Final Fantasy - A Review & Reflection

Final Fantasy - The Journey That Started It All

I first played Final Fantasy when I was seven years old. I probably got it for Christmas in 1987, but the details are a bit fuzzy. Most of my gaming life to that point was spent in games like Centipede or Super Mario Bros. where the “story” lived only in my imagination based on the limited introduction given in the instruction manuals at the time. 

Final Fantasy was different. I knew it was a paradigm shift immediately, even though I wouldn’t know that phrase until Final Fantasy XIII two decades later. The game itself was far too difficult for me to beat at that age, but it captivated me with its sense of discovery and adventure. Meeting kings, rescuing princesses, and stepping into a world full of towns, caves, and monsters felt like a novel coming alive. It was magical. 

By the time I was in 5th grade, I was carrying my Nintendo Power strategy guide to school, studying monsters and dungeons in my free time. I occasionally asked my teacher to explain words to me, which only cemented my nerd status among my classmates. I remember my first party vividly as it remains iconic to this day. 

• Todd the Fighter

• Dave the Black Belt

• Jed the Black Mage

• QT the White Mage

QT was a girl in my mind, but in elementary school giving her the name of a female classmate felt like a bold confession, so I kept it anonymous and generic. Later in life, I would see the White Mage (and moreso the White Wizard) as a male and name him Kiru after my Final Fantasy XI character who was also a White Mage.

It took me nearly a decade to conquer the NES version of Final Fantasy. I was 16 and over-hyped for Final Fantasy VII to launch, replaying all the classics to fill the time over the summer leading up to it. The day I finished it, I felt like I closed a loop that began when I was seven. I finally mastered a game that had introduced me to a lifetime of stories. 

Game Breakdown

Final Fantasy is a short but dense JRPG, beatable in a weekend if you know what you’re doing. The moment-to-moment gameplay loop is simple. You explore towns for hints. You explore the overworld for dungeons. You explore dungeons for upgrades. Those upgrades come in the form of experience to level up, loot from treasure chests, or gil (money) to buy new spells and equipment when you head back to town and thus the loop begins anew. 

The game opens asking you to build a party of four members from a choice of six jobs or character classes. The freedom to choose between warriors, thieves and wizards felt incredible to my young mind. Later learning those classes would go through an optional evolution was even crazier. When my White Mage was finally a White Wizard wielding Thor’s Hammer and could call down lightning with it, my imagination was in full overdrive. 

By modern standards, the story is a bit thin. However in 1987, it felt groundbreaking. The world’s light mythology about crystals, dragons, chaos, and legendary heroes of light was enough to spark my imagination for years (decades) to come. Even being able to name your party members with the four-character name limit became a huge part of the game’s charm. Homages to this would be paid in Final Fantasy XI and Strange of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin years later - even my old Black Mage “Jed” suddenly found himself fighting alongside Jack - at least that’s how it is in my headcanon. 

Even in this early game, the music deserves special mention. Nobuo Uematsu remains one of my favorite composers of all time, and Final Fantasy really planted the seeds of what would become an entire franchise of iconic soundtracks. Although, Uematsu was working with the NES’s limited sound hardware, he managed to craft themes that felt bigger than the gray packaging that contained them. “Prelude” and “Victory” are simple 8-bit compositions that carry that spirit of adventure and transcend the NES hardware. Later games’ soundtracks would certainly outshine in complexity and emotion, but these foundational first tracks on this first score would echo through the entire series. “Chaos Shrine” and “Mt. Gulg” have permanent residence status in my memory and emotions. 

Notable Versions

The NES Original (1987) is punishing but pure. This game had limited spell usage (spell slots) rather than MP pools that later games would adopt. Predicting the party’s lethality is a necessary strategy, because if the Fighter kills the enemy the rest of the team is targeting, then everyone after him will fight that empty space. This is what I consider to be a true “hard mode” version of this game.

The Dawn of Souls on Game Boy Advance (2004) added smoother combat, the modern MP pool, and additional Soul of Chaos dungeons with bosses ripped from other games in the franchise. The 20th Anniversary edition on Playstation Portable (2007) is my personal “definitive” version with all the content from Dawn of Souls and an additional Labyrinth of Time and Chronodia superboss waiting for you at the end. 

We’re currently in the era of Pixel Remaster which boasts sleeker visuals while retaining the original style of the NES version. This version strips out the optional dungeons for a return to form on the original experience. 

If I were guiding the modern player to check out Final Fantasy, I would recommend the Pixel Remaster edition. It’s approachable, charming, and true enough to the core experience that I described as short, dense, and magical. While I still hold true that 20th Anniversary is the definitive version with all the bells and whistles and extra content, the optional content can frankly be a slog and a distraction from that succinct weekend adventure I’m promising. If you end up loving the game, check out the versions with more content later down the road. 

