TEXT PLAY SIDE GAME: Final Fantasy (NES 1990/PS 2003 [Origins]): Issue #23: Back To The Future, Part Three: Epilog

I've been meaning to get to this for awhile, but it's been a busy week, with quite a lot going on, especially for me.

But I'm finally getting to it, which is the important thing, I guess.

The first Final Fantasy game was one I'd wanted to beat from the first time I'd heard about it. At the time, I was a loyal subscriber to Nintendo's consumer magazine Nintendo Power, and roughly coinciding with the release of the game here in North America, they released a players' guide for the game. It was interesting reading, and it really got me kind of psyched up about buying the game. That may be why it turned out to be such a major change of fortune for Squaresoft, who had published the game, as I suspect quite a lot of folks felt the same way I did.

It took me a while, saving up my pennies and other money from things like my paper route and other jobs, but eventually, I did get a copy of the original cart for the NES. After trying several times and either growing bored with the game or running into time constraints, if not both, I eventually had to get rid of all my classic 8-bit gaming gear because I needed money more than I needed the console.

Some years later, back in 2011, I happened to be in my local second-hand gaming shop, a cool place called Last Stop CD Shop, just looking around to see if they had anything that looked interesting, as I do every now and again, and I happened across Final Fantasy Origins on the rack. It was really one of those impulse, spur of the moment things it's good to do every now and then. When I mentioned having picked it up on the County Line Gaming forum, one of the fine members of the main group had said he'd have generously sold me his copy, had he known I was looking for it, as he had recently done LPs of both those games.

Part of the reason I did this Text Play was, as I said at the very beginning, was to see if I had managed to fix some issues I had with the disk. Sadly, I hadn't, but fortunately, this time around, the issues hadn't cropped up much and I managed to get through the game well enough

Another reason is that the first Final Fantasy game is one that a guy's kind of got to finish if he wants to call himself much a fan of classic RPGs like this. I finally did get it done. Granted, it came twentysome years after the original release of the game, seeing somebody else do an LP, and playing on a recently-introduced easy mode to get it done, but I did it. If I really wanted to go hard core about it, I'd try it on normal mode. I might yet, and I might even write about it.

For now, though, I think I just need to play for myself for the time being. Maybe in a couple months, I'll decide to do another Text Play. Like I said at the end of the Legend of Mana run, now that I'm done with this and LOM, I think I'll give Final Fantasy and Mana games a rest for awhile, even though I have at least one more of each in my collection.

One thing I'm thinking about doing is having a poll over at CLG to help me decide which of the other games in my collection I should do next. I know, or am at least pretty sure, that I have Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, Chrono Trigger, and Breath of Fire for the SNES here. And I at least think I've got SaGa Frontier, Breath of Fire 3, and Vagrant Story for the PS1. But that's all for later, folks. I need a break from this style of blogging for awhile, and I'll have to look to see just what I've got anyway.

For now, though, I think I'd better just wrap this up. It's been fun, managing to finally finish off something of a childhood fantasy, if you will. It was a real thrill to do it, even if there were hiccups along the way. I'm glad I got 'er done so now I can put this on the shelf for awhile and maybe see how I do at a different sort of game for awhile. I've put off getting into that Sly Cooper game I picked up for long enough now, I think, even if my skill level can best be summed up by a Team Fortress 2 parody or two.

So, anyway, now that this is all on the books, be the cool folks I know you all are, and I'll keep doing like I do, too! See you soon with other randomized stuff, everybody!