[General Discussion] Getting Involved With The RPG Video Game Genre For The First Time.

I recently had a great conversation with one of my best friends. We were talking about how we got involved with RPG Gaming for the first time. It came up when my friend was getting ready to put his final fantasy I hack on an actual NES game cartridge.

I thought about it for a while and it was actually by accident I got into RPG Games. The First RPG game I ever played was actually Dragon Warrior back in 1990. I was only 10 years old at the time, and majority of the games I had played for my NES were mainly side scrollers. What really peaked my interest for Dragon Warrior is when I seen the commercial for Dragon Warrior on TV.

Here is the actual commercial:

YouTube Video

I asked my dad if he ever seen the game at the local video game store to rent it for me over the weekend. When I first played it I didn't get very far. As soon as I started to fight some of the skeleton monsters I found the game way too hard and I swore to myself I would never play a game like that again.

Fast forward a few months and I had a subscription to Nintendo Power and one of the magazines I got the Nintendo Power Strategy Guide For Final Fantasy. This is a picture of the actual magazine.



As soon as I seen this guide and started to read through it I was automatically addicted to it. Unfortunately during that time to find a copy of final fantasy in a town of only 3000 people was next to near impossible. I never had a chance to play the game in itself until 1992, when I went to see my aunt. I only had a weekend to play it and I only got as far as the marsh cave. I never actually had a chance to own my own copy of the game and beat it until 1996.

Between 1992 and 1996 I was already involved into rpg gaming. Even though we didn't have a great library. I already had played Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, Breath Of Fire and action RPG's such as Soul Blazer and Actraiser. Through those games and finally playing/finishing the first final fantasy after 6 years of its original release really satisfied and flourished my interest toward RPG's in general.

So to members of the Gamingforce community how did you get involved with the RPG Gaming for the first time.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The year: 1990

The setting: Little Deni's friend's living room

The Dramatis Personae: Little Deni, Little Deni's Friend, An NES, an old TV with knobs for channel changing.

Little Deni sits, transfixed, his Gretzky-esque hockey mullet in rapt attention at a group of a fighter, a monk, a white mage and a black mage walking across a bridge. The screen flashes. The story unfolds.

Little Deni is addicted.

Little Deni ran out and made his mom buy him a copy of it as soon as he saw it played. Or he tried. It didn't work. Little Deni was the tender age of 7, and it's the precise reason he got a paper route. He needed a Nintendo and he needed Final Fantasy. And goddamnit, he got it. And such was born a love affair with a genre. At 7, Little Deni was reading Tolkien and McAffrey and all sorts of pulp fantasy. And here were playable versions of that. He was taken.

So I cut my teeth on Final Fantasy and the Light Warriors. This love affair continued through the SNES. Games like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Earthbound, Lufia II, Legend of Zelda: LttP, Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy IV, and of course Final Fantasy VI... there were others, as well... they were bread and water. Sure, I played other video game genres. I loved Super Metroid, I loved Joe and Mac, and Super Adventure Island... but RPGs were my love affair. There were more to come. Dark Wizard on the Sega CD, Shining Force and Phantasy Star on the Genesis, Dragon Force, Shining Force III and an almost countless number on the Saturn... I still collect them, of course. Tons sitting on my shelf, a fine collection. Even OCD Skills would admit to that.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My dad got me into them with Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, though as the years went on he lost interest in the genre as they got less about gameplay and more about storylines. (He was never fond of the Japanese RPG plots I suppose; can't truly blame him for the most part)

I remember after school for a long while we would play Zelda 1,2 (not rpgs, I know) and then Dragon quest 1~4, followed up by Final Fantasy 1 and 4. After that point I was pretty much playing them on my own entirely, as he lost interest in the genre after FF4; though he still was interested enough in Zelda and a few others that we played around together sometimes.

I remember last year I finally got him to play OOT and Majora's Mask because of the bonus disc that came out for the gamecube. Couldn't get him to try much past those, though.