Snapshot

Pros: 

• Short, dense adventure that respects your time (10-20 hours)

• Party building freedom and satisfying upgrades; good for replaying with different combinations of characters to choose from when building a party

• Timeless sense of discovery and nostalgia; see the origin story of a huge franchise

• Pixel Remaster makes it easy for modern gamers to access and enjoy

Cons: 

• Story is dense, but sparse; no cutscenes, no exposition - just the player experience and dialogue from NPCs in towns to build the world, explore the lore and define the narrative

• NES Original mechanics feel clunky and archaic compared to later versions

• Those optional dungeons are more padding than payoff; fighting bosses from future games is cool, but the dungeons themselves are tedious. 

This depends on your values as a gamer, but the game does not hold your hand. It expects you to talk to the town NPCs and follow clues to complete objectives. There is not a shiny line leading you from point A to point B or quest markers over anyone’s head. Exploring and discovery is part of the design. This is frustrating to some, refreshingly old-school to others. 

Final Reflection

Final Fantasy didn’t just entertain me. It really shaped me. It was my first window into how video games could tell real, captivating stories. It merged my love for fantasy, mythology, and adventure into an interactive experience. Even now, decades later, it’s more than nostalgia. It’s the game that pushed me from gamer to storyteller. It was the first spark that would carry me into a lifetime of RPGs and creative writing - endless imaginary worlds would follow. 

If you’ve never played this game, go in expecting a short, charming experience that is basically a time capsule from the dawn of the JRPG genre. For me, everything I love about games today really traces back to those four little heroes on the NES exploring the unknown to save a world. 

Jack Unbound - A Starbound Story

Screen Capture from Episode 1 - "Pilot"

I have been enamored by several "Let's Play" series on YouTube over the years. These video series are basically people playing video games while adding their own voice over narration and reactions to what they're doing in games. I stumbled into this genre when trying to determine whether or not I would like a particular game - and have since used it more often and more reliably (with better results!) than typical game reviews and media. Actually getting to see someone play a game hands on and mess around in the world lets me know fairly quickly whether or not its a game I would enjoy or not. I even dabbled in doing my own "Let's Play" of a game once, but it was a disaster. Although I do think I can tell a fun story when prompted, it's difficult for me to speak and play at the same time. It's difficult to think of what to say while you're actively engaged in another action. It was awkward and terrible and I abandoned it. I decided "Let's Play" are not for me.

Then a thought occurred to me several years later. Perhaps a series doesn't need a voice narration. I don't need to bring my personality to the series if I can invent personalities that are engaging to an audience. I may not be very good at narrating my own actions in a game, but I am good at narrating a story. So I began to ponder whether or not I could tell a story within a game I'm playing. I wondered for a long time if that type of video would even be entertaining to a general public audience. I fear that it isn't, but I decided to go forth and create a pilot. Some people love it. Some people think it's tediously boring. Personally, I think it's cute and I have fun doing it. Since it's not a traditional "Let's Play" series, I've opted to categorize it as a "Let's Role Play" series. I don't think I invented this genre, but the role-play series I see on YouTube are far and few between.

Jack Finds an Abandoned Mining Camp

I decided to play an open-ended sandbox game called Starbound. I've mentioned it before in a couple of "Week in Review" columns as it's a game I've been playing on and off for about two years. The game is still in development and so content changes a few times a year. I think the game finally hit its stride with the current version, called Spirited Giraffe, and has provided an ample staging ground for telling a dynamic story. There is enough to do and the added convenience of bookmarking and teleporting to and from worlds which was absent before now. The basic premise of the game casts you in the role of intrepid space adventurer, braving the dangerous of unknown planets to forge your destiny in the universe. I know that's vague, but the game is so open there really isn't any set path for a player to explicitly follow. This is what makes it such a fun playground in which to invent a story.

The story revolves around Jack - as of yet no known surname - who awakens on a broken down starship and is forced to mine the planet below for enough materials to repair the ship. Jack's ship was attacked while he was in stasis and he remained in stasis for twenty years. There is much Jack doesn't know about the current state of the universe and humanity, but he's desperate to find out - and reclaim some of what he's lost. He is accompanied by his prison ship's Artificial Intelligence who seems to have an agenda of his own.

Jack Does Some Light Tomb Raiding

While I tend to play Starbound at a rather frantic pace, consuming and exploiting each new world I visit as quickly as I can and then moving on to the next, I really wanted to slow down with Jack. I spend a lot of time building up shelters and other constructs for Jack as he explores the universe. Typically such things are just for fun and there's not a huge amount of incentive to spend the time gathering and building up huge bases, but because I'm playing Jack with a realistic mindset, he eats everyday and sleeps every night. He hunts and gathers and mines and builds. The series is much slower paced than the average "Let's Play" of Starbound, but within the series there is an unwinding narrative about Jack's past and what he intends to make of his future.

