30 Years of Gaming: My First RPG

I'm going to skip ahead a few years from my last "30 Years of Gaming" post and fast forward to 1994. I was almost 2 years out of high school and neck deep in my 2nd (and last) semester at college. My good friend Chris had tried to introduce me for years to RPGs and fantasy books, which were his favorite genre if memory serves me right. But I was never interested. I liked games, and had been gaming for many years at that point. But RPGs just never appealed to me.

I had played a little Final Fantasy IV on the SNES, which was stupidly numbered II In the US. It was a lot of fun. But not enough to hold my attention to the end (I think it would now though). Give me Super Metroid any day. But that's a completely separate blog post (it deserves one).

The game that did it for me and made me an RPG fan for life was Final Fantasy VI (also stupidly numbered in the US, as III). I know a lot of articles have been written on the subject. And a lot of people tout Final Fantasy VII as their first, and favorite, RPG on a console. Some even say it's the greatest RPG ever. I'm not here to argue that point (although I disagree). It was a great game and blew everyone out of the water. Even non-RPG folks loved it (my brothers included). And the Sony Playstation was all the rage. Cartridges were dying (don't tell Nintendo). But I vowed to never buy one. I was a Nintendo guy. Until I saw FFVII. Then I bought a Playstation. But the only reason I was even remotely interested in FFVII was because of FFVI.

Final Fantasy has always been (for a good part of it's life anyway) about the story. I don't think the early games really had much of a story. They certainly didn't have the graphics to pick up the slack like games this generation do. And some would argue that the more recent games sacrificed story for spectacle. And while though I enjoyed XIII and XIII-2 a lot, I would have to agree. But for me no game in the series comes close in story and incredible characters to FFVI. Terra. Edgar. Celes. Locke. Sabin. Cyan. Relm. The list of great characters seemed to go on forever. You get to know these characters and their history. You find out why they're here. Long after I finished the game and played other RPGs, if they let you name your characters, I often changed them to the FFVI characters. My monk was always Sabin. My knight was Cyan. If there was a female character, she was Terra or Celes.

Not only were the heroes great, the villain was probably the best the series has ever had (in my opinion anyway). Kefka was insane. He was a madman in a clown makeup (literally). And he had no problem tearing the world apart (also literally) to achieve his goals.

And you were in an opera.


At this point, I don't think anyone is going to be convinced what Final Fantasy is the best. Everyone has their favorite. Most will say VII. But this post isn't about that. For me FFVI introduced me to a genre I had pretty much ignored. Sadly because, in the minds of many people, if you liked RPGs you were probably weird. But if not for FFVI, I can almost safely say I wouldn't have played games like Skyrim or Dark Souls many years later (and loved every second of them). I'm glad I gave RPGs a chance 18 years ago. And I am grateful that FFVII brought them into the mainstream. Thanks to FFVI I'm an RPG fan for life. And probably a little weird.

Skyrim vs Skyward Sword

I figured I should take a moment to talk about two games I'm playing right now. They will come as a shock to absolutely no one. Bethesda Games Studios Skyrim and Nintendo's Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword.

In one sense these games couldn't be more different. One is a massive "sandbox" fantasy RPG set in a gritty and deadly world where you can do whatever you want, the other is set (10 hours into it anyway) in a bright and colorful world of talking plants and villains in unitards. With Skyrim my wife has asked me to stop and turn my character around so she could marvel at the world. She calls Skyward Sword "Candyland". But does that mean one game is for grown ups and one is for kids? By no means!

Skyrim as you probably know is the 5th game in the long running Elder Scrolls series. I put many hours into Morrowind on the PC and only a handful of hours into Oblivion (which was my fault for waiting 5 years to play it). The original Legend of Zelda was probably the first RPG-like game I ever played. I've got stories about my 7th grade self trading secret locations with my classmates on our overworld maps. Skyward Sword is the latest entry in that long running series, and most likely the last game on the Wii.


But I love both games. Skyrim, in all it's gritty, bloody, open world glory shows me how far games have come. I shape this world. I'm not just along for the ride. Those kinds of games are great too, but there's something about having impact on a world with your choices. Skyward Sword is just fun. Skyrim is fun too, and even though I feel like Nintendo is constantly holding my hand as if I were perpetually 11 years old, they know fun. And while I was starting to feel like Zelda had grown stale, Skyward Sword makes it feel fresh. It's still 100% Zelda, but it feels new, and I'm having a blast. The hardest part is finding time for both games. I'm over 20 hours into Skyrim and about 12 into Skyward Sword. I'm not tired of either one.

I'll probably devote individual posts to these games soon. They deserve it. These games remind me why it's such a great time to be a gamer.