I don't remember how old I was exactly, as I didn't play them right when they came out (well, I did try DQ4 and FF4 right when they came out, but not the others) but I was pretty young. I still remember those times fondly cause outside of that me and my father never really had a lot in common, so those were the only times we ever really spent any quality time together. Hard to believe it's been so long.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I got a free copy of Dragon Warrior with my subscription to Nintendo Power (was a subscriber since issue 2). I don't even know how young I was at the time, but I thought the game was fantastic and eagerly looked forward to any other game like that I could find.

I don't remember hitting another RPG until my brother borrowed Final Fantasy 2 from one of his friends, and I watched him nonstop. Pretty much from them until the PS2 generation, RPGs were my favorite genre (nowadays I feel they're too drawn out and unimaginative to be worth the time they take).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

A little embarrassingly for me my first RPG experience was Chrono Trigger. Now it's not embarassing the fact it was Chrono Trigger, but the reason behind me hiring it from that video store. Now my video store used to stock PAL games and NTSC games for hire, which was unusual, but that always had it clearly displayed on the box. Now my friend had a US SNES, no it was no problem for us to be able to play these games.

So back to the embarrassing part, we were browsing for games to hire. At this time I would have been 11 or 12, the N64 had already come out so we weren't really into hiring SNES games anymore. We had picked up Wave Race and we were walking to the front counter when I spotted something. Something that looked like a DragonBall Z game.

The rest is history. After I hired it I asked the owner if he could order in a copy for me so I could haver it at home, I borrowed my friends SNES (he moved away I still have it ) and played the game like no tomorrow. I also bought Terranigma, cause the video store guy said it was made by the same people.

When I had a PSX I tried to get into Final Fantasy and the like, but they sucked.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Unbeknownst to me at the time (I must've been between 7 and 9; I was born in 1983), my first RPG was Willow on the NES. But I didn't truly get into the genre until the SNES, when I discovered Secret of Mana. The ad/poster in a magazine caught my attention very easily. It looked something like this, of course:



Anyways, the game had a big impact on me. If you saw that intro sequence with Fear of the Angels playing back in the day, you'd understand why too. I think it was probably the first time that I found a game 'beautiful' as well as moving on an emotional level. From there, I was pretty much hooked on the genre. I would soon play Breath of Fire, Breath of Fire II, Ogre Battle, Illusion of Gaia, Lufia, Lufia II, Final Fantasy II/IV, Final Fantasy III/VI, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Evermore, and Super Mario RPG before jumping into the 32-bit era.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

My first RPG was also Dragon Warrior. Oh no, not the NES version, but the Game Boy Color remake of the first two games. I played many more portable games back when I was a child (since I couldn't really convince my parents to buy me a console), so, I had to wait a good while for my classic RPG experince.

FELIPE NO

Free Dragon Warrior game with Nintendo Power. Back in the days of being poor and young, a free game was something you didn't pass up no matter how shitty it was (no, not even that copy of Castlequest my aunt got me). As it was...I happened to like DW quite a bit. And it led to FF1...Which led to FF2/4, which officially hooked me to RPG's (at least up until recently).

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I wasn't really aware of the SNES during my childhood, sadly. Some of the SNES RPGs would've been awesome to grow up with. Rather, I got a PSX as soon as I could. My first RPG experience was either Final Fantasy VIII or Suikoden II, the latter clearly being the better game. Funny how I have much stronger nostalgic ties with Suikoden II than I do with FFVIII. After that I got FFVII which I didn't enjoy. I played it again recently and still, nothing. Contrarily, I got Suikoden I after I played Suikoden II and that was really when I fell in love with Suikoden. Then III came along...*shudder*

Suikoden ftw. ^.^ I'm proud to be labeled a Suikoden fanboy, really...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Super Mario RPG. I didn't even know what the "RPG" in the title meant, but I liked the TV ads. As a person with rather poor reflexes, the turn-based play appealed to me, and it was virtually the first console game that I was able to beat. The music inspired me to take my first tentative steps into the game music world as well, by downloading cheap tinny MIDIs of the game's themes.

