The Cheap Video Game Challenge

The COVID-19 virus has been giving us a lot of the bouncy-teasy routine lately. Cases decline, then jump. Decline, then jump. While every other country in the world has been able to contain this sucker and begin the reopening process without much incident, we’re stuck in a weird little limbo between a Nazi president who decided the pandemic response team could easily be done without, and millions of people who won’t listen to proper safety protocols out of misguided interpretations of their freedoms, government officials bitching constantly about the economy, and large groups of people who got together to decide they can out-tough a virus. We keep being threatened with being forced to return to something resembling the version of normal we knew before the pandemic. But we also haven’t been complying with it, because we know that virus is still out there to get us, and a full and proper reopening doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this year at all. It might happen at some point deep into next year. And since the pandemic exposed pretty much every incredible flaw in both this country’s society and its operating ethos, it’s safe to assume there are going to still be a few major changes in the works. Maybe. Hopefully. 

So what is everyone doing? Well, those of us who have any brains are still doing the best they can to play it safe and slow the spread of the virus. Generally we’re not going out into public a whole lot (even on the occasions when we do, it’s still a lot less crowded than normal). We’re spending more time in outdoor environments, alone with our thoughts, and spending time indoors getting caught up with our favorite arts and media. Which, in turn, means that people are really starting to go out to buy video games in droves. Back when the entire country started going into lockdown, you couldn’t find any new consoles anywhere, and that wasn’t only because the video game industry is starting to rely on false scarcity used to keep prices up. It’s because everyone was out buying games for the expected long times inside, not being able to go anywhere, for a form of entertainment. I managed to beat three or four games while I was waiting out my furlough. 

In any case, with consoles and games selling like hotcakes, you can’t just wander into Pink Gorilla or Another Castle these days and expect them to be stocked with the immortal classics that you’ve been dying to get your hands on. (I avoid Gamestop whenever possible.) Hell, it’s difficult nowadays to find even the hidden gems that you’ve heard so much about and been curious about. Hell, “hidden gems” has become a contradiction of its own since the internet came along. The thing about those hidden gems is that, thanks to the internet, they don’t stay hidden for very long anymore. When a good one digs its way up through all the advertising muck, it’s not long before every reputable Youtube gamer is uploading videos raving about them, and that gave rise to an odd little phenomenon: The “hidden gems” now sell faster than the popular franchises and become harder to find a lot sooner. And on the rare instances that you ARE able to find them, you can expect to pay rare game prices to get your hands on them. 

The thing about being a video game nut is that when you start to really get into video games, you quickly become aware of the rather disproportionate ratio of games advertised to games available. And once upon a time, word of mouth meant exactly that – if something was good or bad, you heard about it strictly verbally. If your buddy got a new video game that you never heard of, but it turned out to be great, you heard about it in school the following week. If someone was able to crack a particularly difficult bad guy in a popular game where everyone was having trouble, you found out by overhearing two other people talking about it during lunch. But the problems here were obvious: What if a game caught your eye that you didn’t know ANYTHING about? There could have been reasons for this: The game belonged to a genre that wasn’t certifiably cool. You didn’t have any friends. You didn’t know any people who had more than casual interest in video games. You lived in a place where video games were stigmatized as sinful abominations against God and those who played them were doomed to lives of delinquency. What did you do then?

There WAS a point where gamers had to buy their own video games with no information to go on at all save for what was on the back of the box. And with the gaming situation right now being what it is – the good ones flying off the shelves – you can’t just rely on randos reviewing the highly-reviewed big releases right now. So what does that leave? Well, what’s left is the way gamers looked at and decided upon games to buy back in my generation’s gaming heyday – The Cheap Video Game Challenge! Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t so much a challenge as it was looking for the most interesting game available for the lowest possible price because you didn’t have any money. That was a tricky order way back in the day because video games were a lot more expensive. To bring home four or five games a year was a big deal. Now, when inflation is factored in, video games are actually cheaper – games which are $60 now would have been around $40 or $45 during the 16-bit years. And that’s not even getting into the super-robust used video game market, where games can be bought for under $5. Of course, there are sacrifices that will have to be made; since cover art and manuals have become collectors items which are more valuable than the games themselves in some cases, you may just have to suck it up and look at those games in the bargain boxes. But if you have any idea of what you’re looking for, the under-$5 boxes can be gold mines. I bought the first Mass Effect game, Jak and Daxter, and one of the Ratchet and Clank games all for less than $5 because I looked there. 

