagine; it was once a call to dream. So why do we game? We game because it is escape; we game because it brings order to a chaotic world. We game because it's fun, and we game because it's a challenge. Our friends do it, or our friends look down on it. But in spite of it all, this small boy games because he remembers, and he loves.