I noticed other games by the same developer on the rental joint's shelves, and the fever took hold from there.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My dad brought home an Atari PC, not sure of the model. Which had several floppy disks that contained several genres of games. Mudpies, Spy Hunter, The Black Cauldron, Pac-Man, Asteroids... all sorts of what I would consider cheap, old school arcade games. And on one of those disks was Ultima: Exodus. The file that was saved actually had a high level party that had a ship that could obliterate any enemy on the map with a press of the space bar... until it ran out of shots.

I was between 6 and 8 if memory serves me correctly and I couldn't quite figure out the mechanics of the game, though it had several quirky little print outs that my dad brought back from work. They described the world and even what was necessary to cast certain spells in the game... rather, how to casts spells quite literally. Actual ingredients, usual organs of creatures I could neither pronounce the name or identify with my then current knowledge. But the verbal picture of fantasy was what broke through to me in those little printouts, though my eureka with the game would never really come. The "instructions" would have belonged in something like a fantasy novel, as nothing ever clearly described how to play the game.

I deleted the save file and decided to try and make my own party. I chose all warriors/fighters, because when I did get into a random battle in the first save file, I saw that they were the most powerful. Playing through the game, I was told to find the king and talk to him. I noticed that you could fight anyone in Ultima: Exodus via a command in the pop-up menu of options. I decided that it was time for a regime change.

The king promptly annihilated my well-meaning group of revolutionaries, each attempt I would make to dethrone him only left me defeated more swiftly than the previous effort.

After deciding the monarchy wasn't that bad, I tried a few attempts to possibly reduce the tyrannical city and palace guard contingent, each attempt met with various levels of "You wanna be the guy? Maybe when you're older", I gave up on Ultima: Exodus.

My understanding of RPGs at that time was summed up as the following: If you hold a stone to your breast and chant "I-vag-llorum", you'd be granted protection against evil. If you save over a save file at the end of an RPG, chances are you have to start over again with people who don't have an awesome ship that shoots red pixels of death... but you'll still have the no-direction of a game that could let you try to overthrow the kingdom if you so desired it.

I'd play other RPGs, Final Fantasy 1 on the NES, Dragon Warrior... but the only thing that ever stuck was when 1995 hit and then I saw advertisements for Chrono Trigger. I was smitten. The very idea of it was subversive to me at the time, every other setting was some kind of fantasy romp and my mind could only be wow'd by the world presented and leaked little by little in magazine previews.

I played and fell in love with Chrono Trigger like many folks.

RPGs just really haven't been the same since, save for a few pleasant exceptions. But isn't that how it always goes?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Ah man, this takes me back.

My first brush with RPGs was with my cousin actually. They're about 5 years older than me, and back when I was maybe 7 or 8, I'd go to their house since they had an SNES and what I now know is a disk loader emulator for the SNES which allowed you to play what I now know as ROMS. (Back then, I had no idea. I just knew games were on a disk and you had to load the disks into the SNES.)

Anyways, one of these said games was Final Fantasy VI. Obviously, I never got to play since I had two cousins, and if they did do 2-player (which was rare), it was usually the other playing. But I really didn't care, because just watching it was fun. Another game at roughly the same time that caught my interest was what I later found out to be Fire Emblem 4: Seisen no Keifu (or Geneology of the Holy War is the English subtitle, I believe), which again, I never got to play, but was happy and having fun just watching them play.

At home, I didn't have an SNES (or any other console for that matter) but all I had was a computer. A few months later, my other cousins came down from New Jersey to visit. They're also about 6 or 7 years older than me, and they then introduced me to the world of emulation and ROMS (namely, for the Genesis and the SNES.) At the time, the Genesis didn't interest me much, but I immediately went online to find Final Fantasy VI, downloading at 3.5KB/s on a 56k modem (those were the days) and enjoyed every minute of it.

The rest is history. After Final Fantasy VI, there was Final Fantasy VII (for the PC) which my cousins bought. I eventually borrowed that from them as well, enjoying the game at a chugging 20 frames per second. When the PSX finally hit, Final Fantasy became an all-time favorite franchise, not only with VII, VIII and IX, but more importantly, I, II, IV, V, VI, and the dark horse, Tactics, which incidentally, was what introduced me to strategy RPGs (or at least the first I actually played), and since then, I have never turned back. I LOVE Strategy RPGs.

