A Real Story: The Final Fantasy That Got Away… And Then Came Back

So, I'm going back on something that I said  I would try not to do on this blog: Talk about video games. However, I also did leave a clause in there about story. Therefore, I'm going to do just that. I'm going to tell you a story about gaming.

The following that you are about to read is real; None of this is fictionalized content. You want to know more about one half of Between Him and Her? Then here you go. As you continue to read, you'll realize that story has been a part of life for me from a very young age, even in gaming. The following was an editorial I wrote months ago about dealing with Asperger's Syndrome and being a dedicated game hobbyist, and how it has helped me function and get through problems I have encountered in my life. I never expected it to end the way that it did. 

June 2011:

I've been around video games for a long time, over 25 years now. I began my gaming career at a very young age, ironically starting with Squaresoft (now Square Enix titles). The very first NES game I EVER laid eyes on? The 3-D Battles of World Runner. So to say that Square games have always been a part of my life would be an understatement.

I have been a fan of Square through the thick, and the thin. From the loved (Final Fantasy IV), to the not so loved (Secret of Evermore, which unlike most other people, I loved), all the way to current generation. If a Square-Enix developed title comes out, there is a strong chance that it will be snatched up by me almost immediately. In all those years, I have sat down and played every locally released mainstream Final Fantasy title (in the numbered series), except for one.

The original Final Fantasy for the NES.

I was about 8 years old at the time, in a bad living situation with my older brother and mother. We were staying with my aunt and cousins, and I had just transferred schools yet AGAIN. As a rule of thumb, we kept to ourselves in the house, staying the hell out of their way and all living in one very small bedroom. Needless to say, it was a cramping experience. It goes without saying to state that we were obviously very, VERY poor and the living situation was uncomfortable at best. My mother didn't want my brother and I to have to compete with my cousins for the use of the NES, so scrimping together what money she could, she went out and got us our own that couldn't be bullied nor taken from us.

Surprisingly, the NES actually made us bond together CLOSER as a family. That was our family quality time. I still remember the first two games that we picked up; the original Megaman (with shit-tastic box art!) and Legacy of the Wizard. Later on, this would be followed by  Shadowgate (one of the greatest games of all time!) and Deja Vu, its sequel. Let me tell you, you may have had a great childhood, but for us? The weekend rolling around, Mom not having to work and us taking a field trip to the mall to go to the bookstore and look up the solution to puzzles we were stuck on in Shadowgate, and then picking up some gummi strawberries from the Tropik Sun Fruit & Nut stand. As far as I was concerned, I was in heaven…. at least for a few minutes at a time.

You will be angry that you have never heard of Ace Harding until now. Go play this game. Immediately. This is some of the best writing in video game fiction, period.

The reason I say that, is that as a kid growing up with unknown at the time Asperger's Syndrome, I was without a shadow of a doubt the black sheep of the family (no pun intended). My cousins refused to socialize with me and treated me like shit; My own brother would only interact with me when mandated by my mother. I didn't understand why at the time and it left me with feelings of being unliked and unloved. For some, it can be difficult to imagine NOT being loved by people you share blood with, but that was how it was. Vast periods of loneliness and being trapped alone with my own thoughts was a very constant and very present reality.

Although my family life was incredibly rough, my school situation was coincidentally not as bad, especially when you get around other game geeks as a 3rd grader. I had two friends, Zack and Josh. Their last names escape me, but they were without a doubt my best friends. Zack was a pretty much normal kid that was a game junkie, but Josh… he was something else. I remember he had a crazy eye tick, you know the kind of guy you think might start a fire? That kind of eye tick. Nevertheless, he was solid. Recesses were spent discussing games, reading Nintendo Power, and sharing tips and tricks with each other on the games we were stuck on.

There was a day when we were walking to our individual homes after getting off the bus. As we were walking down the block, Josh (with his CRAZY EYE no less) spotted a little sliver of green nestled inbetween the REST of the green of the grass. We all stopped to inspect and, lo and behold, it was a crisp 20 dollar bill. We were all ecstastic, obviously. To an 8 year old, 20 dollars might as well be a million. Now that I think about it, 20 dollars NOW is still roughly a million as far as I'm concerned. You can buy a lot of shit with a 20 dollar bill if you manage it right!

After cheering about our good fortune, we had the classic problem: Who was going to claim it? All 3 of us were present at the time of discovery, and although Josh was the one who saw it and had rightful claim to it, we had all decided it simply wasn't fair that way. So, they decided to base it on allowance. Zack got the biggest allowance out of all of us, 20 dollars a week, and Josh received 10 bucks every couple of days, for the usual sweets, comic books and other NECESSARY TO AN  8 YEAR OLD odds and ends. However, it came around to me and I had to hang my head in embarassment and shame. I didn't even really have a concept OF an allowance. After a few moments, Josh handed the 20 dollar bill to me. It was, to the best of my knowledge now, the first genuine gift I ever received from another person. Not only was it a gift, it was a gift of money! Money that was my own to spend! I had never had that experience before.

