The Video Game Revue

The Longest Final Fantasy Wait

There's a story that I like to tell about how between 1997 and 1998, I waited for 16 months for the release of Final Fantasy VII. Today, I would like to tell that story again.

The prologue to this tale is how I came to be converted into a Final Fantasy fan, and for the sake of brevity, I'll keep that part relatively short. I first played Final Fantasy II/IV for SNES back in 1995 and was not won over by it. I was much more of a Zelda fan back in those days and the active time battle system just wasn't my thing; but cut me some slack--I was only 15. I did have some significant RPG experience, at least, thanks to Dragon Warrior, which I got a free copy of for subscribing to Nintendo Power back in the day. Anyway, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ceased to be my favourite game of all time sometime early in 1995 when I got into Secret of Mana. I didn't even realise at the time that Secret of Mana was published under Squaresoft--the very same Squaresoft that published the Final Fantasy series and would later merge with the creators of Dragon Warrior/Quest, Enix, to form Square-Enix.

I had a couple of close friends in Jr. High School. One was Alex, who was also a big fan of Zelda and became an even bigger fan of Lufia--the Taito RPG. I used to debate with him constantly about whether Lufia or Mana was the better game, which is significant because he drove me towards becoming an even deeper Squaresoft fan, although I didn't realise it until later. The other friend of mine was Fritzkrieg, who fatefully rented Final Fantasy III/IV one day, late in 1995. He called me up on a Saturday afternoon to invite me over, saying that he had the awesome new Final Fantasy game. I wasn't enthused, so I made him agree that we'd only play it for an hour, and then we'd play something else.

From the very first minute that I played Final Fantasy III/IV, I could not stop myself. Fritzkrieg and I played for at least four hours straight that day, and I left his place reluctantly. In the week that followed I scraped together every last penny that I could get my hands on to afford the game--it completely tapped me out. I played FF VI for 20 hours/week for the next six weeks straight before finally showing any signs of burning out on it, and I continued to play it regularly for another two or three years after that.

Final Fantasy VI has been my favourite game of all time ever since, perhaps only being de-throned this year by World of WarCraft.

It was in early 1997 that I bought a copy of GameFan magazine--the best gaming magazine that has ever been published--which had a massive article in it about Final Fantasy VII. At the time it was being showcased at some sort of expo in Japan, or something, and GameFan had all kinds of screens of it. One thing that you might assume is that if this story got so much coverage in GameFan, other mags must have been all over it. But the fact is that covering gaming announcements in Japan wasn't as common-place a practice back then as it is today, and Final Fantasy--although a very strong brand at the time--wasn't the sort of household name at the time that it is today either.

So there I was, clawing at my face in anticipation of this unimaginably incredible 3-D sequel to my favourite video game of all time. I was dying, and my life being what it was at the time, I felt like the only person on earth who cared about this fantastical Final Fantasy VII thing. I was so excited that even thinking the name "Final Fantasy VII" made me feel like the earth was giving way under my feet. Even now, that was probably the most excited that I've ever been about any video game, and I had an incredible sixteen months to stew over it.

Between 1997 and 1998, I bought every game magazine that I saw which featured FF VII on the cover and read as much as I could about it (having a part-time job at McDonalds helped to pay for this stuff.) I watched the Nintendo 64 arrive and do a belly-flop, which broke my heart because I have always been a dedicated Nintendo fan. But Final Fantasy VII was never far from my mind. In May 1998, I bought my PlayStation, along with Soul Blade (the amazing predecessor to Soul Calibur.) Suikoden and Wild Arms soon followed, and I waited for September to arrive.

That fall I started University. It was a very exciting time in my life, to say the least, and for the first time since I was 10 years old, my life as a gamer was somewhat overshadowed by something else. That is to say that I was following a bigger dream and experiencing bigger potentials than simply revelling in the latest greatest video games of the day. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I was on the cusp of losing my identity as a gamer, and I would eventually enter a lapse of three or four years of not really caring much about video games at all.