As a random note, other franchises followed slowly as I wouldn't check out other RPGs unless I was recommended one. This brings in the Mana series (starting with Seiken Densetsu 3 and then Legend of Mana), Tales series (starting with Tales of Phantasia), and Fire Emblem series (one that I had forgotten about until 2 years ago) to name a few. But now I check out most RPGs as they come out, most of them being pretty fun. (Admittedly, I never got into the Chrono series....maybe a visit to that series is in order...)

This only applies to JRPGs, apparently, as I haven't played too many Western RPGs that I liked. The exception to this would be Fallout and Fallout 2.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Rotorblade

RPGs just really haven't been the same since, save for a few pleasant exceptions. But isn't that how it always goes?

I does seem like the three-peat of Secret of Mana ('93), Final Fantasy VI ('94), and Chrono Trigger ('95) was something special that will never be repeated again.

I was speaking idiomatically.

We live in hope, Megavolt.

Originally Posted by Megavolt

I does seem like the three-peat of Secret of Mana ('93), Final Fantasy VI ('94), and Chrono Trigger ('95) was something special that will never be repeated again.

Vengeance is mine, by the way.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Back in 1988, my first was Dragon Warrior as well. My second was FF1, too.

Through the twenty years I have immensely enjoyed all Dragon Warrior games and love half of the FF games and dislike the other half for some reason or another.

I met the Shining Force series in 1994 and love it.

I consider myself a classic gamer of RPGs. I like classic ones where you have to keep grinding until you become powerful. It really makes me feel like I've earned it.

My favorites are, in no order:

FF1, 4, 7
Shining Force 3, CD
Super Mario RPG
Lunar Silver Star & Eternal Blue (SEGA CD versions)
Dragon Quest 3, 8

With pretty much 20 years of experience, my conclusion is that Final Fantasy IV is the best game of all time. I am so psyched for the DS remake.

The storyline starts out pretty powerfully and keeps you going to the very end. The ending itself is very full and complete as well. Along the way there is emotion, a coherent plot, and some fun.

The gameplay is perfectly balanced where each character is of a different class. They each have important abilities so that all 5 people in battle must work together in a smart way to win (rather than have characters that all have the same spells and are less unique). It also has some very creative bosses -- especially for 1991. You have to defeat them in different ways, such as using wall in different ways, etc.

I doubt anything will beat it anytime soon.

FELIPE NO

First RPG I ever played was Robotrek for the SNES. I remember my brother and I didn't get very far because we would avoid the random encounters and as a result, had incredibly weak party members.

YouTube Video

It's a really quirky little number. The lighthearted slapstick is rad, at least.

How ya doing, buddy?

I think the first RPG game that I played was FFIV, but it might have been something else as I can't remember that very clearly.

My father who's been interested in computers since I was a small kid had heard of that you could emulate SNES games on the computer back in 1995 or 96. We had a SNES of our own with many games, but the thought of being able to play things for FREE at the time was amazing (it's not like that many RPGs came to Europe anyways so I wouldn't have had the chance to play them if I didn't emulate). So I got an emulator and downloaded any games I could find with cool titles on our 56k modem (Oh boy I loved those times) I saw this game called Final Fantasy IV, and man, it had one of coolest titles I had heard of and could understand at the time so I just had to try it out.

I started the game, and I got all hyper just by seeing the airships and stuff and Cecil kicking ass in the first monster encounters. I didn't understand much English back then since I was 6-7 years old (I'm Swedish), but I sat down with a dictionary and practically learned English on my own by playing all these different RPG games, translating every word that I didn't understand.

I didn't finish the games I played at the time since I still couldn't understand everything but the more games I played the further I got in them and the more I understood of the battle systems.

