#214 Master A Video Game

Yoshies! I love Yoshi. Too cute!

Yes, I am old enough to remember the first video games. I hail from Generation X. We witnessed the birth of the Atari, the Commodore computer, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, cassette decks, VHS players, John Cusack's career and that pesky little Rubik's Cube. The only way I could solve that damn thing was to peel the stickers off and LIE. Generation Liar! Every single one of us were liars because we all had Rubik's Cubes with a bunch of crooked stickers on them. You would take one look at a friend's cube and be like "Yea, I know what you did there. Mmmm-hmmmm. Sure you solved it."

Ah, the joys of being an 80's child. The 80's truly rocked and I miss them much. Video games were the shit in the 80's. Yes, I know they were around in the 70's but they really exploded in populaity in the 80's. Our first family video game console was the Atari 2600. It was a thing of beauty hooked up to our big, wooden, 1970's floor model TV. The system came with a game called Pong. Pong was about exciting to me as watching The Lawrence Welk Show. I may have played it twice in my lifetime and that was two times, too many.

And don't get me started on that game Yars' Revenge! First of all, it had a scary bug on the cover. Second of all, it sounded like a bunch of buzzing bugs. F that! I think I'd rather enter a lead paint eating contest then subject myself to a creepy game with bugs in it. File that one under G for Garbage. Spaced Invaders, on the hand, well that was my bitch! It was way better than Yars' Revenge. I became so good and so arrogant at Spaced Invaders that I used to make designs and patterns with the space creatures just cuz...... I could.

Spaced Invaders. Damn right I will press start!

Eventually we got the video game Asteroids and my siblings and I pretty much never played the Atari again. Why is that you ask? Two words....My Mother. She played that game ALL day long. The only time she took a break was if Princess Diana was on TV or if the new Star or Globe magazine hit the newsstand. Not gonna lie though, she was really, really good at Asteroids. Like, REALLY good. It took me a long time to beat her high score, but eventually, the day had come. I then proceeded to make the fatal error of telling her to come look at my score on the TV. Bad move kid. Bad move.

My mother's lips were pressed so tightly together they turned white as she sneered at my score. She was pissed! Later that day I got grounded for some stupid "thing" I did. I think it was for breathing or being alive or something along those lines. Guess someone was pretty butt hurt that day. Whatever. She didn't like me anyway. (I really wish I was making this up but I'm not.) I told myself if I ever had kids, I would be happy if they beat my high score. You want your kids to be better than you at everything. You pray for that! Sighs.

Link- The Legend of Zelda

Through the 80's and into the 90's, I mastered a lot of video games on the Atari and Nintendo gaming systems. There was Pitfall, Frogger, Super Mario World, Dr, Mario, Yoshi's Cookie, Donkey Kong Country, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Tetris, Q-Bert, Final Fantasy, and The Legend of Zelda to name a few. We won't even get into the computer games but let's just say, I was a big Leisure Suit Larry fan. It was definitely more of an "adult" game but funny too.

Then the Sony PlayStation came out in 1995. We ignored it's presence in the gaming world for quite some time. We were a bunch of Nintendo snobs in this house. We bled NES! Mario for President. Luigi for VP. We love mushrooms. Play that Ocarina white boy. Ain't no way a Sega Genesis or PlayStation was coming in THIS house. It probably wasn't any good anyway right? I mean did they have Yoshi? No! They did not have Yoshi so they had to suck.

Then the unthinkable happened. My beloved Final Fantasy series made the move from Nintendo to PlayStation. Shit just got real. Those bastards at PlayStation stole Final Fantasy. How could Nintendo let this happen? Did they not care? Was Mario next? Oh my god my life was ruined. This was so wrong on so many levels. I coped with the utter shock by becoming more involved in surfing the Web. It's probably the only surfing I will ever do in my life but hot damn, I am good at it. 

Did you know I have been online since 1993? It was mainly Bulletin Boards (BBS) back then. There were only a handful of websites. Now, it's huge and I was there for pretty much the entire ride. It's wicked cool to see how much the WWW has evolved since I first hopped on back in it's infancy. I even got a commission job as a local writer on a city travel site back in 1998. That lasted a whole 3 months. The company never got the funds to truly go live and the website went under.

Still, I was having a blast with the Interwebz. Final Fantasy who? Traitors! I already forgot about them. I forgot about them until the year 2000. The year 2000 is when PlayStation introduced their new PlayStation 2. All of a sudden all the regular PlayStations were now selling dirt cheap. The kids knew this. They vocalized that really wanted to try games on other systems. They wanted to broaden their horizons and open their minds.

Well..... they didn't word it exactly like that, they were 6 and 8 years old, but I knew what they were putting down. I pride myself on being open minded and free spirited. My kids were displaying those very same qualities. It just melted my heart and filled me with pride.  So.......we bought a PlayStation. Never say never right? Let the games begin once again!

Like I mentioned above, I have mastered many video games in my life. The one I am going to talk about though is my favorite video game of all time, Final Fantasy VII. On Christmas in the year 2001, I received Final Fantasy VII and the complete walk through guide for a Christmas present. And while I loved my Christmas present, I did not play my game right away. My daughter had her Spyro games to play and my son, well my son got over the PlayStation really fast. He is definitely a Nintendo boy and at the time, he was totally wrapped up in Pikman.

This game was really neat and so cute. Used to love when my son would play it.

But I still didn't want to take any time away from my kids playing their games. Then, about a month after Christmas, both my kids were like, "Mommy, why aren't you playing your new game?" So that night I unwrapped the game and the rest is history. The first time I played it, I did so without looking at the guide book. I liked wandering around trying to figure things out on my own. It's a wonder I beat it the first time because I was missing a key piece of materia. The second time around I used the book to find the things I missed my first go round. I missed A LOT!