I'm posting weekly on YouTube. I try to have a new episode up every Friday and if I do any heavy building, I post a "Build Episode" on Mondays or Tuesdays. Those episodes don't really progress the story, but show a lot of the edited out footage of building up structures and shelters. I hope you check it out and more importantly, I hope you enjoy it.

Jack Unbound



- TOP
@TOPGamingBlog

The Return to Blogging

Many times this year I've thought about returning to TOP Gaming. I originally started this blog as a way to get back into writing. I'm a storyteller at heart, one of the few and proud gamers of the world who actually value a good story and strong characters over graphics (and to some extents gameplay). Blogging was mostly an exercise to get myself writing every week and perhaps launch into bigger and better writing projects in the future. After a personal tragedy in 2013, I returned to college to finish a degree in Applied Linguistics and decided that since I was writing a paper every week, I really couldn't afford the time to write about video games every week on top of that. I was certainly getting enough writing practice.

I wanted to do a grand reopening in January with a "Best of 2014" article, but that fell to the wayside as I prepared to move from Maryland to Hawaii. It's roughly 4800 miles to move a family of five. No big deal. My supportive wife says, "It's never too late." So perhaps I will do a review of 2014, or perhaps I won't. I haven't decided what to do, honestly. All I have decided is that I need a creative outlet. I've been out of school since January and comfortably settled in Hawaii since March. It's time to get back into writing - and hopefully back into blogging.

The last real post on this blog was Music May of 2013. It was a huge undertaking and it was one of my favorite projects that I've ever done. It took months of preparation and hours of writing and listening to music. When Grooveshark crumbled in April, I was fairly devastated. My entire blog was dependent upon Grooveshark to provide the optional, ambient background music of TOP Gaming. It was another crushing blow and another setback to my return, because I knew once I came back I'd have to address it. I still don't know how to solve the issue. There really isn't anything quite like Grooveshark on the internet that I'm aware of. I don't know how best to integrate video game music with video game musings. I'm sure that in time something will come up.

May 4th of this year, a new son was added to my family. He's asleep right next to me as I write. The weekend leading up to his birth was a very difficult weekend for me and I wrote a yet unpublished blog about how I was feeling at the time. I'd also like to polish up and publish that blog for you sometime as it was an amazingly powerful outlet for me to vent some pretty strong emotions - and yes, I somehow managed to tie it together with a video game, or specifically a video game song that I don't know how to feature on this blog at the moment.

That brings me to June - which it is for a few more hours. I didn't really have any life-changing or blog-disrupting changes this month. I probably could have posted a bit earlier, but I did not. I got caught up in the Heavensward launch for the MMO Final Fantasy XIV, but now things have settled down and I'm trying to set aside more time for creativity and expression. That's really all I have. I don't want to tease an audience (whatever's left of one) into thinking I'm truly back. I haven't really thought this through. I just thought it was long overdue that I sat down and wrote.

- TOP                    

@TOPGamingBlog 

Educational Value of Gaming - Sengoku

It was one week ago, January 28th, that I attended my first, official college course since 2001. I am reluctant to admit that I was unprepared. The entire experience completely overwhelmed me physically and mentally. My first day of school greeted me with well over 200 pages of assigned reading to be finished by Wednesday. My classes didn't exactly ease me into this transition of being a full time student. I was thrust into it head first. I spent every free moment of my day reading (and taking notes) on this mountain of homework that I was given. Mixed in with that was the responsibility to find suitable daycare for my children and celebrating my daughter's fourth birthday (twice). I had every intention going into last week to put up a blog, but my hopes were dashed upon the rocks.

Darth Oda, Lord of the Sith
Unifier of Sengoku Period Japan

So here I am, now. I'm no longer a stay-at-home father with free time to burn on video games and blogging. I am a college student once more. My children started full-time daycare just yesterday and I miss them terribly while we are apart. The recent life-changing, tragic events of last fall give me no shortness of anxiety at handing over my remaining children to someone else's care and responsibility, but they themselves seem to enjoy it a great deal. It has been a complete upheaval of our life at home. It will be some time before we all adjust to the new routines of work, class and daycare. The good news, however, is that after the hectic week I had last week, my homework is going a lot smoother. It's easier to tackle in small chunks spread out over the course of the week than all at once within two days. With proper management, I even find time to play a few hours of games and write up my weekly blog. TOP Gaming can continue!