The first RPG I finished must have been Chrono Trigger, if I remember it right. This game was like magic to me, and I couldn't let go of it. Even when having crazy headaches I couldn't stop playing this game. I got so engrossed in the game that I could barely hear my mom screaming for me when it was time for dinner. She had to pull away me from the computer every time

Jam it back in, in the dark.

My first RPG was, similar to many other here, Final Fantasy I.

I was at my uncle's house, and I was watching him play it. I was pretty young, and was intrigued by the gameplay. I had never seen an RPG before, and on my Nintendo at home I only had a few games. I remember owning Mario, Mario 3, and Tetris. Beyond that, I had only rented a game here and there.

Anyway, the 'random battles' looked fun, as well as being able to freely wander around the map from town to town. After he had been playing for a while, I saw him go to an inn, and then go to turn off the Nintendo. I immediately freaked out, saying something like "WHAT you've been playing for like 3 hours and did all that, and you're just going to turn it OFF?"

He just laughed and explained that the inn lets him 'save' the game and go back to it later. I was impressed. [And wished games like Mario 3 had that feature, heh.] So after he was done, I started up my own game. Eventually the NES was basically 'phased out' by SNES, so I got my hands on their Final Fantasy cart, and still own it today. :D

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Ooh, good topic.

Even though I owned an NES beforehand, my first experience with RPGs wouldn't be until the SNES era. I'd frequently watch my older cousin play FFIV and FF Mystic Quest, and was completely taken in by the fact that there was this on-going story throughout the whole thing. To compare it to the only thing I could relate it to then, it was like a cartoon you could play. I decided right there that I was going to own an RPG of my own, and it had to be one my cousin didn't already have so we could swap at some point. I couldn't make up my mind at first, until a chance trip with my mom to Sears brought me in contact with Breath of Fire.

"From the makers of Final Fantasy!"

We all know Capcom made it, but Square published it, meaning they got the right to slap their logo on the front and call it their own. Did this crafty advertising work on me? Boy, did it ever! That and fact that I could apparently control a fish-man, an ox, and a snake-woman in addition to the sword-wielding hero. Not even FFIV had that. What would follow was a crash-course in item management, turn-based battles, and saving that would lead to many, many deaths and re-starts. But I pressed on, and it payed off when I got to transform into a dragon for the first time and melt some enemy face. The whole thing was pretty special, and if I laud over any BoF game in my posts, this is often why.

Originally Posted by Muzza

I wasn't really aware of the SNES during my childhood, sadly. Some of the SNES RPGs would've been awesome to grow up with.

Granted, some of us were pretty fortunate to grow up with the NES/SNES stuff, but you didn't miss the boat entirely. Suikoden II and FFVIII are still classics no matter how you slice it, but what matters most is that they're special to you. We all had those games, the ones our grandparents fished out of the bargain bins or mis-read the label and bought Fantasia instead of Final Fantasy, stuff we wouldn't buy ourselves in broad daylight, but good or bad, they were no less a part of our past.

I'll tell you a story that sorta relates to this. Back in 1993 I picked up a copy of some gaming mag at a grocery store. I don't know which one exactly, but they had a multi-page spread on a certain game called Lunar: The Silver Star. I was spell-bound, it was like a Disney film put to pixels, with animated visuals and CD sound, the whole gamut. I knew I had to play it, experience it, right then. But, the sad truth was, I already owned an SNES and a Genesis, and my mom and dad weren't about to shell out another small fortune to by me an add-on just so I could play the game. I was heart-broken, but I put it behind me when a bunch of good stuff starting coming out for the systems I had. Eventually, I got to play it, and it was great, but I wouldn't trade it for what I did get instead. Who knows, maybe I wouldn't have gotten to play BoF, or even Chrono Trigger had that little plan come to pass. Hold close to what you did get. Besides, you could've done a lot worse.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Nall, I was so waiting for you to answer this thread. I'm actually surprised to find you only started out in the SNES era, I had you pegged as a FF I/DQ kid.