It’s not like you’re being forced to pay astronomical prices for games with box art and manuals, though. The Cheap Video Game Challenge can be done for any console of any console generation. The first thing you do is set a bar. Want to see if you can find a good video game for under $10? What about under $5? Awesome man, have at it! Just make sure to manage your expectations according to the console you’re shopping for. It’s not hard to find good games for the Playstation 2 that only set you back five smackers these days, and the only thing you have to do to find something decent is keep an open mind and look for the most creative names and covers. Hell, if you’re willing to leave your comfort zone, your options will expand. I like drifting out of my comfort zone, but I tend not to stray too far – there are a lot of ATV racing and dirt bike racing games for the PS2 that I won’t go near because games like that don’t spark my imagination. But one of my later PS2 buys was a funny little game called Dark Summit, an offbeat combination of snowboarding and science fiction. Yes, you read that right. Since I loved the Tony Hawk and SSX games I’ve played and I happen to be into sci-fi, I gave it a shot. It turned out to be pretty good! 

In any case, the Xbox 360 is a tougher console to buy for because it’s newer, and a lot of games under $5 tend to be bottom feeders. So that’s when I raise my bar to $10 and end up becoming a fan of the Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed series. My bar for my collection of handheld consoles tends to fluctuate, but there are a LOT of games available. And when the backward compatibility of my consoles kicks in, things get strange. The Playstation 2 is backward compatible – it can play almost every video game ever made for the original Playstation. The Playstation is now 25 years old, which means games for it are harder to find. If you’re stuck with nothing but a Gamestop where you live, good luck. But The Cheap Video Game Challenge for the Playstation forces me to raise my price bar up to $10, and I HAVE had successes with it – Re-Loaded and Samurai Showdown III were recent purchases. And hell, letting myself go up to $15 a few years ago let me get my hands on a scarce game which was one of my personal favorites back before my original game collection was jettisoned: Chrono Cross. As for the original Xbox, I managed to get my hands on Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge for a cheap price. (Which shocked me, because I found it at Pink Gorilla, a retro store whose owners know exactly what they’re doing. Yes, the game is complete, and works just fine.)

Since it’s now clear that I won’t be getting any consoles from the latest generations anytime soon, this is what I’ll be doing for now. I had my name on a waiting list for a Switch Lite, but with Nintendo being one of the industry leaders in faking scarcity, my month on the waitlist is now over and I’ve decided to just let it go. I’m even thinking of just creating a PC rig of my own for video games and just using that from here on out. But the thing that’s now at the top of my desire list is the Retron – the HD version which plays both Super NES and Sega Genesis games. I was a Genesis person during that era, but I’ve long wanted a Super NES, and I would also like to start seeing if I can find a lot of the rare Genesis games I managed to pick up back when they were widely available. But I also can’t wait to see what goods The Cheap Video Game Challenge is going to end up yielding for me from the gaming generation that I grew up with this time. 

The Greatest Video Game Controller Buttons Ever

Readers of this blog may have caught a post I wrote around a year ago about the worst video game controller buttons ever made. I fully intended to follow that up with a post about the greatest video game controller buttons ever, but my ever-frequent sidetracks came along and kept me from doing so. But since it was a great idea, I knew I would have to get around to writing on the subject eventually, and so here it is: The long-awaited follow-up. Every gamer knows that some gaming console controllers are better than others, but there a lot of individual controller buttons which are better than others. Some are excellent for their quality and ease of use, others for their innovations, and still others are good for the way they commonly function. But which ones are the best of the best of the best? Well, keep right on reading, because I’ve come up with an inarguable, bulletproof list of the best video game controller buttons of all time. I wrote it up on my napkin during break!

Yes, you can blame Kotaku for inspiring the original idea. But Kotaku doesn’t do descriptions or explanations, and I do, so there!

