My Life of Gaming, Part 3

A couple years after we obtained our Super NES, something that would probably have the greatest impact on my gaming history happened. We picked up a game that, at the time, was titled Final Fantasy III. This was my first taste of the Final Fantasy series and boy was it a doozy. We thought it was going to be just like Dragon Warrior, but it was so much more.

For the first time we had a huge cast of characters, high customization, a more adult story, tons of side quests and many other things that we hadn't seen in our previous RPG excursions. My brother and I sat in our basement and played FFIII together. (Note: It was actually Final Fantasy VI, but was released in the U.S. as Final Fantasy III. The correct title would be applied to later releases.)

It took us a while, but we finally got through it. It was probably the most defining gaming experience of my life, as after that point SquareSoft's RPG series would be some of my favorite games of all time. (Note: SquareSoft merged with Enix in 2003 to form Square-Enix.)

Three other RPGs that I played on the Super NES during that time period were Secret of Mana, Earthbound and Chrono Trigger. All these together pretty much sum up my RPG experiences on the Super NES, and really solidified my love of the genre because of their deep storytelling and intricate game play.

Up until this point, Nintendo had pretty much dominated the game console industry with two blockbuster systems and a large following of loyal fans. Ten years after Nintendo released their NES system in the U.S., Sony finally released their PlayStation. We can all give thanks to Nintendo's short-sighted white collars for that little change of power in the gaming world. Sony's console rose to the top, while Nintendo's next console, the N64, didn't do so hot.

As usual, I didn't own a PlayStation until well after it came out...in fact, it was about three years after it came out (and after it was redesigned) that I bought one myself. However, I did manage to borrow a friend's PlayStation in late 1997. Why, you ask? Because of one game - Final Fantasy VII. It had been several years since my first encounter with a Final Fantasy game, but the new title with lush, 3D visuals, caught my eye. The only problem was, I didn't own a PlayStation. Enter a friend of mine, who offered to let me borrow his while he was on vacation for a month.

I started playing FFVII and couldn't put it down. I finished it very quickly. Two years later, in 1999, FFVIII was released, and in 2000 FFIX came out. It was only a month or two before FFIX came out that I finally purchased a PlayStation of my own. I bought FFVIII with it, played through it very quickly, then picked up FFIX when it came out.

I ate those games up and treasured those jewels in my gaming collection. Other PS1 RPGs I really enjoyed were The Legend of Dragoon and Chrono Cross. There were, of course, other non-RPG games that I played - such as Crash Team Racing - but none made more of an impact on me than those Final Fantasy titles.

At the time, I thought the PlayStation had plenty of RPGs to keep me occupied for a good while. But then, as if to rub it in Nintendo's face that their first console was so successful, Sony released their PlayStation 2.