The most demanding class I'm taking is also the most exciting to me. It is a look at Japanese history starting at 1800 up to present day. The bulk of all the reading assignments come from this course, but the content is extremely fascinating to me. When I was a student back in 1999-2001, I was a Japanese language and culture major, but I never got around to taking any history classes in the short time I attended. That means I have a basic level knowledge of much of this history, but I've never actually read about most of it in depth. I find that I still have a sincere interest in the Japanese people and their history. Although the class is focused on the year 1800 and beyond, I decided to do a bit of extra reading about the events leading up to the Tokugawa Shogunate which was in place in 1800. I wanted to read what the history text had to say about Sengoku jidai - the Warring States period of Japan.

During this time there is over a hundred years of civil war until the eventual unification of Japan by Tokugawa Ieyasu (building off of his predecessors' and allies' efforts) which ushered in 200 years of peace and prosperity for the country. As I was reading through all the information about Japan's most turbulent time, fraught with constant military campaigns between rival warlords, I realized that I was pretty familiar with most of the major players and events, despite never having touched a history textbook on the subject. The Sengoku jidai is arguably one of the most popular events in Japanese history and it is retold over and over in film, anime and video games. It's through these literary mediums that I learned so much about this time period.

In Sengoku Japan, Pokémon catch you.

It was odd for me to be reading about historical figures such as Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi with images of a recent Pokémon game I was addicted to flashing into my head. I'm speaking of the game known as Pokémon Conquest in North America, but Pokémon + Nobunaga's Ambition in Japan. It's a cross over that takes the Sengoku jidai and slaps it into the Pokémon world. Samurai warlords staging epic battles with Pokémon companions - could there be a better game? Probably, but it's pretty good. At any rate, it's a strange world where you are reading a history text, but associate the names to characters in a game. I thought about how odd all of this was and began to trace back my personal history with video games and the Sengoku jidai.

This is how I like to picture Myamoto Musashi in 1612.

I believe it was the great company Squaresoft who introduced me to concepts of bushido (the samurai code of honor) with their game Bushido Blade in 1997. This game is about samurai in a modern setting and has nothing to do with any historical samurai conflicts that I'm aware of, but I learned a great deal about samurai, their code of honor, and various weapons from this game. In 1998, another game about samurai was released called Brave Fencer Musashi which also had almost nothing to do with the Warring States period of Japanese history, but it did borrow some of the legends of that time period. This game introduced me to Miyamoto Musashi (and his rivalry with Sasaki Kojiro) even though the game was cast in a completely fictional world. I knew somehow that it was drawing on real historical-mythology. Although Musashi was not a warlord, he was perphaps the most famous ronin samurai (akin to "freelancer" for our purposes) of all time and author of The Book of Five Rings which is still significant to this day.

This all began to snowball in conjunction with my growing love for anime into an increasing awareness of samurai history and culture. The interest in Musashi drew me in to a deeper understanding of a comic series I had loved since I was a boy, Usagi Yojimbo. In turn, this led me to various works of Kurosawa Akira, legendary Japanese film director responsible for Seven Samurai among other great works. Kurosawa's films about samurai cultured a deep love for the video game Way of the Samurai and its sequels which are told in styles very similar to a Kurosawa film - with multiple endings and various perspectives on your enemies depending on how you play through it. Way of the Samurai led to an introduction to the Meiji period, which is the end of the samurai as a ruling class (something we'll be discussing in class in the coming week or two) and the anime Rurouni Kenshin.



Shogun: Total War was given to me as a gift from my father in 2000 when I was a student of Japanese in college originally. The gift was important because it marked the end of a long-standing grudge my father was holding against me regarding giving me computer software and hardware. It was also touching because it was an unspoken support and acknowledgement of my interest in Japan, and given to me on a medium I'm sure he knew I would enjoy - video games. I've said before that I'm a complete "noob" when it comes to the real-time simulated battles of the "Total War" series, but despite that this game was my first foray into real historical simulation in Japanese history, incidentally simulating the Sengoku jidai. I soon learned that if I pushed "Auto-Resolve" through the actual battles (which almost defeats the purpose of the meat and potatoes portion of the game) I could focus on what I was much better at - the strategic overlay of troops and logistics. Not unlike the "Civilization" series, Shogun: Total War allowed me to build up my infrastructures, train troops and march them into my rivals' domains to unify Japan under my banner.

Did I mention my favorite board game is Risk?

I'm trying to illustrate how a simple interest can explode into your major field of study in college, as well as how much you can learn from video games if you pursue you interests within them. It's amazing how much I learned even based on fictional pieces of work set in the background of Japanese history. I learn that Oda Nobunaga was ruthless in his quest for dominance over the landscape of Japan, but ultimately left his conquest to one of his primary vassals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It was practically usurped from his heir, Hideyori, by Ieyasu Tokugawa (another right-hand man of Nobunaga) who managed to solidify control and usher in an era of peace for hundreds of years. These basic concepts are familiar to me because of what I learned from playing video games and I'm surprised just how much so.