Also, I am saddened that for once, I must disagree with you. FF VIII was a classic? Perhaps a classic example of how not to write a story. The music, however? Beautiful.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

My experience was hilarious. I had a game genie and noticed that Final Fantasy had basically more codes than any other game. So I asked for the game, and asked for the game, and asked for the game and finally got it for Christmas. It was definitely a good thing that the game came with it's own game guide as I had no idea what I was doing and while there were a LOT of codes, there was still that nasty 3 code limit (although why I didn't just not use the infinite gold code once I got what I needed I'll never know).

After that was Dragon Warrior where i learned the age-old art of leveling up to clear an area. There was this one slime in some abandoned city where I would get my butt handed to me each time. So then I would begin leveling, and kept trying each time I leveled upl. I think at level 18 I finally beat the slime or whatever it was. I also beat the game, although it was quite hilarous at the end where you are given the choice of having half the world only to get "Art thou sure?" if you said Yes.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Nall

what matters most is that they're special to you.

I can agree with that. The 32-bit era has plenty of good RPGs anyways. One thing that I can't stand however is the PS1 RPG fan who looks down on pre-PS1 RPGs as having inferior stories and therefore being inferior RPGs. I honestly think that most of the people who feel that way do so out of ignorance and fear. I think they feel that way for the simple reason that they aren't able to play many of the good 16-bit RPGs beyond FFIV, V, VI, and Chrono Trigger. For me, the cutoff point for an RPG being too dated might be with the first Dragon Quest. Obviously some of those early RPGs are a bit barebones, but the third Dragon Quest is still a good game despite being 8-bit and so certainly the various 16-bit classics still hold up.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Also, I am saddened that for once, I must disagree with you. FF VIII was a classic? Perhaps a classic example of how not to write a story.

Yeah, I think FFVIII is too love or hate to be considered a classic. Suikoden II is easier to accept as being worthy of the distinction.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Nall, I was so waiting for you to answer this thread. I'm actually surprised to find you only started out in the SNES era, I had you pegged as a FF I/DQ kid.

Also, I am saddened that for once, I must disagree with you. FF VIII was a classic? Perhaps a classic example of how not to write a story. The music, however? Beautiful.

The story, not so much - Dawnson's Creek with swords, but I give the game props for having probably the best 3D and cinematics at the time, a decent challenge factor, and, like you said, good music. I know some people are pretty attached to it, even if it exemplifies what we now know as The New Square, which is more like a soap opera and less like a rock opera than the originals. It's the FF people love to hate, but I think it was sorta important for the genre that it existed. On a personal scale it ranks pretty low, but, classic or not, a ton of people played it, so it has name value if nothing else. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to give undue praise to the game that it doesn't deserve, I'm just saying it was there and had presence in a big way. Suikoden II was superior in just about every way, and even if it didn't make nearly as huge of a splash, it was still beloved, and that's what I was trying to reconcile Muzza with.

And I can't tell you why I never played RPGs on the NES; I honestly don't know. DQ was really impressive to me, same with FFI, I remember that, but I didn't know anyone who actually owned them, nor do I remember seeing them in stores or anything and just had to have them. Guess I was more into platformers back then, but boy did that change! So no, I wasn't an FFI kid, but I did hop on the FFII (as we knew it) train, so I guess I wasn't too far off.

Originally Posted by Megavolt

but the third Dragon Quest is still a good game despite being 8-bit and so certainly the various 16-bit classics still hold up.

I didn't play the third until a few years after it came out, but it's still my favorite of the series by far, and probably one of the best RPGs on the NES. This, I would say, is a classic.

FELIPE NO

My story is a crazy one. I didn't show up at the RPG scene for a long time. Sure, I'd been into adventure games on the surface level (sup Zelda?), but it was a while before I came into contact with features like levelling up, turn-based battle systems, intricate storylines, memorable characters, and the like. While I consider my encounter with the genre as something close to haphazard, I'm grateful that it happened.