There was a chain of gaming stores at the time called CompuCenter, and that was where I bought Final Fantasy VII, on release day, on my way home from class. When I think back on it now, it's amazing that I didn't have to pre-order the game; not pre-ordering for one of the biggest video game launches in history seems unfathomable. Nevertheless, I did stroll out of there with a copy of FF VII. When I got home, I knew that my younger brother wouldn't be able to eat supper in anticipation of the game--hell, I was having trouble myself--so I lied and told him that I didn't actually get it and would have to get it tomorrow. After supper he could see that I was excited, and that's when I pulled the game out of my backpack.

Final Fantasy VII was not a complete let-down, but it was a let-down. In retrospect, I can see that the game's storyline was pretty good (aside from the ending, perhaps), and the gameplay was definitely good. But the characters were lacking, and somehow the game just didn't reach me as deeply as FF VI did. I still believe that FF VI is a superior game, but I also recognize that a large part of why FF VII didn't take over my life is because it was overshadowed by my University career and my general withdrawal from the video game world.

I never finished FF VII in the end, although I did make it to the final area. My brother finished it long before I did and I watched the ending cinematics with him.

No amount of anticipation will ever top that year and a third of waiting for FF VII, but what I really wanted to talk about today was Final Fantasy XII, which comes out on Tuesday. EB Games has already phoned me to confirm that my copy will be waiting for me at the store when they open that morning. I've been watching trailers and I'm pretty stoked about the game (it's even part of the reason that I've been playing so much Valkyrie Profile 2--now up to 12 hours of play time), but I'm not particularly dying with anticipation. Still, I'm amazed at just how long I've been waiting for this game.

The last true Final Fantasy title was Final Fantasy X. Since then we've had Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy XI (the MMORPG), and Final Fantasy X-2. I may be forgetting something, but the fact of the matter is that not one of those games since FF X has been a worthy successor to the series. Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, and X were a non-stop parade of classic RPG titles, and although I myself was living in a cave at the time (or is it living outside of the cave that I've only now returned to?), I can look back and see that these games were some of Squaresoft's finest. The last one, Final Fantasy X, was back in 2001, I believe--six years ago!

For the last two years I've had a Final Fantasy XII desktop wallpaper on my laptop. It's even been a long time since even the Final Fantasy XII demo came out with Dragon Quest VIII, which I greedily snatched up even though I probably would have taken a pass if it was just Dragon Quest VIII in the box (I admit that with shame.) Final Fantasy XII hasn't been haunting my waking thoughts the way that FF VII did at all, and yet somehow I've still felt the draw of it--it has still managed to wriggle into the cracks of my mind and make a home for itself. The other day when I was watching the latest story teaser for FF XII on GameTrailers.com, I felt myself choking up. I thought that I'd essentially left the lion's share of my love for Final Fantasy back in the 90s, where it seems to belong. In fact, maybe I have, but maybe there's still so much love left that I still can't help myself.

The longest wait for a Final Fantasy game in my life didn't start in 1997 when I bought that GameFan magazine with the exclusive FF VII preview. It started on the week following the release of Final Fantasy VII when I realised that I don't love Final Fantasy as much as I used to. It continued through 1998 and all the way to 2001, covering Final Fantasy VIII, IX, and X, all of which I've played (well, VIII only a little) and none of which got the kind of attention from me that was deserved (although I did at least play FF X all of the way through, once.) And then it continued some more through 2002 until present day. Part of me has been waiting for nine years for a Final Fantasy game to really grab my attention and hold it--for a Final Fantasy title to show me that the series doesn't merely live on in name only.

Could Final Fantasy XII be that game? Am I finally ready, after missing out on the bulk of what the Final Fantasy game universe has had to offer to the world so far, to tap in again and re-experience that awe and wonder? It could be that I'll be waiting the rest of my life for another Final Fantasy game to really impress me. Or it could be that I'll only be waiting for three more nights.

posted by Parappa @ 12:34 PM