Let’s Have Good Memories: Final Fantasy VII

Hello friends. And what the heck, hello enemies (I know you’re out there)! Make a circle on the carpet and join me for an announcement.

Come November 1st 2008 in this Year of Our Lord, I will be handing the reins for Playstation Monger to someone else. “Who(m?)” is undecided at this point, but I’m sure they’ll be fabulous.

That means our time together is limited–unless you catch me on one of the other thousand million Internet corners I hang out in–so I thought I’d do something special to wind down the clock. I thought I’d just kick off my shoes, forgo stuffy news posts and just talk about my favourite Playstation memories.

My Playstation experience began with Final Fantasy VII and I’m not ashamed to admit it. The game is deeply, almost fatally flawed but in 1997, it was unsurpassed. It dazzled us.

We don’t like to think about the days when we nuzzled up to FF VII; it’s like imagining our grandparents when they were young, spry and mating with youthful exuberance. But we can’t deny how we felt at the time.

I personally can’t remember what year I brought home my Playstation and my copy of FF VII, but I do remember it was on the (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend. I also remember how the grim music for the first Mako reactor sabotage mission continued to bong through my memory hours after I turned the game off (I had to share the television with my father).

Yeah, I apologise for spoiling the whimsical voice of this memory by using an example video uploaded by someone who renamed cloud “El Boner.”

Looking back at this, it’s so easy to see why we were impressed—and why we’d be unimpressed now. Nintendo had done so much to sanitise gaming for Americans that FF VII just seemed…well, rebellious. Grown up. Square left in kanji. Barret swore (poorly). Even the name of the game placed it miles away from our previous Final Fantasy experience, III.

We look at FF VII now and we feel awkward. It’s like meeting your middle school’s “coolest” kid after ten years—as he takes your order behind the counter of McDonalds.

But I still can’t forget how Final Fantasy VII first made me feel. I lost my copy long ago, but if I ever find it, I wouldn’t mind going out for a coffee and catching up on old times.