Jenova

I remember being in awe of how advanced the graphics were for that time. The game opened up with a pretty girl carrying flowers in downtown Midgar. Later I would come to find her name was Aeris/Aerith and she was the chosen one. She was last in a 2000 year blood line of ancients. She also had materia/magic inside of her but someone needed to stab it out of her. Perhaps an alien could do that but...I am getting ahead of myself.

The game jumps right from Aeris' scene into a battle with the game's star and antihero Cloud. Cloud had this big ass sword that is as tall as he is and chunky, blonde spiked hair. Cloud bands together with Aeris. a gang of fighters and a red wolf/dog to defeat the evil powers of Shinra, a company that was draining the life blood from the earth. Hmmmm.....Kind of like humans cutting down the rainforests, deploring the world's natural resources and fucking up the ecosystem. Pretty slick there Squaresoft. Pretty slick.

Jenova and Sephiroth were also evil and needed to be destroyed. They were the main villains in this game. Jenova was locked away but her son Sephiroth was walking around causing all kinds of mayhem. Guess what they were....

This game gave me many premature gray hairs and way too many hours of enjoyment. FF7 helped me coin some new swear word combinations I never thought possible. Of course these inventive and colorful phrases were only spoken after the kids were asleep. One of my favorite memories of this game was when I would get so into it that I would keep playing and playing and playing for hours on end; then I would get in a battle with a really hard monster and as I lay dying on the ground because I used all my magic and health potions, it would dawn on me that I did not get my ass to a save point and I pretty much wasted five fucking hours of my life for NOTHING!

That movie Groundhog's Day with Bill Murray, yea....that was often my reality when I was playing FF7. I was also a habitual re-setter. ( When you screw up in the game and reboot it to the last save.) My son still busts my ass to this day about it.

Traveling the world and visiting all the spots on the map was my for real favorite part of the game. At the Gold Saucer, FF7's version of the Mohegan Sun casino, I would laugh my ass off racing Chocobos. They looked like goofy ostrich chickens running around in a circle. My characters could also fight in the battle arena to win much needed cash, potions and materia. I spent more time in this fake casino than I ever have at a real casino in my entire life. I also got to breed my own Chocobos at the Chocobo Ranch.

Baby Chocobo Hatching - Concept Art

The goal was to breed the ultimate Chocobo, a gold one, that could take you all over the map of Gaia. It took me forever to get a gold Chocobo. There were about 100 things I had to do in order to breed one. Go here to get greens. Go here to get a lure. Now you need a rare nut that can only be found here. Now go race 17 Chocobos you already bred. Now brush their hair and tell them they're pretty. Now take a vile of blood from your first born Chocobo and burn in a fire under the 11th full moon of the year. Oh, you burned it on the 10th month. You fucked up kid. Now you have to start all over again. It was a huge pain in the ass but it was still fun. And yes, I got my gold Chocobo. I named him Chrissy.

Growing Materia by equipping it to your weapons during battles was also a lot of fun but very time consuming. Materia was magic that gave you powers to heal, steal and summon creatures to assist you in your battles. Kjata, Phoenix and Hades were my most heavily used summons but summoning Knights of the Round, now that was MAGIC! I would spend days and days just walking around the world getting in battle after battle to grow my materia to it's max potential.

Summon Phoenix Concept Art

Did I have to? No. Did I have VGOCD ( Video Game Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and need to have everything at it's max potential? Yes. I felt strongly that it was important to have my materia maxed out because when you forgot to get your ass to a save point, stronger materia makes the difference on whether or not your game controller, game console, the game itself and your TV are all getting hurled out your front window because you died!! Who wants to clean up all that broken glass? Not I.

Of course there was a very sad scene in this video game. Final Fantasy always likes to kill off a beloved character. I am not sure where it happened exactly but I remember having a conversation with a few people about Final Fantasy 7. We were going on and on about battles and monsters and characters. I started talking about Aeris and how I could not believe Sephiroth killed her. One of my friends lost all color in his face when I said this.

"Aeris dies?" he exclaimed. "She is my favorite character!" I seriously thought this kid was going to burst into tears. Yes, there is a lot of passion among us FF fans. Sometimes there are tears as well. I honesty felt horrible for spoiling it on him. I felt like Sephiroth, only instead of piercing Aeris in the back with a blade, I pierced this kid's heart. I apologized profusely to him. He assured me that he was not mad at me, he was just sad that Aeris was gonna die. He asked me what part of the game this terrible tragedy was going to occur so he could mentally prepare. I helped a brother out.

Aeris and Cloud Aeris' Death Concept Art

Anyways, I beat this game three times. I also went on to beat FF8 too.

Of course I spent way too much time playing this game. I knew I would. I'm a junkie. It's why I rarely play them now. I can go almost 24 hours straight playing a game. That's a lie. I have gone 24 hours straight playing a game. This game. It was nice though because the kids liked to watch me play. They would come in the room and sit next to me on the couch or pull up a pillow on the floor and watch their mother beat monsters and save the world. The both of them have also played and beaten FF7.

Quistis Final Fantasy VIII Card Game

Below is funny videos that sum up FF7 but for real, it is an awesome game and an amazing series. My son still plays the series here and there. He is actually playing FF7 again, as I write this. My daughter is an avid and outstanding FF player. She is the captain now. And I will never ground her for being better at the game than me.

Honest Game Trailer Final Fantasy VII

In closing I would like to say "Cheers" to all the gamers out there.....The past gamers, the present gamers and the future gamers. Gaming can be a lot of fun. Just remember, everything with moderation peeps. There is a real world out there to be experienced and there are real people out there to meet. Enjoy participating in your gaming adventures, but don't forget to participate in your own, real life, adventures as well. 

Cloud and Aeris.

Chrissy