- TOP
@TOPGamingBlog


Here's a few other games that got me swept up in Japanese (samurai) history:

• Samurai Warriors series
• Nobunaga's Ambition series
• Civilization series (among many other histories)
• Onimusha series
• Sengoku Basara series

Memoria de Eorzea

During the first two weeks of October 2011, I was possessed by the spirit of battle. I was presented with a daunting challenge, and I decided to step up and pursue it with everything I could muster. I gathered my friends and allies around me. I took volunteers willing to fight. I took anyone who would stand with me in battle to throw ourselves against fate. From these allies and volunteers, I forged a team I was sure would win and one after another they faltered, but each failure was bringing me closer and closer to victory. The time I spent out of battle was spent in deep thought, or in deep conversation with my trusted council of strategists. The thoughts of immanent victory consumed me. I ate and slept very little. I would see this beast fall. I would slay this being that shackled my spirit, imprisoned my mind and tested my sanity. I would defeat Ifrit.

The introduction of the Ifrit battle was a big deal, not just to Final Fantasy XIV, but to me personally. He is a recurring creature in the series, and most notably an early summon spell for summoner class characters, which have always been my favorite since my introduction to them in FinalFantasy IV, 1991. I believe part of my affection for the class (as well as “Final Fantasy” in general) is because it draws on a wealth of mythology to fuel its imagery. The summon Ifrit is based on Ifrit/Efreet from Arabian mythology, which is a type of djinn or genie that is an embodiment of fire. As a mythology enthusiast, I was drawn to these allusions within the “Final Fantasy” series. It was exciting for me to be able to summon Odin into battle, and equip Mjolnir or Excalibur. It set the series apart for me at a very early age, and since then I have had quite a strong connection with its summoners over the years. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy XIV does not have a summoning class at the time of this writing, so being able to stand toe-to-talon with this monster is the next best thing. It’s also worth pointing out that in order to summon these monsters, one often has to best them in combat to prove one’s worth, so if they ever did decide to add a summoner to Final Fantasy XIV, I would be ready.

Ifrit, via Final Fantasy XIV

Ifrit also fire-breathed new life into a very stagnant game. Due to a very poor launch state, Final Fantasy XIV is undergoing a continuous revision aiming for a re-launch as “Version 2.0” later in 2012. Players were allowed to continue playing and all understood that the game was undergoing some massive overhauls so we would have to be patient while waiting for a new battle system, class reforms, crafting reforms, and especially content which would require all these reforms to have a foundation at the least. So when Ifrit finally erupted into the game, it was a very momentous occasion. There was finally something to do and something worthy to fight. I am not understating this when I say that Ifrit is the most challenging content I’ve ever faced in a Massive Multiplayer Online game. He is a worthy adversary by no stretch of the imagination.

"Ifrit Bleeds We Can Kill It"

The first time I stood inside that burning circle facing Ifrit, I was bewitched. Never before had a “Final Fantasy” game required so much of me. My various defeats on that inauspicious day drove me into a frenzy. If I was awake, I was fighting against Ifrit. Day after day, defeat after defeat, I vaguely realized how I was becoming monomaniacal. I forged a team of players who I thought could defeat Ifrit, and though we came close, we hit a proverbial wall. We threw ourselves at it for days without making any progress and so I disbanded that team and formed another. Feelings were perhaps hurt, egos wounded, but I pressed on, blinded by my own ambition. A Japanese team was now consistently defeating Ifrit, and I threw myself at their mercy to train me, and teach me their ways. They shared with me in broken English their tips and techniques. They created a video for me and me alone to watch. Finally they took me and my strategist companion, Shin, with them to show us how it was done and everything fell into place. We had become the first North American and European on our server to see the monster bested in combat, but it was not enough.

Despite how badly I wanted to kill this monster, to see it done by a team I had not trained was surprisingly unsatisfying. Armed with new knowledge, a new team was forged from the ashes of the old and we progressed ever closer to victory. It was on one fateful night that I made the alliances with people whom I considered inferior moral quality, but superior playing ability (a decision I came to regret). Together with members of the new team, we managed to slay the beast and as a result my wife was the first North American to claim an Ifrit-themed prize. This was the victory I craved, though it came with cost. I had sold my soul and played with players I knew to be liars and cheats. I had done everything with single-minded purpose to defeat my White Whale in the form of a red, fiery demon. I swore next time would be different; next time I would be different.

