How it Started

[Lyndis Highwind]

So I've been wondering, what made you guys pick up and play your first FF game?

[Spuuky]

When you've just beaten Dragon Quest and you're hungry for more, RPG pickings on the NES are pretty slim.

[Pike]

Someone told me to play FF6, so I did, but I didn't get REALLY into FF until I played FF Tactics Advance a few years later. That game I just happened to preorder because I read a preview in Nintendo Power and it looked good, and boy that was a good decision.

After that I went and blitzed through like all the FF games that had been released up to that point.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Before Final Fantasy VII released, I already had come to know of the Final Fantasy series and JRPGs. As a very young kid, I was crazy and all about Pokemon back then. To be fair, I was crazy for anything Nintendo popped out. Then my cousin gifted me her SNES along with Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV(known as Final Fantasy II), and Final Fantasy VI(known as Final Fantasy III). Those games' with their soundtrack alone pulled me in, specifically the Prelude theme for both the FF games, To Far Away Times(CT), and the entirety of the soundtrack for Final Fantasy VI. Pokemon was a thing of the past for me starting thereon. Around Final Fantasy VII's release, I was huge into anime at the time. The spiky haired blond dude on the cover of Final Fantasy VII appealed a lot to me. I got my mom to pre-order the game for me along with a PlayStation. She first asked me what the game was about and she was well aware of Dragonball Z and such(calling it the "Goku" show) so I said, it was a Dragonball Z game. She thought that Cloud looked like Super Saiyan Goku(she doesn't know what Super Saiyans are, she just saw a clip of Goku turning Super Saiyan) so she just went ahead and bought it(I had a lot of trouble buying games because if it wasn't Mario, Pokemon, or something Nintendo made I'd have a hard time getting it so I'd have to convince her in a way).

I played the hell out of Final Fantasy VII when it came out. To be fair, I was the only person that I was aware of playing Final Fantasy VII where I lived. I would come to people in my school and ask them about it and they'd be like, "Final What?" Granted, the area I lived in was very indifferent to things from Japan. The only anime people knew about was Pokemon and they didn't even know that it was an anime, associating it with any normal kid's cartoon at the time. I told my cousin about it. She didn't own a PlayStation at the time so she never played Final Fantasy VII at the time of its peak(she played it eventually just not during the 90's). However, she definitely was aware of it. I think she was just more into Pokemon at the time.

Final Fantasy VII reminded me a lot of AKIRA, which was something I loved a lot back then(I still love it just not as much as I used to). The atmosphere was something that I still enjoy to this day. The sci-fi fantasy surrounding the game with a very awesome soundtrack. Spent at least 200 hours just messing around in the game. I also over-leveled the hell out of myself just looking for Yuffie. It was a thing I could do back then, grind for hours upon hours.

Since then, I bought a plethora of JRPGs, quickly becoming my favorite genre. When Xenogears launched, I was just walking around a Game-stop and this was around a time where my mom said I could buy any game I wanted. I was interested in buying M-rated and adult games for some reason. Then, I turned around when my brother pointed me to Xenogears. I was huge into Gundam, Evangelion, and mecha anime in general so I sat there looking at the cover for at least 20 minutes. I was like, "is this Gundam?" I asked the Game-stop employee up front about the game and he said, "I never played that game but if I recall correctly I was told it's a RPG type game with giant robots." I purchased it straight away as soon as I heard giant robot, came home, popped it into my PlayStation, and played upon hours of this game. The first fight scene with Fei and the Gebler units attacking Lahan got me so hooked and from that I became obsessed with Xenogears. I was experimenting with the game to death. Xenogears solidified my love for the genre.

The rest is history.

[FFNut]

For me it was a mix up at the game rental place. Tried renting one game, but the accidentally gave me Final Fantasy. My dad wouldn't go back to the place for the mix up so I was stuck with it. Plugged it in and... Magic. Been playing JRPG's and the like since.

[Colonel Angus]

I really don't remember why, I just remember wanting the game.

[Depression Moon]

I'm in a pretty terrible mood today so I'll keep it short instead of writing a long story like I would if this was a normal day.
Basically someone gave me FFIX and I played it.

[Fynn]

Back in grade school I was into Pokemon. Before that, my dad and I played a bit of Diablo. That's essentially how RPGs began for me. Then my friends discovered this website that was filled with JRPG roms. We all came there for Pokemon, but I soon branched out to Final Fantasy. The first I actually tried was Mystic Quest, but I didn't play it for long. Then I moved on to IV, V, and VI, and the rest is history.

[Karifean]

I don't even remember when my brother got FF VII, he just had it and played it at some point, and I joined eventually.

[Loony BoB]

I rented a lot of random games after I got my PlayStation from our local video rental store thing, back when they were genuinely viable companies. Picked up FFVII. Loved it.

