“Life… Dreams… Hope… Where do they come from?” A Final Fantasy VI Retrospective

Final Fantasy VI is one of the most revered video games of all-time — and at its heart are two very powerful and very different women.

I still remember the first time that I saw a Japanese Roleplaying Game (JRPG). Like many people of my generation, it was a Final Fantasy game, though not one so obvious as the original Final Fantasy on NES ,the Super Nintendo’s Final Fantasy VI, or the megalithic Final Fantasy VII on PlayStation. It was Final Fantasy Legend II in all of its monochromatic glory on the Nintendo Game Boy.

I was at a friend’s house, and his cousin was also visiting. I’d never met the cousin, but he had a Game Boy so I liked him almost instantly. Where I was eradicating (or, more accurately, being eradicated by) the Footclan in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or dodging winged-Moai statues in Super Mario Land, however, he had this slow, boardgame-like game, with numbers, equipment, a map, and many other elements unfamiliar to me. I particularly remember a fight with a ferocious tiger. The one pictured here. Looking back…