Shai, Shin & Nimla, Heroes of Their Time

As far as I know, there will not be a next time, though. I’m still quite torn up about leaving Final Fantasy XIV behind me. I was looking forward to playing it since it was announced mid-2009. I was loyal and faithful to it for over a year beyond its botched launch. I really appreciated the original freedom to play how you wanted to play, and build your own class. Your character was a blank slate that you could fill up with abilities as you leveled new classes, and while there was no sword-wielding mage class, you could make one if you wanted by leveling two jobs and combining them. Much of the game orbited around the idea of creating the kind of character that you wanted to play in any way you could think to play it. However, this was too unstructured for people, according to player polls and responses, and all these interesting, creative features have been thrown out for a nearly identical job-system that the predecessor, FinalFantasy XI, features. The original systems of Final Fantasy XIV were bland and lacked a certain amount of flash, but I think the core ideas were truly impressive and I simply would have liked to see the idea fleshed out and added upon. However, due to the failed launch, the developer decided to redesign the entire game. They are currently aiming for a re-launch later in 2012 under the name “Final Fantasy XIV version 2.0.”

I miss Shai & Nimla very much.

There is a part of me that is still attached to my character, attached to the story the game was building and the lore of Eorzea. That part of me is curious about how version 2.0 will turn out. It whispers the evil thoughts to me that I may want to log in when it launches and see what kind of game this has actually become. I am, in a sense, heart-broken, though. It is an unpleasant experience to watch something you like wither and die and get replaced by something proven to be more financially successful. I remember people telling me that this is all for the good of the game, that it needs more people playing in order to generate enough revenue to keep it going and updating. I understand all that, but it’s simply not good for me, if I’m not even going to play it anymore. The game may go on and be successful, but if I’m not going to enjoy it, what difference does it make to me? I held the unpopular opinion that Final Fantasy XIV was at its core a great game, released before it was ready, and not allowed to blossom before they brought in the heavy machinery to tear it down and plant new seeds. I may see what grows in its place, but it mostly feels to be a worse version of Final Fantasy XI now, a game that I was done and tired of in 2009. I fear that despite my curiosity I won’t be heading back to Eorzea, but thanks again for Ifrit and the other fond memories.

-TOP

Related Links
 The Blog I Kept for Shai Hulud of Mysidia - http://kirushai.blogspot.com/
(discontinued, of course)

A Music Chain of Memories

I often listen to the soundtrack of Kingdom Hearts and it often causes me to cry. Certain songs of that game effortlessly trigger an emotional response from me and it wasn't until just the other day that I came closer to understanding why its so emotional. I have thought for years that Kingdom Hearts is just a very sad game and the sadness of its story was being recalled by the music. Now I think it goes quite a bit deeper than that and I am surprised that it took me so long to realize it. As I was listening, and responding emotionally, I was thinking about how to write this article. That's how I had this sudden insight to what the game and the music actually mean to me.

Kingdom Hearts is a collaboration with Square Enix (formerly Squaresoft) and Disney Interactive Studios. It successfully blended elements of the Final Fantasy series with characters and settings from various Disney worlds in an Action-Roleplaying Game experience that was unlike any other game of its time. Sora, the main character, is original to this series, but he is constantly interacting with Disney and Final Fantasy characters who encourage him or fight along side him. The game was released in September 2002 and since then I've played it from start to finish several times - which is indicative of an excellent game in my book. 

Now to understand what I discovered about my connection to the game, you have to understand where I was in my life when I met Sora. September 2002 was the middle of the darkest time in my life. I was in a terribly unhealthy relationship. I had abandoned college and my dreams of studying Japanese because I was young and foolish. I had enlisted in the Air Force and was living in California, far away from my home in Massachusetts where I'd lived for 20 years and far away from Japan where I would have been studying abroad if I had continued my college curriculum. Due to the nature of the relationship I was in, I did not feel I had the freedom to communicate with my friends and family on the phone or by computer. I also did not have the freedom to pursue new friendships with my classmates and fellow service members there in California. I was extremely isolated and lonely. I was depressed, but I didn't know how to handle it. It was in this dark time when I met Sora.

Aladdin was my favorite Disney film growing up.

This first time playing Kingdom Hearts I was outrageously jealous of Sora. This 14 year old kid gets swept out of his humdrum life in Destiny Islands and begins exploring these fantastic worlds with characters I had adored since I was a child. I wanted to fight Jafar alongside Aladdin. I wanted to play mini-games with Pooh and Tigger that revolved around "hunny" and bouncing. I wanted to tree-surf with Tarzan and fly with Peter Pan as we crossed swords with Captain Hook. I wanted to summon Bambi, Simba, Mushu, Tinkerbell, and Genie. I wanted to swim alongside Ariel, whom I had been smitten with since first seeing her and hearing her sing when I was 9 years old. Sora was living this childhood fantasy and I was pretty miserable in my life. Although I was able to live this dream vicariously through Sora, I would have given anything to switch places with him. I wanted an escape from the darkness of my own life.

I'm 31 now, and still a bit jealous of this...