 

10 – A Button

Gamecube Controller

Better known as The Big Green Button, the one thing the Gamecube controller managed to get right was the ginormous A Button. Standing out among a formation of oddly spaced and oddly shaped controller buttons, Nintendo’s signaling of the phrase “PRESS ME!!!” was placed front and center, larger than any of the other buttons on the damned thing, bright green and basically impossible to miss. It might as well have been a giant neon sign. Just sitting there, the A Button knew it was the lord and master of everything it surveyed. Whatever game you happened to be playing on the Gamecube, you knew that whatever function The Big Green Button performed was going to end up being hella important, and so you started plotting your gaming style and strategy accordingly. In a way, that made the Gamecube controller’s A Button an evolutionary step up from one of the legendary video game controller buttons…

 

9 – Button

Atari 2600 Controller

Yes, this is a posterity pick, but you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think it deserves a spot on this list. See, you have to remember that video games are like any other entertainment medium – they evolve, and a lot of things that were once innovations either become better versions of themselves or get junked. Back in the days of gaming yore, no one thought that video games were ever going to need more than one button, so yes, this sucker ended up running its course. But what a course it was! Sitting there alongside a joystick, you always knew where it was and what it did because it was the only action button the 2600 used. It’s the only dash of any real color on the controller. It made Pitfall Harry jump, it made the thing in Space Invaders fire, it… Well, it performed countless different functions in just as many video games. And unlike the finicky joystick standing there next to it, it never particularly cared about the position it was in in relation to the gamer, because it always performed the same way whether it was upside-down or not!

 

8 – Start

Genesis Controller

This is a weird selection, mainly because the Genesis controller’s version of the Start button eventually turned into such a wild card. As most people who know anything about video games are aware, the Genesis controller did something unprecedented: It wiped out the common stock button known as Select and replaced it with a third action button. At first, this looked like overkill. Then it looked like foresight. It eventually started to look backwards after Nintendo placed four action buttons and two shoulder buttons on the Super NES controller. That last one started to cripple the Genesis when Sega decided that it wasn’t going to start including six-button controllers in its packaging. Not everyone bought the six-button, and those who decided not to but loved fighting games were treated to a myriad of weird control substitutions which often utilized the Start button. In one game, it could be the turbo button. In another, it could be block. And in others, it switched between punches and kicks. The caveat was that there was no way to pause a game, but a button as useful and quirky as the Genesis Start button wasn’t something we saw everyday.

 

7 – D-pad Right

Most 16-bit Video Game Controllers

Well, what other direction would you go in?

 

6 – Z Trigger

Nintendo 64 Controller

For all the bad-mouthing we do about it, the Nintendo 64 controller was a stroke of genius in a handful of different ways. The Z Trigger is one of the coolest little innovations I’ve ever seen on a controller. Used in tandem with the analog stick, it brought a bit of ease to first-person shooter players because it was now possible to aim and fire using the same hand. Yes, the usual griping came out of PC gamers, but the Z Trigger introduced a natural ease to shooters which hadn’t been felt since the point-and-press days of Space Invaders. If you weren’t much for first-person shooters, well, you got stuck using the Z Trigger anyway. As I wrote in my piece about the worst controller buttons ever, the Nintendo 64 controller was bogged down by the fact that no one ever programmed anything into the d-pad or L button. The entire left side of the controller was useless. So when a function needed to get placed into a shoulder button, it was the Z Trigger that got the outsourced function on the Nintendo 64 version. What we have here is a novelty trigger with more versatility than a trigger is usually allowed.

 

5 – Analog Stick

Nintendo 64 Controller

And hey, speaking of the Nintendo 64’s analog stick, does anybody remember how much everybody HATED the thing when it first came out? The only reason we had trouble adjusting to it was because we never HAD to adjust to something so radical before. Even the Sony Playstation, which was launched around the same time and led by a prevalence of 3D games, used the basic d-pad. But the analog stick turned out to be an instance where’s Nintendo’s attempt to force gaming to evolve was right on point. Yes, everyone is still so in love with the original d-pad that all the major console makers are forcing them onto their controllers to this very day. But as a form of basic movement, the d-pad is a two-dimensional way of moving for a two-dimensional time in video gaming. When games jumped to 3D, Nintendo saw that gamers would need a form of uninhibited movement in 360 degrees. It saw that we were going to need our games to read more minute movements which would have to be read in more efficient ways than light, gentle taps on the d-pad. Now here we are over 20 years after the fact, and no hardware maker is crazy enough to try to launch a new console without this standard form of movement.