[Pumpkin]

I apparently played FFVIII when I was mega young, but what made me start wanting to play was Spirits Within. I liked the movie and was told there was a series of video games. So I started doing the research and found Yuna, who I thought looked somewhat like the protag of the movie, and wanted to play it. Then I saw that FFX-2 was announced and it was ALL GIRLS WITH DRESS UP and I wanted it, but it wasn't out yet. So instead I got FFVII, VIII, IX, and X to hold me over, and that's how I got in to the series!

[MJN SEIFER]

I kept reading a walkthrough for Final Fantasy VII that I don't have anymore (it was part of a cheats and tips book for PlayStation) and just had to get the game, because it sounded interesting. The walkthrough gave me just enough detail, but never explicitly gave anything a way, so I was curious (it was excellent at not spoiling things, from what I remember).

It was also a strangely written walkthrough in a sense; it put all (or what it knew) of the side quests together and didn't really say how to do them (it mentioned Gold Chocobo only locations, for instance, and didn't say you needed a Gold Chocobo) and got several boss's names wrong - not least referring to Sample:H0512 as "Jenova Specimen". I'd love to read it again one day.

Actually, I just did some googling, and if you're interested in what the boss's where named - it seems to be all here (http://squareinsider.com/guides/2/boss-guide-part-1), this is not how the walkthrough was written, but there are similarities (like whoever wrote this may have changed the wording of the walkthrough) these appear to be the wrong boss names they used (though I'm not sure about "Gi Attack" and Hundred Gunner, Helli-Gunner and "End of Sephiroth" weren't even named in the walkthrough).

[Vermachtnis]

Growing up my MawMaw had a SNes with two games. Link to the Past and Mystic Quest. I loved Mystic Quest and at the rental place I saw Final Fantasy II. Thinking it was a sequel I got it. Played a ways into it and figured out it wasn't a sequel, but I was hooked. And went around and started playing them all. And of course II was actually IV.

[Del Murder]

Nintendo Power released a really kick-ass guide for the original FF and it looked really cool. I also really liked the FF Legend games and only later found out they are just FF by name for Western appeal!

[Freya]

I got Brave Fencer Musashi and it had a demo for VIII, which I loved! I rented VIII and hated it. But I rented IX and adored it. And here we are.

[Sephiroth]

Snakes are my favourite animals. Cobras, to be more specific.

I wanted to know what that game with that "big snake" was. It was Final Fantasy VII.

Thank you, Midgardsormr.

The End.

[Scruffington]

10 year old me thought the dude with the spiky hair and the big sword on the cover of a game looked cool. I convinced my dad to buy it for me at the flea market, and when I got to play it I was blown away.

I loved Final Fantasy VII so much that I even bought the game for my best friend the same year. It has been my favorite game ever since.

[botnslave]

My sister bought her then boyfriend Ff7 brand spanking new for his bday. I watched them play the opening and I had to play this game. I was only about 14 or so at the time.
I eventually hounded him to let me borrow his ps1, Ff7, ridge racer, and re1 every weekend he would let me.(yes I was a child of the psx golden age)
Anyways. Fast forward 20 years, my sister is still with the same dude. (engaged now at least hahah) and it turns out neither of them actually ended up liking 7 and never finished it. (but they love 8,9,10)
I've finished it multiple times and still pick it up once every year or so. It is my favorite game, definitely some nostalgia at play there.

[fat_moogle]

It was my Mums (at the time) boyfriend that got me in to Final Fantasy with FFVII. I used to watch him play it on his PS1 and I thought it looked really fun. When I gave it a go I was terrible at it, and the piss easy materia system confused the hell out of my tiny 7/8 year old brain. Also my Mum used to do mobile hairdressing, so I went around with her. One of her clients had FFVII so I spent more time getting used to it there, too. When I got the hang of it fully I was hooked, and I've been playing Final Fantasy ever since.

[maybee]

Started with FF VII when I was about 9 years old. Thought that the game looked pretty. :shrug: I didn't really get into the game fully until I was about 12 years old though, as 9 year old me thought you could just summon your way to victory at LV 9 or something. Basically, it was all just serendipity.

[Shiva95]

I started with FFVI when I was like 4-5 years old. I played the coop mode with my father because it was his favorite game and I had watched him play before (I really liked to take an unplugged controller and do as he did on his own), and he translated me the dialogues because I didn't speak English that much at the moment hehe :D

[Galuf]

i used to watch my sister play 7 and 9 when i was a youngling, then when i was aboot 15 i got started on listening to a bunch fo FF music and then my sister let me borrow FFXIII which i thought was pretty fun. then i played FFVI o nan emulator i downloaded, which i played when my internet ran out and i was pretty damn hooked on the series after. still am.