The second time playing Kingdom Hearts was around Christmas of 2005. I had decided to dust off the old keyblade in preparation of Kingdom Hearts II coming out in March 2006. This time was profoundly different than the last. It triggered a nearly opposite reaction, which I believe in part was because I knew the ending that was being foreshadowed, but also due to something a bit closer to my own heart. This time I saw Sora's journey more for what it truly was, and I found I was not at all envious of Sora. In fact, I felt quite sorry for him. You see, Sora and his two closest friends, Riku and Kairi, spent their days on Destiny Islands dreaming of finding an escape to another, more exotic, world but when they finally get their wish their own home is snuffed out by darkness. Everything they had known was cut off from them and they were separated. Sora spends the rest of the game trying to find his friends and restore the Destiny Islands. The purpose of his entire journey is to set things back the way they were after wanting them to change for so long. 

Now, he does meet a wide variety of new friends along the way, and each relationship I believe makes him stronger, but he never gets to stay long and appreciate his new friends because he's so dedicated to finding Riku and Kairi and stopping the darkness from swallowing up more worlds. In this context, I saw that his friendships with the Disney characters were fleeting as he was always forced to move on to get closer to his true goal. Unfortunately this ultimate reunion with Riku and Kairi is marked by sadness as all three are separated again in order to protect the worlds from being consumed by Darkness. It's a very sad story and it's hard not to tear up when saying good-bye to the friends you spent so much time looking for. 

What I discovered is that the music doesn't make me cry because Sora's story is sad. 

It makes me cry because I am Sora. 

You can see the resemblance best in this picture of me circa 2003.

When I play Kingdom Hearts or listen to its music now, it reminds me of how I felt about my life when I first played it. I was like Sora when I left behind the only home I knew, and also like Sora I was completely cut off from that world. There was no going back for either of us - at least not without fighting for it. We could only look forward and face what was ahead of us even though it was often unpleasant or difficult. Even if we could go back, everything about us was changing and different. Sora and I both grew strong and independent through these ordeals. Simply returning home and reuniting with our friends wouldn't erase the things we'd seen or the person we would become due to our various struggles in life. In essence that era of my life was my coming of age story, and in many ways Sora mirrors that time with his own trials against darkness.

When I left home at the age of 20, I thought I was an adult. I decided to leave college, get married, and joining the Air Force among other adult decisions of lesser impact. I realize only more recently that I was not. So Kingdom Hearts is symbolic of my own loss of childhood innocence and ignorance. The game and its music continue to be a subconscious reminder of how I suffered and endured to become the stronger, confident, more adaptable and happier person that I am today. 

I chose to share this story about myself to illustrate how powerful music can be in our lives as well as how deeply one can bond with fictional characters and circumstances. It demonstrates that the best games have a combination of great music, good story-telling, and memorable characters with whom you can identify. These are exactly the types of games I seek out and enjoy most. I'm so shocked to discover just how emotionally invested I am in Kingdom Hearts. I'm grateful that I got to play such a great game and got to know Sora at a time when my entire world was changing so drastically, and I with it. It certainly helped me cope with my own life at that time. I can't promise Kingdom Hearts to have this powerful an effect on everyone, but I can promise that it is a game that may become timeless that everyone interested in gaming should enjoy at one time or another in their life.

-TOP

Related Links

Music-Memory Connection: http://www.livescience.com/5327-music-memory-connection-brain.html
Kingdom Hearts Music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Kingdom_Hearts 

Kid Icarus, Melongenophobia and You

 
The tale I’m about to tell is a dark and horrifying story of one boy’s decent into a mind-addling fear that would scar him and his family for life. It is not for the faint of heart or weak of mind. I take no responsibility for the ensuing nightmares or revolting dinners you may find yourself trapped in after I have passed on this story to you. I recommend no child under the age of eight be subjected to these terrors contained within, as I was on those fateful weeks shortly after Christmas of 1987. This, my friends and readers, is the tale of how Kid Icarus warped my mind and ruined my appetite. Now you may have heard of Kid Icarus recently as a sequel called Kid Icarus: Uprising is about to hit store shelves on March 23, 2012 – no doubt to mentally cripple a new generation of children not ready for the horrors of Angel Land. Let this article be a warning to all 3DS owners and curious Nintendo Entertianment System (NES) enthusiasts. Kid Icarus is dangerous!


I was seven years old when I unwittingly unwrapped an NES on Christmas morning. I was not amused. As any irrational seven year old might react, I was angry. I had wanted an Atari like my cousins had at their house. Instead I awake to find Santa had gotten this goofy looking thing with a man stomping mushrooms for a game. In retrospect, I assume that really hurt my parents' feelings who had tried to "one-up" my Atari Christmas wish. I believe it was an attempt to sell me on the superiority of a NES when they began playing Kid Icarus, but what started as a demonstration grew into a huge addiction from my perspective. I'm not sure if it was all a show on their part or if they truly did grow an appetite to consume 8-bit pixels for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Whatever it truly was at the time, my mom and stepdad began to play the hell out of those first two video games, Super Mario Bros. and Kid Icarus. They particularly enjoyed taking turns playing Kid Icarus and I recall coming home from school several evenings over the next few weeks and not being able to get a game in edgewise due to their rampant addiction to MY game system and thus I grew indignant. If there was ever a way to make me want something I thought I didn't want, it was to play it in front of me and not grant me access to it when I demanded access to it.


