How I Found Video Games, Or How Video Games Found Me (part three)

In case you're too lazy to scroll: part one part two

Part Three: Another Game In Town

As I mentioned at the end of my last entry, I wanted a N64 for Christmas. Why? Because a new Donkey Kong game was coming out for that system. A SNES was no longer gonna cut it.

I made it very well known that I wanted an N64. So come Christmas morning I unwrapped all of my gifts.

No N64.

But I can't say this was a video game system free Christmas. Why? Because my SISTER, who barely plays video games, got a Playstation. Yup. A Playstation.

Let me backtrack a minute. I still don't know why my parents chose to give the Playstation to my sister. I wound up playing it way, way, way more and currently have it in my home. Why they got the system at all was because my dad heard it was better or something.

Neither the Playstation nor the N64 were new systems at this point. No way. They were a few years old in fact. I didn't know much about the Playstation. The most I knew about it was from seeing the demo system in Toys R Us (I thought the controller was the weirdest bulkiest thing ever and I thought the symbols on the buttons was a strange choice.) and reading an article that pitted it against the Sega Saturn in an issue of Zillions. (LOVED that magazine. If they still made it, I'd still subscribe.)

Oh, and I also vaguely knew something about a game called Final Fantasy, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I was kind of annoyed that I wanted an N64 and didn't get one, but my sister gets this Playstation and doesn't even play video games. But being a video game freak, I consented to play it anyway, of course. We had two games: Toy Story 2 and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I remember when I first tried to play Toy Story it told me I couldn't save because I didn't have a "memory card". This concept was foreign to me. Why did you need a separate thing to save the games on? I made my dad go out and buy one.

Back to my N64 saga. After Christmas I had acquired a good amount of money. I was in high school by this point, my senior year, believe it or not. (That SNES had lasted a long damn time.) We went shopping one day and we were able to leave when I spotted a video game store. I ran inside and the store was PACKED. But I saw a box that had not only an N64 but it was bundled with Donkey Kong 64. So of course I bought it. My parents were not pleased. But I was happy.

I'll make my thoughts on the N64 brief, because honestly, it was the most useless system I ever owned. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Donkey Kong 64 and the price of the system was worth the game. But I never really got into the other games for the system. In fact the only other game I ever owned for it was some stupid Kirby game that felt like it was for 5 year olds. I really was more interested in the Playstation. So I guess in a way my parents had done the right thing. (Pretty shocking, I know.)

Back to the Playstation. As I said before I had heard of a game on the Playstation called Final Fantasy. Some of my friends were playing it. They all talked about a guy named Sephiroth. My friend tried to explain it to me once but she got as far as it was about a guy named Cloud before my eyes glazed over and I lost interest. RPGs were not my thing. They reminded me too much of Link. Plus, they looked too complicated for my action/adventure themed brain. I was determined to steer clear.

My sister, however, was interested. She wanted this game. So she instructed my father to go buy it for us. (Dad was feeling extra generous this holiday for some reason.) He came back with Final Fantasy VIII. My friends, of course, had been talking about Final Fantasy VII. But we didn't know any better and neither had dad. FFVIII was the newest FF title out there. So my sister sat down to play.

I, meanwhile, played through all of Toy Story 2 and all of Crash Bandicoot: Warped. (Both were enjoyable games, especially Crash Bandicoot, which was right up my alley.) My sister, in the mean time, was playing with Final Fantasy VIII. I find it horribly boring to watch other people play video games, so I had no idea what she was up to. She told me about how there was this guy named Seifer who teased this guy named Zell which made Zell flip out. And there was this cool cowboy guy named Irvine. She also had no idea how to play. She dragged Squall's dead body around for a long time because she didn't know how to bring him back to life. (The game eventually gave him some pity HP, I shit you not.) She drove around in one of those rental cars searching for the Tomb of the Unknown King for HOURS. Seriously, HOURS! I tried to help her find it, but we were both overwhelmed by this world map. It was nothing like the games we were used to. (Too much like Link.)

I avoided the game for awhile. But then something bad happened. I had beaten Donkey Kong 64, Toy Story 2, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. The only game in the house that I hadn't beaten...was Final Fantasy VIII.

So out of boredom and boredom alone I picked up the game, mostly as a joke. And I don't remember when the joke ended and the addiction began but I quickly became hooked. I was all over this game. The junction system confused the heck out of me, it was ages before I figured out how to boost a GF, and forget that card game all together. But I found myself really liking the game. It wasn't like Link at all.

So I made it through Disc One and most of Disc Two with no major problems. By the time I got to the fight with Fujin and Rajin in Balamb the only GF's I had were the ones you started the game with. Yeah. I know. So anyway Fujin and Rajin kicked my ass all over the place. I tried time and time again but all I did was die. I got so frustrated I remember very well throwing the controller to the ground in a fit of rage. I was starting to not like this game anymore.

Then one day at the mall I stopped by the video game store and saw a strategy guide for the game. I opened it up and flipped through it. And there I saw everything I had missed, including a ton of GF's. I remember being amazed you could draw GF's out of some bosses. Well oh crap, I thought. I really messed up big time. So I bought the guide, went home, and decided the only thing I could do to play this game right was start over. So I did. And I will fully admit that I've never played an RPG without owning a strategy guide since.

So in the war of the Playstation vs. the N64, the winner was clear. Parents: 1, Me: 0. If it wasn't for them, I'd probably wouldn't have played a Final Fantasy game until years later, if ever. Weird, really. Go figure.