So Final Fantasy VII hit stores on November 17th, 1997, I’m five, we’d just gotten a Playstation a couple of
months prior, my Dad just brought himself one and it sat hooked up to the TV in
the living room, in the front room we
had a Mega Drive hooked up to shittiest ten inch TV you’d ever seen but I didn’t
care, cause my daily routine was, get up, get dress for school , run down
stairs and eat cereal out of the box while playing Sonic 2, go to school, come
home, play Sonic 2 until I fell asleep, rinse and repeat.
FF7’s release was on a Monday, the following Saturday me, my
mom, my dad and my sister all go out shopping, now my parents shop for Christmas
throughout the year so November is last minute for them, so of course we end up
in toys r’ us and I run straight for the video games, dad follows me, I’m there
looking for Sonic 3, I didn’t even know there was a Sonic 3 until I’d saw the cartridge
on my older cousins desk when I’d been at my uncles house a couple of weeks
before hand, so I was looking intently for Sonic, while I’m doing that my dad’s
looking through the Playstation games and sees Final Fantasy VII, so he picks
it up for himself, I end up finding a copy of Sonic 3, so I’m over the moon, so
we get home, I rush straight into the front room, don’t even care that it’s meant
to be a present for me, I start playing and loving every second.
Couple of hours later my mom and my sister leave the house
again, I don’t really remember why, I’m still playing sonic having an awesome
time, when I hear my dad boot up the Playstation, and for the first time I hear
that bass that plays when you started a PS1, I hadn’t even touched the
Playstation, far as I was concerned that was his, I just played my Sega. But
then I hear that piano that plays over the opening credits, and I just think
what is that? So I just turn off my Sega and just walk into the living room,
just as the opening sequence with the long pan to show all of Midgar, the logo,
and then the zoom to the train and my jaw just fucking drops.
Took my dad 4 months to beat that game, and I was sat by his
side for every second, transfixed by every single FMV, I didn’t even really
know what was going all I remember thinking is “this is better than any cartoon
ever, why don’t they make them all look like that?”
People look back at FF7 and some claim it to be amazing,
others just think it’s the nostalgia talking, for me it’s not about how good
the game is or isn’t, I play it now and I think it’s good, but the most
important thing for me about it was that it was a 4 month journey me and my dad
shared, it was a bonding point.
The reason I’ve bring this all up is that Final Fantasy, to
me, is important cause it reminds me of that time, a happier time.
So we skip forward a couple of years, (my dad had actually
brought and tried FF8 without telling me, thought it was shit and sold the
thing, and with having tried it now I can say, thank you dad) it’s 2001 now and
I’m nine, my dad comes home from work with a copy of Final Fantasy IX he’d
brought second hand from a workmate, it was Sonic 3 all over again, I didn’t
even know there was an 8, let alone a 9,
at that point the Sega was gone out of the front room, the PS1 had gone
to my sister and I had a PS2 in my room, so I ran upstairs, grabbed my PS2 and
rushed down to hook it up to the living room TV and me and my dad just play, 4
years later and it was the same jaw dropping awe-inspiring experience for me,
it’s such a moment of my childhood that I’ve always thought of it as something
me and my dad shared so when I thought about writing this I asked him for a
quote about it.
“Seeing those 2 games
for the first time is the only time I remember ever having seen you just shut
the fuck up.” –LadDad
Hardly Shakespearian but the mother fucker has a way with
words.
So, the simple fact is any lady boner pointed at me would be
deflated at the mere sight of this post, so why write it?
Well there are many reasons I could tell you, one possible
reason is I think it’s important to mark the roots of a hobby which I’ve been
doing for as long as I can remember and will continue to do as long as my hands
can move, another reason could be that this memory of me and my dad sharing in
this experience is something that I hold very dear and would like to have it
written down in some way.
Ultimately though there’s only one reason I wrote all this…
…
…
…
I wanted a good excuse to type the term “lady
boner”, sounds better than “getting a clit on.”