 

4 – L2 and R2

Playstation 2 Controller

Yes, I know everyone remains in love with the pill known as the Super NES controller. And yes, it WAS important – it included more action buttons than any controller ever seen at that point and introduced the first two shoulder buttons. Unfortunately, the thing was small and uncomfortable, and I hated the thing so much that I passed on the Super NES for a Genesis. When Sony introduced the first Playstation, the pistol grip put my deformed arm at ease, so it rescued my ability to game. But it wasn’t until the Dual Shock 2 came out that Sony saw it fit to extend and taper the bottom two shoulder buttons, making them easier to grasp and get our fingers around in way that was more natural than anything we had seen before. Although L2 and R2 were originally done as novelties that only made it easier to fit more functions into a single controller, the Playstation 2 is where they started to take on a new life of their own. The use of shoulder buttons as basic action buttons started with the Dual Shock 2, and a console generation later, Sony started spring-loading the buttons to allow their greater involvement in video games.

 

3 – L Trigger and R Trigger

Dreamcast Controller

Concluding the trigger portion of this list is the breakthrough enhancement that enabled designers to see the potential of triggers on controllers. Yes, the Nintendo 64 was the original, but the Dreamcast spring-loaded the things and placed them properly underneath the controller, transforming the difficult shoulder buttons into practical devices we could use without having to remind ourselves that they were there. Microsoft liked them so much that they nicked them straight for the original Xbox controller, creating the iconic versions of the L and R Triggers gamers have all come to know and love.

 

2 – X and Y Buttons

Super NES Controller

After Sega added a third action button to the Genesis controller, Nintendo realized it would have to go big. So it created a controller for its new flagship console with four action buttons and two shoulder buttons. Not only did that force Sega to create more evolved controllers to add to the Genesis, but how many more controllers had a button C? Even the Dreamcast used the X and Y axis layout.

 

1 – B Button

NES Controller

Okay, you can make a powerful argument that the A button belongs in this spot, and I’ll understand. A made Mario jump and Link swing his sword, after all. B was slightly more innocuous in Nintendo’s primary mascot series because Mario mostly ran with it. But when you make that argument, you’re denying Mario his ability to throw fireballs, Link the ability to shoot his bow and arrow, Samus the ability to shoot anything, and Kirby the ability to suck up his enemies. My qualm with A here is that so much of its function revolved around jumping. It was B that continued what Atari started with the 2600 controller, but it pulled off the trick of doing that while being an additional button which let gamers play with accessories and power-ups. B was the sort of button that shined bright whenever its time came, but which knew that it had to take a backseat at other times. It was B that eventually caused video game controllers to expand the way they did, inviting the other action buttons to show up at the party and bring along unique personalities of their own. B was the button that was at ease playing either the leader or the sidekick. Its position on many of today’s hand-engulfing controllers still enables it to play both of those roles with ease. And all of it started when Nintendo promoted it to its first big boy console.

My Problem with Final Fantasy VII

My favorite game in the Final Fantasy series is Final Fantasy IX, and it was somewhat jolting to learn how many gamers didn’t like it. It had the most cohesive group of characters and plot-driven gameplay since Final Fantasy IV, which was another popular game in the series and one which, like Final Fantasy IX, was set in an outright fantasy world and stripped down to basics. You would think the contingent of gamers constantly bitching about Final Fantasy’s abandonment of its roots for the Philip K. Dick emo festivals the two previous games were made into would have been satisfied by the only real fantasy offering since IV, V, and VI rocked the role-playing realm, but the internet had become the world’s most importantly ubiquitous celebrity by then and was lighting up. Apparently gamers were loving the new tales of Final Fantasy hipster characters, so after IX, Square returned to the series 32-bit roots and has been tinkering with them ever since. 

There are two camps of Final Fantasy fans: The Before Crowd and The After Crowd. The before and after in question requires no introduction. It’s Final Fantasy VII, that great Playstation juggernaut which captured a slew of people who, before then, would have beat up anyone who described a favorite game as an interactive silicon book. The advertising blitz for Final Fantasy VII didn’t quite reach the highest level – I’ll still insist that Super Mario Bros. 3 will always hold that record because a full-length, live action feature film, The Wizard, was made for the sole purpose of making sure people knew about it – but it was unprecedented for an RPG. RPGs were the video games of choice for the most outcast of the outcasts back then, which was my social class. When Final Fantasy VII began showing up in TV ads and display features, people took notice, and being a geek became a little bit easier. All the cool kids who had been obsessed with the fighting game wars just a few years before were standing with the geeks, openly wondering what secrets Cloud’s past held and wondering if the death of Aeris was a designer ruse or for real. Aeris’s sudden murder is one of the greatest pieces of video game lore; it captured imaginations to such an extent that even today – 17 years after the original release of Final Fantasy VII and long after rumors of any shot at bringing her back within that particular game have been denied by developers and obliterated by every gamer fool enough to try – new rumors continue to pop up about this or that absurd, far-out method of resurrecting her. 

