I remember the day I picked up my first Final Fantasy game. I was at my friend's home after school for Study Group(let's face it, Study Groups were what we told our parents when we wanted to hang out at a friend's place). So I was going through her list of games and one of the games caught my eye. It was of a spiked up, blonde-haired guy with a big-ass sword on his back looking at a well-lit building. "Ooh, looks cool" thought 10 year old me. It's even the final of it's series(no, no it's not you dummy). That day changed me or should I say I "Leveled Up" as a gamer.
Since then I've enjoyed playing a teenage-mercenary "SeeD", off stealin' hearts as a monkey-boy from Terra, existed as a Blitzball Player in Spira, off sky-pirating with Balthier, and recently played as Crown-Prince seeking to rid the world of darkness.
Final Fantasy or Square(SquareSoft, SquareEnix) has made such a huge impact on my life, my hobbies, interests(my unhealthy obsession with collecting), and even career. Games are the reason why I chose to study 3D, to create those amazing pre-rendered cutscenes for games although technology has gotten so good that in-game graphics are as good as pre-rendered cutscenes...
Taken from one of the auto-snapped images from my game.
Although I quit doing 3D(long story), I will never stop gaming so long as there's Final Fantasy(I hope I didn't jinx it) and the hundreds of awesome games out there(but I can't afford them all). So here's to you Final Fantasy,