Oh, almost forgot about the topic at hand...(long story but here goes)
THE NUMBER ONE MEMORY.....
Asking my parents for Final Fantasy 2 (SNES) and actually getting it, this is probably the single most defining video game memory of my life (just happened to fall on Christmas)
This was an era were my parents did not have a lot of money, and they even explained to me, due to that (and since I was the older kid in the house) I might have to get more practical things for Christmas (clothes/etc..) I was in High School now and was getting "too old" for video games anyways. My parents had always given me awesome presents, mainly video game related (atari/NES/lynx/etc) so even though I probably didn't show it on the outside, I understood and expected a "practical" Christmas
My friend Jim (the reason I play RPG's at all) came from a house of three brothers, him being the youngest. He didn't have bad parents by any means but after 3 boys you could tell his parents were tired, and Jim could have easily dissapeared for awhile without anyone noticing. He would frequently stay over at my house for weekends without even bothering to call home. I thought it was cool back then but kind of sad now that I am older and a parent myself. He would love to do things with my parents that I would totally take for granted like board games or movies, I didn't understand it back then and would get annoyed with him/them but now I get it. My parents always really liked Jim even though he was a very bad influence and pretty much every bad decision I made early on (skipping school, smoking pot, alcohol, tobacco, stealing/etc) were all directly accompanied by him. I would have done all that crap anyways though and I think my parents knew that. Deep down they knew he was a good person/friend, and he was. Jim was always an asshole to me on the outside, kind of a bully type, sometimes I would wonder why I hung out with him but looking back he did help me out quite a bit with certain things....
We both (me and Jim) wanted to play Final Fantasy 2, we grew up playing D&D dice games together and at this point had played through any RPG on the NES worth playing (and some that were not!) so you could imagine how excited we were about FF2. I had the SNES but explained to him the odds of me getting it were slim to none. Jim always got things like clothes or other hand me down stuff for Christmas so I knew he wasn't getting it, I didn't even ask. NONE of our other friends were into these types of games and neither of us had any money so I just assumed that was that and forgot all about it...until one night over a friendly board game with my parents and Jim the subject of Christmas presents comes up and Jim went to work. The show was spectacular... "RPG's are like reading books and the puzzles increase your intelligence" blah blah blah...I bet my parents would have drove to the store that night and bought it for us if they could have, I'll give the guy credit he had a way of talking people into stuff
Well, Christmas came and yes it was practical but really pretty good overall, I got plenty of cool stuff and of course last but not least....Final Fantasy 2!! I can still remember my Mom saying "you better give Jim a call and let him know" I think it was a gift for BOTH of us.
Jim was over immediately after I called him and for the next 10 days or so we played FF2 constantly. He stayed overnight a lot of it but my Mom would make him go home sometimes. Many of our friends would come over during this time and we endure the "nerds" or "losers" comments as we turned down there plans to leave the house so we could sit around and grind up our characters and see what happened next in the story. Well, many cans of mountain dew and bags of chips later we finished it, we had beaten Final Fantasy 2! It felt like the greatest video game accomplishment ever. It was also the last time I seriously played video games (until recently with the whole nostalgia thing of course). and the last time I really felt like a kid.
I strangely didn't hang out with Jim very much after that. I guess we just kind of outgrew the whole "fantasy" stuff and went our seperate ways. I saw him now and then but I don't think we said more than a word or two and just kind of did our own thing. I tried to find him on Facebook a while back and just found a memorial page explaining that he died of cancer a few years ago. I tried to play through Final Fantasy 2 again recently but couldn't get past the title screen, the music sent me into a tidal wave or memories, I couldn't believe how real it felt, it was like I was 14 in my parents basement again. I just stared for 10 minutes or so thinking about that epic FF2 marathon or the old school D&D days. I then started thinking about things I could have done differently with my life if I was in that exact spot again right now. I decided not to play it. I think this Christmas I'll track down another copy of FF2 and do a 20 year reunion marathon. I will name the character Jamesworth just like Jim used to name ALL the heroes back in the day in the RPG's we played. Yes, ALL of them, even MY final fantasy 2 game, lol. Yeah, the guy could be a D-bag but he was probably my best friend back then. Miss those days...
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IntellivisionDude, on Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:43 AM, said:
