I feel so lucky that I was there when this was the only Final Fantasy around. As I've said elsewhere on this forum, I loved RPGs back then before I knew FF existed thanks to ancient PC games and Dragon Warrior. My cousin and I happened to run into this game by pure chance and a local video game rental store, and my Aunt was nice enough to just buy it for him right there and then (the place in question let you do that if you wanted). It was so magical discovering the game with him. He was in the captain's chair most of the time, but I didn't care. I knew I could con my parents into buy my own copy sooner rather than later (and they did)! I sucked at the game back in the day, but I still enjoyed it very much (that Marsh Cave was brutal on my single digit age self).

Anyway, this was such an awesome post. Very fun to read, and I even learned a thing or two about aspect surrounding the original release of the game!