image courtesy of Twitter’s @nataskaos

My elementary school used to organize garage sales every year. Families from the school would sell their used goods, with a focus on things for kids and families.  Amongst these items, an odd smattering of used games would routinely appear.

One year this assortment of games included Final Fantasy IV (FFIV) for the Super Nintendo.* I believe the asking price was $5, which I eagerly produced. I was excited for the game since “playing Final Fantasy” was a popular playground activity at my school.

One of my friends had played the game and explained the concepts of White, Black, and Red mages along with knights, paladins, and all the other roles waiting to be filled by eager 2nd or 3rd graders. We would role-play from there, my only memory being Red and Blue child-mages agreeing to combine their powers to literally split the Earth in half. I don’t think blue mages exist in the official cannon, but that was of little concern to us at the time.

Actually owning FFIV was a thrill. It gave me details to add to the fantasy realms of my childhood, not to mention being my first videogame RPG experience. The game starts with you as the commander of a fleet of airships called the “Red Barons”. What kid wouldn’t love that idea?

I never got very far in the game as I could barely read all the text on the screen, much less understand the concept of leveling and the advanced strategies needed to defeat some of the bosses.  But on the game cart was a save file from the previous owner that included a ship which would transport me to the moon at my command. I had no idea how my nascent progress became that globe-spanning epic, but I have always been curious.

Last summer I bought a copy of the FFIV remake for the DS, and I’ve been playing it during my travels ever since. I’ve gotten farther in the game than I ever did as a child. It is interesting to see parts of the game that I simply couldn’t reach earlier in my life. It gives me a feeling of substantive progress. Hopefully soon I will be able to get that spaceship and reach the moon on my own merits. We shall see.

Bonus Material: I once sold a Sega Menacer light gun at the same garage sale to a man whose phone number spelled WOMBATS. Possibly the coolest phone number I have encountered to date.

Bonus Bonus Material: At the same garage sale (and possibly from the same dealer) I bought a copy of Joe & Mac for the Super Nintendo. In the game you play as either Joe or Mac, who are both cave men. You progress in the game by killing dinosaurs by throwing bones at them. A sweeter concept has yet to be discovered.

*Final Fantasy IV was referred to as Final Fantasy II upon release because two installments of the Japanese series were never released in the USA. Modern nomenclature refers to the game as Final Fantasy IV, which I choose to adopt for purposes of this blog.