Role-playing became mainstream. Hallelujah for Final Fantasy, right? I guess, except for the little detail of Final Fantasy VII not being the best game in the series for miles. A grand survey of folks who were playing games before 3D was an accepted norm reveals that VII was outclassed by almost every other game in the series, with the possible exception of the first. You can usually tell what kind of Final Fantasy fans gamers are by asking them about Final Fantasy VII. The Before Crowd will give it a vicious verbal thrashing before stating a case that one of the earlier games – mostly likely Final Fantasy VI – is the absolute pinnacle of gaming perfection and you’re not a gamer if you think otherwise. The After Crowd lavishes its endless affection on Final Fantasy VII and claims it a revelation that turned gaming on its head. Somewhere in the middle of this weird war of magi, though, is a third crowd that just wishes they could nuke the other two into their morning coffee.

I’m a member of this third crowd, and it’s a constant oddity because being there means constantly fighting with everyone about the commercial and artistic merits of Final Fantasy VII. For every greatest game ever list FFVII tops, every best hero/villain list topped off by Cloud and/or Sephiroth, every wish for a chocobo race simulator, every Gamefaqs tournament ending with Cloud or Sephiroth in the final, and every petition to rename Las Vegas “Gold Saucer,” another little motor unit inside me fries to death. I want to champion Final Fantasy VII, but that’s impossible because doing so against anyone means going extreme in the opposite direction since concessions mean you automatically lose the debate. Unfortunately, the perceived infallibility of FFVII has gotten to be too much to bear, so even though I like the game a lot, I find myself beating it up more and more as more people born after the 16-bit era come of age and regard FFVII as their greatest seminal experience in video games. 

I don’t get the character attachments. When the game begins, you take control of Cloud, the main character and an acting mercenary for a group of eco-terrorists. Cloud is only looking after himself through the first segment of the game. As is the won’t of Final Fantasy, though, Cloud does make his presto chango, but it comes a wee bit too early and with too much convenience to character for a guy who spends a lot of the game supposedly grappling with himself. It’s too easy to lump him up with Squall, the insufferable lead of FFVIII, but Cloud does manage to change, overcome his personal demons, and become a headstrong leader in the end of the game, so that much I can give him. Unfortunately, his past is laid out and scattered in such a way that one of the side quests – the visit to Gongaga – is of utmost importance if you’re to figure out the significance of this Zack guy to him, and even then, you’re still forced to piece it together like a jigsaw even after Tifa’s visit to his head. 

The most inexplicable story decision, though, is trying to figure out the villain. To their credit, the writers managed to envision one of the most pointlessly cruel, hateful, hostile, spiteful, inhumane, and just plain evil villains of all time…. Only to place him on the side to an anime porn prettyboy named Sephiroth. Anytime there’s a new FFVII-related form of media saturation, Sephiroth is guaranteed to be a part of it. Poor Hojo, meanwhile, was there and killed and never seen again. While Hojo was a by-the-book mad scientist most of the time, his strength as a villain came from his lack of redeeming qualities. He was like Kefka in FFVI in that at the conclusion, you wanted him gruesomely tortured to death with his head mounted on a nice plaque in your study. There’s a weird dynamic at play in RPG world savior scenarios because when the villain is humanized, the need to differentiate between good and evil is blurrier, even though you still know in the end that he’s trying to destroy the world and will have to kill him rather than redeem him. It kinda nullifies the whole point of one or the other. Sephiroth, after all, turned out to be more or less a de facto bad guy whose mommy issues would blow up Sigmund Freud’s brain. Hojo was evil to the bone, and no other bad guy in the game held the importance he did. Who was as terrible as him? Certainly not Sephy. Rufus Shinra? He was almost a complete nonfactor once Cloud made it out of Midgar. Even the game didn’t consider him important enough for the party to kill, leaving the dirty work to Diamond Weapon…. After Hojo shot Diamond Weapon with the Sister Ray. The Turks were easy battle victories and hired hands. Heideggar and Scarlet were clear graduates of the Dr. Claw School of Henching. Dyne wasn’t around for very long. Yuffie was theoretically one of the good guys.