We parted ways from there, and I toddled the rest of the way home clunching that 20 dollar bill mercilessly, heartbeating in my chest. It was mine, I could do with it whatever I wished and no one could tell me differently. When I got home, I told my mother about what happened and she was surprised. No one made mention of what good friends that I had had who did something so selflessly… because they were white (but that's a story for a different time).  Regardless, my oldest cousin was driving at this point and everyone could tell that this 20 dollar bill was burning a hole in my pocket, and so he took me to a pawn shop, where obviously the selection of video games were plentiful, and definitely cheaper.

That was when I saw it on the shelf. A copy of Final Fantasy. Of course it wasn't in the box and there were no instructions, but I didn't care. I had a good feeling about this one. And it was right in my price range, 18.95! I had exactly enough to buy it! I left that pawnshop happy that day; It was not only the first real money I had had for myself, but I had bought my VERY FIRST VIDEO GAME! It was no one else's, it belonged to ME, and me alone.

When I got home,  I could barely contain myself. My brother though, wasn't quite as receptive. To this day I still remember the scowl on his face. It's burned into my memory, I can't get rid of it. I think disdain would be an appropriate word here.

I had the NES all to myself and could play. I sat down and popped it in, confused as all shit by the character creation system, but I managed to get through it and make my first party. I remember going for a balanced team of White Mage, Black Mage, Fighter, and Thief. It seemed like a good idea.  Naturally, I got my ass-kicked up and down the starting field for about 2 hours before it was time for bed. But that was okay! I now had all the time to slowly learn how to play and conquer this beast. Or so I thought.

The next day, I returned home from school, excited to get back to playing my new game. But I couldn't find it, at all. I looked everywhere, I was certain I had left it in the NES! Finally, after getting frustrated with searching for it for about 20 minutes, my older brother piped up "I let Calvin borrow it." He had, without any sort of permission or query, lent out MY new video game to a friend of his. I still remember how furious I was. I punched my brother as hard as I could, screaming at the top of my lungs. My aunt, my cousins, my mother? They did nothing at all. In fact, I was the one who was punished for punching and fighting, and I was grounded from the NES for a week. They completely overlooked and ignored the fact that my new game, for all intents and purposes to an 8 year old, had been STOLEN from me.

A week had passed and I had gotten antsy at this point. I queried my older brother "When is he bringing back my game?!" The response that I got was… less than pleasant.

"Oh, Calvin moved out of state."

That's right. After lending out my game to a friend without permission, that same friend? HE MOVED OUT OF THE STATE. I had no way of recovering it at all. It was now considered a lost cause. And I cried. I cried so very, VERY badly that I can only think of one other time in my life I cried that hard.

Why had he done this to me? Why did my brother do such a spiteful, hateful thing to his own baby brother? I didn't understand then, and I still don't understand now.

Like all other things, time passed and I "got over it"…. to a point. Forgiven and forgotten? No, neither. It was simply a lost cause to even bother trying to recover or pursue it. To this day, it always sits in the back of my mind, clawing at it like a beaver tearing at a dam.

Asperger's Syndrome is a strange, funny little thing in people. It manifests itself in many different ways, with some commonalities between them. Myself for example? I happen to be "cursed" so to speak, with a damn near photographic memory. Imagine, if you will, that something that happened over 21 years ago happened to you 3 hours ago instead. That is what it is like for me. It is a constant, living nightmare of hurt and emotional pain. I can't STOP remembering it, and it is as fresh as the day it occurred for me.

The years passed and I moved on to more games, bigger ones. I continued to pursue Final Fantasy every chance I got, as a natural fan of the series. And yet every time I've ever seen a copy of Final Fantasy sitting on a shelf at Funcoland or Software Etc (you know, before it became THAT company), I would pause and become nervous. The original Final Fantasy, emotionally, equates to me like a dog that has been punished for a bad action, and begins to associate a behavior with pain and henceforth, avoids it. That is the way that it has felt for me for all these years.

I have wanted to sit down and finally play the game. You might say "Well, there's tons of NES emulators out there! Finding a rom of it isn't a big deal!" or "That game has been remade PLENTY of times on current platforms! There's no reason you can't get it!" And you're right. I COULD do that.

However, the point isn't playing the game anymore… it is about returning what is RIGHTFULLY MINE. I want no  special treatment from my older brother; I want his love and genuine respect as a human being and as his KIN. I want him to make good on his great wrong. Even years later, after other people have "forgotten" about this incident, and even with me telling him in PLAIN ENGLISH? He doesn't care and refuses to, based on "it was so long ago."

