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Super-Excited-Rosa is super-excited
Jun. 13th, 2019 08:08 amI woke on Tuesday morning to news that was totally beyond my wildest expectations.
Final Fantasy 8 is getting a remake for the PS4!!!
*dances wildly for several seconds*
I still can't quite take it in. Only the other day, I was explaining to my gamer colleague why I had no expectations of ever getting a PS4 port, let alone anything else. The received wisdom was that Square had lost the source code and with it any chance of me ever playing it again, unless I dusted off the son's PS3 or attempted to play it on my aging laptop, and bought the appropriate version.
And then... Tuesday morning...
*dances wildly for several more seconds*
It does make me wonder whether the story about the source code was true or just a rumour Square put out to keep fans quiet? Or maybe someone was exploring a dark and dusty basement, filled with JRPG style puzzles, and stumbled across it?
ANYWAY, to say that I am hyped over this is the under-statement of several millennia. Possibly of all time. I have signed up for email updates and am haunting YouTube for reaction videos. And am loving the general level of excitement from the members of the FF8 fb forum I belong to.
FF8 was my entry-level drug not only to the wild and wonderful world of gaming but to the often wilder and more wonderful world of the internet.
I had played FF7 but I was rather irritated by the less-than-subtle ecological references, since I felt like the world's only eco-warrior at the time and didn't need a video game to tell me what I already knew - I needed the rest of the world (especially politicians) to wake up to it. I also didn't understand RPGs AT ALL. I got bored with the battles and ran away, then wondered why I found bosses so difficult (you're not levelled up because you keep running away from battles, you IDIOT!!!). So, I kind of plugged away with it, but I didn't 'get' it.
Then I picked up a second hand copy of FF8 and all sorts of pennies dropped. I understood the connection between battles and levelling (although, what I didn't realise because my copy didn't have it's little 'how to play the game' booklet, was that the monsters levelled, too). I loved drawing (especially the '???' options) and junctioning. I was blown away by the graphics. I loved the card game, although I never completed it. I even loved the bonkers-even-for-a-JRPG story!
Then I got stuck on the battle with Adel. I just couldn't get past it. One day, I mentioned it at work and was advised to find a 'walkthrough', which sounded a bit like cheating, but I decided to investigate. I found one created by an American girl and used it. She was my first on-line friend and we are still in touch (via fb, but that counts, right?). We started corresponding via email and she suggested I join an 'on-line forum' called Choco-Boko-Booyaka.
Now, this place was like the land of the Chocobos in FF9. It really wasn't the kind of place you could find by accident. It moved a couple of times while I was a member and I could never find it just by searching. It was run by a girl (young woman?) who went by Ellone and she really was our big Sis. It introduced me to AIM, fanfiction.net, Nanowrimo, and LiveJournal. It was the scene of my first on-line identity - Rosa Heartlily (because I misread Rinoa's name - doh!). I was definitely in FF8-heaven.
Oh, and I've just remembered - when someone new joined I would write, '*Rosa appears in a swirl of rose petals and astride her chocobo, Golden Sunset* Welcome to CBB! Have a look around the forums, meet people and, most of all, have fun!' - or something along those lines.
*wipes a tear*
I opened an AIM account (using AthenaRose for Reasons) and got into my first live on-line chat with a lad from Manchester (only about 30 miles from me). After a while, he asked me to vote on a picture he'd done for a forum called Digital Webbing. DW is comics based, so really wasn't in my area of geekdom but I wanted to help my friend. Through DW, I wrote my first comic script (episode 15 of Awesome Storm Justice 41, which is, I think, totally defunct), learned lots about comics and their characters. learned that Darth Vadar is Luke's father (I know, I know - I lived under a rock for years), and was introduced to MySpace and then fb.
Oh, and met my regular on-line chat buddy, who introduced me to the Dragon Age series, amongst other things.
So, without FF8, I don't have the kind of on-line life that I enjoy so much. I (probably) don't have my novel because I've never come across Nanowrimo from any other source - and without ff.net, I might not have started writing seriously, anyway! I wouldn't have so many on-line friends - or, at least, not the ones I do have.
EDIT: I realised after I'd left for work that I should also mention that this game kept me sane through some pretty dark times at work. Being able to come home and slash a few monsters into tiny bits for an hour every evening was a true life saver.
FF8 is so much more than 'just a game' to me. And I cannot wait to play it again and relive all the memories.
