"I'm an old man. I hate everything but Matlock. Ooh, it's on now!"
I'm old in the sense of what people on the internet these days seem to regard as old. In other words not that old, but I'm not hip to the lingo daddy-o! That's still what kids say these days right? I'd guess I'm a year or 3 on either side of Mr Jeffrey Gerstmann, but I don't have a job that keeps me aware of "stuff". So anyway, as people tend to do, I started reminiscing recently about playing Final Fantasy 2 on the SNES. For some reason (CUZ IT RULES BRO!) that game has always stuck with me. I had played the first Final Fantasy on the NES, but I was a kid and that game was fucked. I'm sure I'd go gaga for it now, but at the time that thing was like Chinese Calculus and I was a product of the Louisiana public school system. "This game sucks! I'mma go shoot my BB Gun outside mom!" "Be careful not to shootchya bruthah!" I also remember my dad trying to be sly about Final Fantasy 2. We were in his pickup truck going somewhere, my dad, my little brother, and myself. He apparently had been talking to Santa Claus and wanted to get a feel for our reactions on Christmas morning. "Hey've y'all heard of this game Final Fantasy 2? A guy at work has it and Pilotwings and was telling me about them. They any good?" Me being the clever little fucker I was remembered that wasted trip the video rental store that resulted in Final Fantasy 1 says "Yeah Pilotwings is good but I bet Final Fantasy sucks! It's all readin'!" "fuckin' kids..." "Huh?" "Nothin'." If my dad had realized at the time that our lack of seatbelt wearing could have gotten him free and clear of these two ungrateful boat anchors and debt free he may have taken the opportunity, but thankfully he is a forgiving man. (Also I grew up to insist anyone with me wear their damned seatbelt! It was a different time.) So Christmas comes and we play so much Super Nintendo during the break we get thumb blisters. I finally decide to crack open Final Fantasy 2. OH MY GOD. This is a story! It's epic! There is loss and betrayal! Cecil no! Don't burn everything down! See now you're sad on the airship dude! Again, not to sound too Old Man, but "BACK IN MY DAY" Final Fantasy was hammy but it wasn't so goddamned corny like it has been lately. 15 seems like a good step, I mean it's silly as all hell, but at least the characters aren't all wearing shorts and straps as shirts now. But I digress, more than usual. I loved it. It burned a love of RPGs into my brain that has lasted to this day, but for some reason I never went back to replay it. Also I never somehow learned that what I just played was actually Final Fantasy 4. Flash Forward about 25ish years.
I had a very wild and rambunctious late 20s. I did a lotta dumb but super fun shit. Somewhere along the line I ripped up my knee and "walked it off". I was drinking and "partying" (keeping it PG) way too much and had married and divorced too young so I was living hard. This was all a couple months into Post-Katrina life in New Orleans. It was hard to find a working refrigerator but I could get cheap cocaine and weed from damn near any random fool on the street. Suffice it to say, I self medicated because WOOHOO PARTY BITCHES. Now I'm a nice boy who's settled down, lives in the suburbs of Arizona with my second wife, and OH JESUS CHRIST MY KNEE IS MADE OF FIRE ANTS AND LAVA. One MRI later and I learn that my Meniscus has become wet toilet paper and fallen to pieces with several sprains and pulls in the muscles surrounding it. I'm given strict Doctor's Orders. When at all possible stay off the knee until we can get the cyborg parts ready. Oh man now I have to play video games all the time. :( (My wife is a saint)
I have a Vita, and I wake up hurting like a sumbitch on Friday night/Saturday morning. My wife is asleep next to me and my headphones are in another room. Most of my Vita games rely on sound and voices. Oh well I'll just buy something that I can fiddle with in relative silence. Oh hey there, Final Fantasy Origins! That damned Final Fantasy 1 *hiss* *boooooo* *spit* but also that gem of my childhood, Final Fantasy 2! Oh yay! Somehow either because of its small size, the time of night I downloaded it, or just random chaos of the universe, it zipped down to my Vita in a few short minutes. None of the typical nightmare download speeds PSN seems to find adequate. I fire it up! OH BOY! Ummmm... wait.... what.. um... what is this CGI bullshit? Oh this must have been an update for newer systems. Some way to flash it u... uhmmm.. this isn't at all how I remember the story going. Oh wait. Who the fuck are these chumps?! Google google google. AH HELL! And of course Final Fantasy 4 is $20 on PSN. Well shit... I'm already here, let's give it a shot. And there my weekend went for the most part. It plays pretty much how I remember my Final Fantasy 2 playing. It was the old school JRPG shot straight into my veins I was needing, it just turned out to be a totally different game than I knew I wanted. I'm about 25% done, maybe a smidge more, according to the wiki I found while researching what the hell I had just bought.
Maybe I'll save Final Fantasy 2/4 for even later and go and sample some of the other early games in the series I missed, or get real weird with it, and just start grabbing some random ass old JRPGs off the PSN store and see where it takes me. I just hope it doesn't take me back to Final Fantasy 13.
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