Nostalgia-mounting RPGs

Over the last year I have played Final Fantasy VII and VIII on the PSP, having downloaded them from the aether (PlayStation Store) and uploaded them to a memory card inside the device. I am now doing the same for Final Fantasy IX. We are living in the future. WELCOME TO IT.

When these games first appeared they were on a number of discs each, they were the colossal RPGs of the PS1 era, the solid, shimmering jewels in Squaresofts Final Fantasy crown, before multiple spin-offs cut the jewels a few too many times, and the jewelocity became stretched far too thin. That's right, jewelocity. Final Fantasy X is perhaps the last of the worthy Final Fantasy titles, although an unfortunate twist near the end and a frustrating spin-off tarnishes its sheen. I never played XI, for at the time of release playing online felt like an impossible pipedream, and though I enjoyed XII it was for the gameplay rather than the story. I am currently stalled in XIII, having grafted through 20 hours of linear corridors, and finally being allowed out into a world which is numbingly vast, in an unfortunately tedious way.
It is possible that VII through X are as flawed as newer output, and I simply gloss over this using the magical power of nostalgia. Regardless, I am very much enjoying this playthrough of IX, the cartoonish medieval feel of the story is delightful. Having it in a portable medium is probably key, I doubt I'd commit to several hours in front of the TV using a console, but somehow playing it on a handheld device tricks you into believing that it isn't 3o'clock in the morning.

Having seemingly huge PS1 titles re-issued as downloadable releases is an excellent process, its just a pity that it doesn't stretch to releases such as Xenogears, which, as it was never released in the UK, is unlikely to appear in the British store. I had feared, when the newest generation of consoles appeared (PS3/360/Wii) that old-school RPGs (or perhaps JRPGs more specifically) would die out, in favour of family-friendly minigames masquerading as full games, or an endless stream of shiny FPSs. Thankfully, that hasn't really happened, and new RPGs do appear with a fair frequency, and though on the consoles they tend to be trying something a little different (which is a good thing, even if it means a few games mess up), I am glad that classic formats are still being worked in the handhelds. RPGs were, for me at least, never really about the graphics, and the gameplay is also a measured fixture which lends itself well to a handheld format, where button-bashing or fast sequences aren't ideal, whereas the story and tactical nature of the battling is more fitting. Even the relatively basic graphics are more aesthetically pleasing on a smaller screen.

I think my funny has dried up this week, this is another fairly dry examination. Rather than bail out of this I am going to see this entry through to its tedious, unamusing conclusion, if you are looking for laughs I urge you to abandon this entry post haste, lest my position as Visconte de Hilariare be forever compromised in your eyes.

The amount of hours I have spent grinding away on role-playing games is no ones business. Final Fantasy VII and Pokemon Red were the first nails in a coffin which is now shut with so many nails that the coffin itself is more iron than wood. The soundtracks to franchises of Wild ARMs, Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire and Xenogears swirl on a neverending MIDI loop in my mind, and the plinks and plonks of Pokemon, Final Fantasy Tactics and Dragon Warrior Monster vibrate in my forearms.

Playing through the first stages of Final Fantasy IX I was delighted by the presence of the Rufus Welcoming March, a track originally composed for FFVII, which was clearly added to the game in order to delight empty nerds such as myself. "I was delighted".

However, as futile as it may feel to have sunk quite so many weeks into RPGs, I think there are important and valuable life lessons to be learnt from them.

RPGs reward the player for putting the work in, the main format of levelling up means you have to work to get better. Often in the actual games this takes the form of some quite tedious grafting (unless the battling system is done well, as in FFXII (my opinion)), but the overall ideal is quite practical, it essentially boils down to: if you want to do well, work hard. This is at odds with what usually gets touted in anime (and in a number of idealistic/simplistic stories) where an individual will be able to battle through and succeed simply on the basis of him/her being particularly just or good. The disillusionment from these stories is something I'm planning on looking at in more detail, so I will leave it for now. Suffice to say, having been attacked for no reason by two brainless gimps I can conclusively deny the inspiring second-wind that seems to infuse those who are in the right. Either that or I was the baddie in that situation, which is impossible as I am the main character.

So it seems I am regressing of late, I have reacquainted myself with wrestling, started playing late 90s PS1 RPGs again and having shaved this afternoon I realised I had chosen to go shave down to sideburns, which were my original choice from back when bumfluff was first gracing my cheeks. After work today I am going to go slide down the banking on a piece of cardboard. That, of course, is a fabrication for comic effect, but I will do it soon, film it and it will become a sketch. I am not old enough for my puerility to be a starkly comic contrast, I just look childish. To such claims I would retort "I know you are, but what am I?".

I would love nothing more than to waste the entire evening tonight playing through Final Fantasy IX, but there is much editing to be done for the podcast tomorrow, and given that really I should also have edited one of our sketches by now, it will be a shocking betrayal of our hardworking DIY ethics to let the podcast slip aswell.

This will be the 26th week in an unbroken chain of slapdash audio silliness that we have released, our dedication to silly buggery has spanned around half a year, at this point it feels that our efforts are either highly admirable, or utterly delusional. The day they stop being released is the day we stop enjoying them, and there's not even a whisper of that point as of now, so admirable it is.

I am going to play Final Fantasy IX as well though. I can play it on the toilet. The future is indecent.