I May Never Play My Favourite Video Game Again
By the time I was 10 years old, I had probably accompanied my older brother, Thomas, through Final Fantasy IX’s campaign at least 10 times. Some of my earliest gaming memories — hell, some of my earliest memories period — are of sitting, cross-legged and wide-eyed, on a cushion on Tom’s bedroom floor as he explored the lush and varied world of Gaia.
The first few times I was only able to watch, too young to even read the on-screen dialogue. As I grew older, I was entrusted with some very menial in-game tasks; grinding battles for experience, catching frogs in Qu’s Marsh, playing Chocobo Hot and Cold, even changing the discs when we reached the end of a section… basically anything Tom didn’t want to do. Finally, after proving that I would put up with basically anything if I was allowed to keep watching him play, I was entrusted with the holy grail — his battered copy of PlayStation Planet’s official Final Fantasy IX guide. Every hidden item, every mandatory minigame, every boss fight, was suddenly my solo responsibility. I had to keep my nose in the pages to make sure he didn’t miss a thing, to make sure we cruised through the game with hardly a backward glance. This is when I got the most out of Final Fantasy; riding shotgun with Tom, one of my main role models, making inside jokes and references that I only knew from watching him play so many times before. It was probably the most carefree time in my entire life.
I still remember trying to run through Final Fantasy IX through by myself for the first time. Tom was away at boarding school, but the PlayStation stayed nestled on his bedside table alongside the little 14” box TV we played together on. After school one day, I crept away from the homework I was supposed to be doing in my parents’ absence and popped the first disc in, ready to start my adventure. I’d seen this done nearly a dozen times before, I reasoned, so why wouldn’t I be able to play it by myself? I cracked through the opening section of the game with no bother; I knew how to beat the first boss in as little time as possible, and what items to steal from him in the process. But as time went on, and I wandered the streets of Alexandria as impressionable orphan Vivi, something felt off. I felt… well, vulnerable. Like Vivi, I didn’t have someone older watching over me, making sure I was alright and that I was doing what was best for me. I didn’t have my big brother.
I made it as far as the game’s first big set-piece, where Zidane and his gang put on a fake play as a diversion in order to kidnap the princess of Alexandria. During the scene, you have to nail a QTE swordfight on-stage, and the better you do it, the more money (or “Gil”) you earn as a reward. There aren’t really any stakes, as you can retry the scene as many times as you like, but once you decide to move on the amount of money you make is locked in. Playing by myself, the queen of Alexandria herself was impressed with my performance, but for some reason only 30 or so nobles seemed to agree. I remembered something about this from the guide… maybe I had to impress Queen Brahne and 100 nobles to earn the best possible reward?
Hoping to boost my rating, I restarted the fight and tried again. And again. And again. No matter what, I couldn’t seem to impress 100 nobles, and even worse Queen Brahne didn’t seem to be enjoying the encore. In the end I settled for 70 nobles and no royal approval, slinking away with my tail tucked between my legs. Later, when he came home for the summer, Tom decided to take a look at how I was doing on my own. When he saw that I had less than a million Gil, he had to break it to me in the gentlest possible terms — you only need to impress Queen Brahne to leave with the biggest cash prize, meaning I’d thrown away my one chance at being an early-game millionaire because I misunderstood the goal.
I was understandably devastated; I was only ten years old at this point, and I’d just proven to my big brother that I wasn’t as good at our favourite game as he was. And, as big brothers do, he made it all okay. He looked at how much money I had made and explained that I must have found every hidden stash of Gil so far, as I had more money than I needed even without Queen Brahne’s boon. He helped me find my way to the in-game blacksmith, buy all the best gear I could for my party, kit them out with all the right items and abilities, then sat with me as I carried on playing. The difference was palpable; suddenly I was invincible. He sat with me every time I played from that point on, and I completed my first run of the game with him by my side.
Since those golden days, Final Fantasy IX has come out on half a dozen different systems — you can even get it on mobile now — but I still haven’t gone back to play it again. Maybe I’m worried that I’m viewing the game with rose-coloured glasses, and that it won’t be as good 19 years on from its release. More likely, I’m still scared to play it without my big brother to keep me on track.
I think that some games only stick with us because of how they made us feel at the time and, sometimes, it’s better to leave those memories as they are. To preserve the innocence of who we once were, and the experiences that informed the men and women we grew up to be. Maybe I won’t play Final Fantasy IX, one of my favourite games of all time, ever again. And maybe that’s exactly how it should be.
“We met, we laughed, we held on fast, and then we said goodbye”
-Nobuo Uematsu, Emiko Shiratori
-Melodies of Life (Layers of Harmony)
-Final Fantasy IX OST