*dances slowly, finally disappearing stage right leaving behind a swirl of rose petals*
Final Fantasy 8 is getting a remake for the PS4!!!
*dances wildly for several seconds*
I still can't quite take it in. Only the other day, I was explaining to my gamer colleague why I had no expectations of ever getting a PS4 port, let alone anything else. The received wisdom was that Square had lost the source code and with it any chance of me ever playing it again, unless I dusted off the son's PS3 or attempted to play it on my aging laptop, and bought the appropriate version.
And then... Tuesday morning...
*dances wildly for several more seconds*
It does make me wonder whether the story about the source code was true or just a rumour Square put out to keep fans quiet? Or maybe someone was exploring a dark and dusty basement, filled with JRPG style puzzles, and stumbled across it?
ANYWAY, to say that I am hyped over this is the under-statement of several millennia. Possibly of all time. I have signed up for email updates and am haunting YouTube for reaction videos. And am loving the general level of excitement from the members of the FF8 fb forum I belong to.
FF8 was my entry-level drug not only to the wild and wonderful world of gaming but to the often wilder and more wonderful world of the internet.
I had played FF7 but I was rather irritated by the less-than-subtle ecological references, since I felt like the world's only eco-warrior at the time and didn't need a video game to tell me what I already knew - I needed the rest of the world (especially politicians) to wake up to it. I also didn't understand RPGs AT ALL. I got bored with the battles and ran away, then wondered why I found bosses so difficult (you're not levelled up because you keep running away from battles, you IDIOT!!!). So, I kind of plugged away with it, but I didn't 'get' it.
Then I picked up a second hand copy of FF8 and all sorts of pennies dropped. I understood the connection between battles and levelling (although, what I didn't realise because my copy didn't have it's little 'how to play the game' booklet, was that the monsters levelled, too). I loved drawing (especially the '???' options) and junctioning. I was blown away by the graphics. I loved the card game, although I never completed it. I even loved the bonkers-even-for-a-JRPG story!
Then I got stuck on the battle with Adel. I just couldn't get past it. One day, I mentioned it at work and was advised to find a 'walkthrough', which sounded a bit like cheating, but I decided to investigate. I found one created by an American girl and used it. She was my first on-line friend and we are still in touch (via fb, but that counts, right?). We started corresponding via email and she suggested I join an 'on-line forum' called Choco-Boko-Booyaka.
Now, this place was like the land of the Chocobos in FF9. It really wasn't the kind of place you could find by accident. It moved a couple of times while I was a member and I could never find it just by searching. It was run by a girl (young woman?) who went by Ellone and she really was our big Sis. It introduced me to AIM, fanfiction.net, Nanowrimo, and LiveJournal. It was the scene of my first on-line identity - Rosa Heartlily (because I misread Rinoa's name - doh!). I was definitely in FF8-heaven.
Oh, and I've just remembered - when someone new joined I would write, '*Rosa appears in a swirl of rose petals and astride her chocobo, Golden Sunset* Welcome to CBB! Have a look around the forums, meet people and, most of all, have fun!' - or something along those lines.
*wipes a tear*
I opened an AIM account (using AthenaRose for Reasons) and got into my first live on-line chat with a lad from Manchester (only about 30 miles from me). After a while, he asked me to vote on a picture he'd done for a forum called Digital Webbing. DW is comics based, so really wasn't in my area of geekdom but I wanted to help my friend. Through DW, I wrote my first comic script (episode 15 of Awesome Storm Justice 41, which is, I think, totally defunct), learned lots about comics and their characters. learned that Darth Vadar is Luke's father (I know, I know - I lived under a rock for years), and was introduced to MySpace and then fb.
Oh, and met my regular on-line chat buddy, who introduced me to the Dragon Age series, amongst other things.
So, without FF8, I don't have the kind of on-line life that I enjoy so much. I (probably) don't have my novel because I've never come across Nanowrimo from any other source - and without ff.net, I might not have started writing seriously, anyway! I wouldn't have so many on-line friends - or, at least, not the ones I do have.
EDIT: I realised after I'd left for work that I should also mention that this game kept me sane through some pretty dark times at work. Being able to come home and slash a few monsters into tiny bits for an hour every evening was a true life saver.
FF8 is so much more than 'just a game' to me. And I cannot wait to play it again and relive all the memories.
*dances slowly, finally disappearing stage right leaving behind a swirl of rose petals*