Think I was nine or ten years old at the time, so this would take us back to 1999/2000. Now, being a pubescent kid with an unhealthy addiction to all things Dragonball Z (it was as if I gained testosterone bonuses just by watching it), I spent a ridiculous amount of time plundering the internet at dialup speeds for information on the show, spending a heck of a lot of time in fan forums and such. Sometimes, I'd kill time by playing DBZ-related games on the official FUNimation website. Suddenly, they released a game that was really good! You could play as any of the main characters and if you chose one with Saiyan blood you could even go Super Saiyan and put Frieza in his place!! WOW! Too bad my mom spent ridiculous amounts of time on the phone... She kept telling me to get off the internet because she was expecting calls. Apparently, I was using the phone line a little too often to satiate my rabid fanboyism.

Of course, this was no good. I'd found a new addiction, and by god I'd take any means necessary to ensure my own entertainment. How else would I kill time while waiting for the "next exciting episode"? I thought to myself that there had to be some way to play this game without connecting to the internet, and so one day I did a quick googly query for something along the lines of "dragonball z downloadable games". The result was a website with a subtle cobalt hue - it offered downloads of various Dragonball related roms that required use of an emulator. These were mostly generic SNES-era Dragonball Z fighting games (admittedly, there was one called Hyper Dimension which had some pretty sweet graphics). Anyway, amongst them was a gem: Chrono Trigger. According to the website, this game was "designed" by Toriyama and acclaimed by many. I decided to try it out.

Needless to say, I fell in love. With time, mind you. Embarassingly, my first playthrough saw the characters named with respect to DBZ - Crono was "Trunk" (the 's' wouldn't fit! ), Lucca was "Bulma", etc. By the time I completed the game, I couldn't believe I was previously wasting my time with that Dragonball trash. After all, these games actually had a storyline that progressed! Character development! Plot twists! Since this run-in with an unexpected but totally magical guest of a game, I've always had a soft spot for games that can tell a good story, no matter how arduous the gameplay may be. (Not that Chrono Trigger was tedious at all.) Went on to emulate other gems in the genre, and I've still got some SNES RPGs that I want to get through some day.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Nall

The story, not so much - Dawnson's Creek with swords, but I give the game props for having probably the best 3D and cinematics at the time, a decent challenge factor, and, like you said, good music. I know some people are pretty attached to it, even if it exemplifies what we now know as The New Square, which is more like a soap opera and less like a rock opera than the originals. It's the FF people love to hate, but I think it was sorta important for the genre that it existed. On a personal scale it ranks pretty low, but, classic or not, a ton of people played it, so it has name value if nothing else. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to give undue praise to the game that it doesn't deserve, I'm just saying it was there and had presence in a big way. Suikoden II was superior in just about every way, and even if it didn't make nearly as huge of a splash, it was still beloved, and that's what I was trying to reconcile Muzza with.

All right, I can't argue with that logic. FF VIII did have gorgeous FMVs and the music was beautiful. However, I will forever hold that the entire cast being from the same orphanage ranks as one of the single worst plot twists in the history of video games. I literally set down my controller, turned off the game and didn't touch it for years. The bad character development and lame story was bad enough, but that was the last straw. Later, when I finally cowboy'd up and gave it another shot, I closed my eyes and hammered the ok button to get through that pile of crap scene, I soon came to the scene where you go to outer space and have to save Rinoa and I set down my controller, turned it off, and haven't gone back to it since.

I've noticed something. Almost everyone I meet who claims to like FF VIII are people of, at best, suspect intelligence. At worst, borderline retarded. You called it Dawson's Creek with swords, and it's a good analogy. People who like FF VIII are the kinds of people who like that and the Gilmore Girls. Depth replaced by whining. Ugh.

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And I can't tell you why I never played RPGs on the NES; I honestly don't know. DQ was really impressive to me, same with FFI, I remember that, but I didn't know anyone who actually owned them, nor do I remember seeing them in stores or anything and just had to have them. Guess I was more into platformers back then, but boy did that change! So no, I wasn't an FFI kid, but I did hop on the FFII (as we knew it) train, so I guess I wasn't too far off.

I think it was pretty hard not to fall in love with Cecil. That opening scene with the Red Wings theme playing is like crack. I still go back to it from time to time.

Jam it back in, in the dark.