Speaking of Dyne, his good guy counterpart Barrett opens about ten barrels of worms people don’t want to point out. Barrett is one of the first characters we meet in the game – he even enters the screen right before Cloud, and is on your side for the entire game. He has a gun for an arm, a violent temperament, a short fuse, and a high level of melanin. Now, Square deserves a ton of credit for doing something which had almost never been done before in creating a minority (black) hero in a video game who played a significant role and never got corrupted or killed. But there’s almost certainly a larger picture or idea that can be introduced about society – our society – by merit of his bad temper, tough demeanor, and gun arm, and I’m fairly sure it isn’t good. The fact that his daughter, Marlene, is white probably helps reinforce said picture or idea. Elaboration, I’m sure, can be found in the writings of sociologists and psychologists who study critical theory professionally, but I can point out that Barrett reinforces an awful lot of negative stereotypes which he never quite sheds in his journeys. I don’t think I’m in the wrong by holding a spotlight to Cid, either, and his borderline abusive way of treating Shera. 

The most famous scene is easily the death of Aeris, and that’s for a damn good reason. Not only is the death done in a very powerful way which solidified the idea that CG cutscenes have a place in video games, but absolutely no one was expecting it. Aeris was the main love interest and the last member of a race that was being exploited, which made her something of a big deal to Hojo and therefore a major plot point. Her death was an emotional moment for most of the people who played the game, and it was a shock to everyone who played it. It was also an evasion. Aeris flirted her way through through her parts of the game and never seemed to show a whole lot of concern, and one strategy guide I read had the idea that there was some kind of hidden meter in the game that showed how much she liked Cloud. Although I haven’t been able to confirm that, it fits her character. When she finally does realize the gravitas of the situation, she bolts from the party, thus freeing the writers from having to develop her, and when the party catches up in the Forgotten City and she threatens to have to grow a third dimension again, she’s conveniently rubbed out. To their credit, the death and sendoff and haunting, emotional, and beautiful, but they’re still a way of getting around having to write her more. To think, these are the same writers who whipped up a silly character named Cait Sith who joined the party for a ridiculous reason, wiped him out, and immediately replaced him with a Cait Sith II (yes, that’s exactly what he called himself in the game), and nobody gave another thought to it.

You can breed chocobos in FFVII. Now, if you weren’t reading a strategy guide, how would you ever know that was even possible? Breeding them is important if you’re to grab the most powerful spell in the game, Knights of the Round, a devastator which totally cuts through everything the game can throw at you, including the last boss. Unfortunately, it involves knowing little insider details the game doesn’t tell you, like the difference between the highest level chocobos. I love thinking outside the box in video games, but this is thinking outside the marble containing our universe. Knights of the Round is mentioned casually by a lot of sources giving you ways to beat the game, but chocobo breeding requires virtually turning your life over if you’re starting from no knowledge. The summon spells also take forever to cast because the animations are long and can’t be skipped. Knights of the Round is a well-known culprit, taking over a minute.

It’s not that I don’t have problems with the other games in the Final Fantasy series. I do – Final Fantasy VIII is as bad as they come, and I even have a problem with the way the “infallible” Final Fantasy VI basically castrates itself in the second half, forcing players to figure out everything about where to go and what to do in a brand new world. Those two don’t annoy me as much as FFVII, though. Final Fantasy VIII is acknowledged as a terrible game in a lot of places, and FFVI doesn’t have the amount of saturation and hype as FFVII. My problem with FFVII isn’t the fact that people love it so much as it is the fact that it’s so fiercely beloved and defended that everyone pretends the flaws don’t exist. It’s like The Beatles.

There’s only one reason why Final Fantasy VII is as popular as it is: It was the My First RPG for an enormous contingent of people who either didn’t realize the genre existed until then or spent a lot of spare time bullying the people who did play RPGs. Yes, it’s wonderful to finally be able to play RPGs openly and not be poorly judged, but it certainly cost a lot of the genre’s integrity. Final Fantasy used to set standards. Now, because people loved Final Fantasy VII, Square found its commercial breakthrough, and so Final Fantasy is merely standard.