The Gamer’s Quagmire: 17th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Last week you saw here a nice long talk about a game from the previous generation of gaming. Effectively it was me finding a ton of text written several months ago that I never bothered to finalize and post. What’s troubling me is that this week there was only one topic in the video game world that has inspired me to write anything- the official end of the PlayStation era. Considering this was the first console I ever put down money for there are a ton of fond memories for this hallowed console.

Up to 1998, well after the PS1’s release, the only consoles I ever had were the ones that my parents purchased for me. I had an Atari 2600 and a Super Nintendo. These were fantastic machines and can show gamers today that you don’t need overpowering technology to make a great game. What fans of a previous generation like to say is how there are great games on those consoles and that newer consoles don’t offer anything new. In their defense they have a great point.

Still I never hold hands with them as they cross the tunnel vision line. Games do not have generations in as much as the consoles do. If someone sat down and just started implementing the first Final Fantasy game now it would blow the presentation of the original Fantasy Fantasy as we know it now away. Would the gameplay be any better? It would be silly to attempt that argument but if you want to run with it go right ahead. When I look back at the PS1 era, which is now officially over, I don’t think about all of the bad games that came with it because that’s not how I want to remember the generation.

I remember the generation as the time I was able to start foraging on my own into the gaming universe. The games were now purchased on my own decisions as opposed to begging and pleading from my parents. Oddly they never seemed to object to any of the games I asked for, but with the PS1 things became different for me. This time I could walk into a store, point at a game, and get it. Did the best games on the PS1 stack up against the best on the Super Nintendo? Spending this week going over the merits of Castlevania IV, which I maintain is the peak of the franchise, could be an interesting exercise. I am not even going to spend time talking about my favorite game on the console.

One game typified the console more than any other game- Final Fantasy VII. Its sequel is a much more interesting game and discussion. It’s not because of the story or the characters but because of the mass reaction to the game. VII brought a wealth of popularity to role playing games, to Square, and to video games itself. The graphics in that game, with the exception of those geometric disasters known as the character models, were way beyond anything we had seen in an RPG before. That sold the game more than anything else to people. The story was also exceptional, which obviously helped, but that’s not what drove the sales figures.

Final Fantasy VIII was in every respect a great game for the series. It demonstrated superior graphics, an interesting new battle system, a fresh set of compelling characters, a top rate soundtrack, and, of course, the best card game ever invented- Triple Triad. It also weeded out the bandwagon Final Fantasy VII fans. To this I say good riddance because VIII represented everything right about the franchise in that the sequels are sequels in name only. Final Fantasy VIII very well could be my favorite game for the console, but I still don’t think about VIII when I first think about the first PlayStation.

I like to think about the reason I bought the console in the first place. Final Fantasy VII was the next game in a series I became addicted to on the Super Nintendo. All of the Nintendo fans couldn’t understand why Square decided to jump ship to Sony’s platform. In 1997 the young gamers didn’t understand the power of the CD versus the cartridge (ironically Nintendo didn’t seem to understand it either until 4 years ago). I still remember boycotting the PS1 until Square released the game for a Nintendo console. Aaah, to be young and overpoweringly naïve. Sooner or later I caved.

And not just in the dungeon crawling sense either (sorry, sometimes it’s impossible to resist those jokes), as the day of the console purchase I was in my room playing Final Fantasy VII all weekend. I considered it my own birthday present as it completed my very first makeshift gaming epicenter that I could be proud of. A computer next to the bed, stereo with CD player under the bed, TV at the foot of the bed and then the PS1 on top of the television. It was a work of art I tell you. There’s nothing like being able to listen to music, do homework, watch a ball game and surf the web all from one spot. At the center of it all was still Final Fantast VII.

My first experience with the game was the year before coming in from class and seeing friends huddled around a television arguing about something. I set my bag down, walked into the room and almost began to cry. Somehow my stubbornness had caught up to me. As I sat in awe of the game for the first time rather than just turning a blind eye to it I saw what I was missing. After the first six hours melted by I realized I had to get back to my studying routine. But for 2 months of intermittent playing with my roommates Final Fantasy VII became the game that was more than all of my past role playing experiences. I didn’t just talk with a couple friends at school about the game. Now I was sitting down going through the whole game with a group of friends for hours on end. We steadfastly played during the day, during the weekend, and even while our sink was spitting up sludge.

I guess some memories as just too poignant to forget.
Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, Cid, Red XIII, Aeris, Sepiroth, and all the other characters in the game reminded me so much of Final Fantasy III it scared me. When you can stuff over 10 characters together into a cohesive story it is an amazing sight to behold. Cloud was a hero you could get behind because you felt his pain when he found out what he was- a bio-engineered weapon (and if you didn’t know that by now I’m still not apologizing for telling you now- this game is almost 10 years old). I felt my skin crawl in the darkness every time Sephiroth’s music started playing. All of the characters were bonded together. Cloud and Tifa were friends from childhood. Barrett and Tifa were both involved in Avalanche. Red and Cloud were both products of materia. The list goes on and on, but the point is that you saw how characters with many different backgrounds bonded together and all went after the one man bent on destroying the planet.

Well, everyone except for Yuffie- but nobody else really liked her anyway.

Ooh- if you enjoy what-if exercises here is a fun one to chew on. There was a group of characters in the game who were the ShinRa’s main enforcement body known as the Turks. They were shady, tough, and great with weapons and martial arts. Imagine a game being released today with a group known as the Turks without controversy. Perhaps that is being far too cynical, but it sure is fun to think about.

Final Fantasy VII to this day is one the most universally accepted RPG’s in the history of gaming. In fact the only other game you could mention in the same argument is the one I mentioned last week- Knights of the Old Republic. The Advent Children movie released on UMD last year was a service by Square Enix to the fans of the franchise (because lately there literally has been nothing else). Watching that movie it was hard to explain why I loved it so much. After thinking about it for a long time I began to see that the characters reminded me of how much I loved the game and the game meant a lot more to me than the movie itself. It has been almost nine years since experiencing the game for the first time and I still remember everything about the game down to the Turtle’s Paradise flyers, the golden chocobo breeding mechanism, and the secret of the Underwater Materia. That is staying power… and a dash of insanity.

So was it just the characters and the story that separate this game from the rest of the PlayStation pack? Why think of this game instead of another game when someone mentions a PlayStation? I still hold onto games from the PS1 because there were plenty of good ones worth playing over and over. Playing Final Fantasy VII on the PC even seems like a fresh experience (where else can I play a classic game and get segmentation faults?) after going through the game over five times. I bought the PS1 with the sole purpose of playing that game and not only was I not disappointed but it remained one of the powerhouse games for the console throughout the console’s lifespan.

At the end of the day the PS1 era was more than any one game though. It was the very first console that was truly mine. I grew up as a gamer with that console. Yet somehow when my parents came to see me at college the kid jumped back out and stashed the console with one of my roommates. On the surface college had to be about the studying and the degree, but in the end it was about the gaming and doing it on a student teacher’s salary. At $500 per console today companies may forget that which makes the official end of the PS1 era more significant than it might otherwise seem.

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