Believe me when I say this: When your memory is photographic, VERY few past things become "irrelevant." It is constantly relevant, simply because my brain doesn't allow it to NOT be.

Wouldn't you know it? 21 years later, I have made it a point to avoid spoiling the game for myself in all forms. I couldn't tell you a single thing about the plot of the game. I have been on a 20+ year spoiler blackout. I don't know a thing about it. The only thing I know is 4 Warriors of Light, and the classes. Outside of that, the entire game and its plot are a COMPLETE mystery to me.

I don't want a brand new copy of Final Fantasy (that would be ridiculously priced if you could still find it in shrink!), nor do I want some special privilege. Unlike some, when I dream, I like to dream within reason and manageably. Honestly? A dream of mine is to be able to sit down with a regular NES, shitty RF cable and all,  and a USED copy of Final Fantasy returned to me from my older brother, so I can finish the adventure that an 8 year old little boy tried to start and was denied.

I don't think that that is too much to ask. Sadly, I don't think that that dream will ever be fulfilled. Believe me when I say you have no clue how much that hurts, on the inside.

But then… fast forward to yesterday, December 28th 2011:

As you should know by now, good readers, I recently turned 30 on the 22nd of this month. It's been a very good week, very busy spending time with friends as I'm going to be moving out of the state at the end of February. Over the past year and a half in the game journalism gig, I've met all kinds of people. During the BigBang event in Ottumwa, Iowa, I happened to meet up with the Ottumwa High School Game Community, a bunch of youth with a hot-blooded passion for gaming.

I've spent a lot of time with these kids, musing back and forth about classic and current gaming. We've all become pretty good friends, and I'm honored to know that these guys even look up to me as a mentor figure, which is admittedly very strange and ODD to me. It's not uncommon for them to ask me advice concerning creative writing and more.

The guys tend to plan road trips up to town whenever they have a break period from classes. Seeing as how they're on Christmas Break, they decided to come on up and spend the day running around.  Naturally, we decided to hang out and grab a bite to eat and talk about the book Jeff and Kirby are working on, Trevor always comes along for laughs (and is big into classic gaming) and just generally have a good time. To go along with that, they'd also picked up copies of Rabbit in the Road and wanted to get it signed.

It's at this point that my buddy Jayme has also shown up and met the fellas too. Unexpectedly, Jeff pulls out the box that his copy of Rabbit in the Road came in, and then slides it over to me. My expression was quite puzzled, but he told me to reach in there, and this is what I pulled out once I got past all the packing paper.

Jeff and Trevor had, of their own accord, went out of their way to find me a copy of the original Final Fantasy for the NES. And this isn't just any old busted copy; A bonafide collector would salivate over this. The game has hardly been touched, the box has nary a dent or even scratch in the surface. It has been re-shrinked, but even then I gave the cartridge a thorough inspection. This copy is in such pristine condition, the included paper material (the instruction manual, player's guide, the maps, even the original ADS TO ORDER NINTENDO POWER MAGAZINE) were literally LIKE NEW, the creases not even bent. They had never been touched, as far as I can tell.

It is rare, INCREDIBLY rare to leave me speechless. I wasn't just speechless at this moment. I was literally stunned in shock. I had no clue this was coming, it was completely out of the blue. Tears have never come so fast to my eyes before in my life.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking "How materialistic of you." That's not the case here. What it really comes down to about this story is that when I thought nobody was paying attention, it turns out I was wrong. Someone was paying attention when I wrote that editorial. And they didn't just pay attention, they knew WHAT it was and WHY.

The important moments in life aren't about the things that we have, but about the people that care about us. I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably never reconcile in any meaningful way with my family. But someone saw the hole that was in my heart, and made an effort of their own volition to sew it shut and make me believe in people again. That's what this means, to me. Someone noticed me, and someone cared. They didn't want to see me sad anymore.

I can say, without reservation, that this is one of the biggest moments of my life. This simple gesture means even more to me than Rabbit in the Road.  These are the moments where good people, bad people, heroes, and villains are defined in life.

These kids might look up to me and treat me as a mentor figure, but the roles are suddenly reversed.

THESE TWO BOYS ARE MY HEROES. 

So now, as I move on to the next phase of my life, I get to start it by finishing what that 8 year old started and didn't get to… we're going to play Final Fantasy, and I can put him to bed and tell him good night. That kid and I have a story we need to finish.

Jeff? Trevor? You boys show that there is still great good in the world. You are, and always will be, my friends.

Thank you.

~Oliver

Left to right, Jeff, Myself, and Trevor.