Now I have to admit what I remember is them playing all night long, but in all honesty it could have simply been them asking me to wait for them to die and me being impatient. I can't really tell and who truly knows how much a 7-year-old's mind can blow things out of proportion. So I admit that I may have been completely off base in my assessment, but what I do know is I said something about it. I don’t remember what was said but whatever it was had a huge impact. My mom and stepdad stopped playing Kid Icarus that very night and (to my knowledge) never played a video game ever again. This would be the First Great Rift that video games would cause between my parents and I. It didn’t matter then. I finally had the game all to myself! I felt I had won a great victory. The repercussions of what I had done wouldn’t be felt until much later when a wiser 9-year-old version of myself realized I had robbed my parents of a joy I would relish in the rest of my life. Truthfully, I felt guilty about it days later when I realized they simply weren't playing at all anymore.

Considering Playing Kid Icarus to Face My Fears

Kid Icarus appealed to me as a young boy because I was interested in Greek myths at an early age. I knew Icarus and I understood his story so I was curious how the story of Kid Icarus would relate to this tale with which I was quite familiar. As it turns out, it doesn't. The titular character "Kid Icarus" is actually named Pit and is a guardian of Angel Land which is ruled by the goddess, Palutena. Pretty much everything in that sentence has nothing to do with Greek myths. The main antagonist is Medusa who retains her snake-hair (or I may have thrown this game in the trash!) but that's about as close to any real myth as this game comes. Due to my age, I was able to forgive the game for its transgressions against mythology - a courtesy that wouldn't necessarily repeat itself for offenders in the future. I spent days and days only playing the first 3 stages over and over countless times without making much headway in this truly challenging game. I developed a deep admiration and respect for it despite it being frustrating and difficult. Little did I know that the true frustrations and most bizarre aspects of the game would come when I made it into the first Fortress, some many attempts later. It was there I encountered my first of many horrific experiences with [pause for effect] the Eggplant Wizards.

These truly nefarious minions of evil have the dubious task of protecting every Fortress in the game. They do not truly seek to defeat you, though, only to engage you and harass you by turning your upper body into an eggplant – restricting your arms and ability to fight. Your only hope for survival against the raging hordes of OTHER (more deadly) beasts in the Fortresses is to run and hop your way back to a Nurse who will remove the eggplant curse. This situation was cause for many frustrating hours of backtracking to the hospital zone, then fighting your way back to the wizard's room just to be cursed all over again and repeat the process (or throw your controller, if need be). It was more tedious a process than I could aptly describe. I wouldn't be surprised to learn "advanced interrogation" techniques involve getting past Eggplant Wizards and finding the hidden Nurse in each Fortress over and over again.  

FAAAAAAAAAAAAAARKK!!!!!!!!!!

I cannot even begin to impress upon you how devastating this was to me as a child. I had nightmares for months of being turned into an eggplant with legs and running around aimlessly trying to get rid of the curse. By now you are probably raising an eyebrow if not fully laughing at me, but I assure you this is not a joke. I truly fear and loath eggplant. I won't touch it; I certainly won't eat it. The appearance and thought of it makes me nauseous and sends chills up my spine. I have been known to tell people I'm allergic to it simply so they won't serve it to me (or find out my dark secret). Ten years after the initial trauma, I very nearly quit a job that required me to prepare eggplant parmesan, though I managed to work it out with my boss that I would never have to touch it. Google tells me this affliction has been dubbed "melongenophobia" and I think its safe to say I am "cursed" with it for life. So think carefully over how much you like eggplant when deciding on whether or not to purchase Kid Icarus: Uprising for your children. I'd wager a guess that the new incarnation of Eggplant Wizards aren't even remotely as devious or torturous as their predecessors, but I've given you all the information necessary for an educated decision. Your future dinners may hang in the balance.

- TOP

Related Links

10 Minutes of Gameplay - http://nesguide.com/games/kidicarus/

"Eggplants = Death" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84MzvfO4P-U

The second video comes with some slightly annoying commentary. At 3:29 he encounters the first Eggplant Wizard and starts a full on rant about how vile they are. I feel his pain. Again at 5:39 he encounters a pair of Eggplant Wizards that force a retreat and a swim through lava just to avoid the curse. MegaFreak400 has a good motto for Eggplant Wizards that I'll paraphrase. "It's better to kill yourself than be cursed by an Eggplant Wizard." 

I leave you with that thought.