Off Course

1997.

I can trace the driving force behind me getting a Playstation. It was Final Fantasy VII.

I first saw the game at a friend's house. Nader, I believe. He handed me the control and fired up a new game. The opening was amazing. The bombing mission of the Midgar Mako Reactor was thrilling. Here was the RPG that I had played more than half my life but with cutting edge graphics. The music was loads better than the days of 8-bit and 16-bit. This was the glory of full-fledged 32-bit music and animation. Not only was there an epic story and big-ass swords and a blaxpoitation character, there was all sorts of other gameplay aspects. The main story itself takes awhile to get through but then there's all the mini games at the Golden Saucer, Chocobo Racing (and Breeding), materia gathering and whatnot. The battle arena had a wonderful typo that keeps showing up every round and we still make allusions to it. In the Brothers Alvarado Chocobo Breeding farm we developed our naming convention for industry: 023-9 and followed by the letter we were on. The first bred chocobo was 023-9a, but by 023-9h, we had struck chocobo gold.

In retrospect, as with all things, the graphics do not hold up and the gameplay isn't stellar. It was a good game, I'll still say. It was easily eclipsed by many finer ones, one in particular, but it was important since it was impetus of me wanting a Playstation.