anyone have distinct memories of their first Final Fantasy or how they got into the series? share them!
as a kid, my parents sent me to live with grandma in Charleston SC every summer. there was an older boy that lived next door, met him while he was fishing in the lake behind my grandma’s house. i don’t know how it happened but i asked him “do you like games” and he, of course, said “yes” and we went to his house, up to his room, and he showed me his collection of PS1 games. i must have been 10 or 11 at the time.
anyways, he had FF8, which didn’t look super interesting to me, but he came over to my grandma’s house one day, brought ff8, and he played it on my grandma’s huge old-fashioned projector TV (pictured); i remember being immediately entranced with the music; specifically Balamb Garden theme, and my interest in the series immediately increased.
that was my first “experience” with Final Fantasy, later during one of those summers my friend’s friend lent me their Game Boy Camera to “play with for the week,” and I subsequently traded it at the local Babbages for in-store credit (i was a psychopathic kid); these events were significant because thanks to that in-store credit, I was able to purchase a used copy of Final Fantasy 7; and at the time, my brain was immediately drawn to the spiky-haired guy holding a big sword on the cover. i spent the rest of that formative summer playing Final Fantasy 7.
As a kid, I went to the local Target store and saw, in the electronics section, a demo for a new game called Final Fantasy VII. It played an ad for the game, then let me play a little of the intro. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen! But I didn’t own a PlayStation, so I never bought it. I eventually watched a friend play through most of it at his house, and he let me play a bit every time I came over.
When I was a teenager, a friend gifted me Final Fantasy VIII for the PC and it was my first time actually playing through a Final Fantasy game. I’ve since gone back and played a bit of the older titles, and I’ve mostly kept up with newer releases since. When I was deployed to Africa in 2005 with the US Air Force, Final Fantasy X kept me entertained. That, Metal Gear Solid 3, God of War, and the .Hack series kept me going through that deployment.
thanks for your input and service; i had a similar “in store ad” experience with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. the ad played on a display in the electronics section of a store called “MEDIA PLAY” and it blew me away, was the coolest thing i had ever seen at that time.