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I often sit back and reflect a lot about life and one series that has had a huge influence on me would have to be Final Fantasy. How has it changed your life?

I remember as a kid growing up in a decent area in Chicago I had a lot of friends and we'd all have various battles on Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Yes my house was the place to be when it came to hanging out. I remember playing Final Fantasy VI in third grade when it came up and became hooked.

Sadly around this same time my parents had forced me to attend various Karate classes. Which meant I'd only have a half hour each day to go and play because my father got home at 4:30PM and Karate started at 6:00PM.

I seen my friends less and less and one day I discovered they all moved away. Around 5th and 6th grade was the time they tore down the projects in Chicago or started to. This was around the time the White Flight started in my area. My parents were hardcore liberals so they stayed. However other Liberals like them started moving after the gangs, drugs, murders and the rapes started.

My parents stayed. After I was finally able to quit my friends were all gone and it was not safe at all to go to the park or anywhere else in the area. The transformation was subtle and had a huge impact. The city to ease racism concerns banned the Ashburn area for having "For Sale" signs so imagine waking up and all the nice houses were turned into trash.

Yeah we had the Internet around this time but my father kind of hogged it on our 26K modem. So I got lost in Final Fantasy II (VI). I literally lived in that world and couldn't wait to go back to it since my life at school was hell since I was one of the last white kids and white kids had bricks thrown at them and were hazed and not allowed to fight back or be arrested for a hate crime.

My schooling suffered. If you can't tell with my grammar in the hood they literally stop teaching you English and teaching in general. My parents who believed I spent most of my time in video games was the cause for my grades broke my N64 with a hammer and wouldn't allow me to play my SNES.

So all I would do is lay and watch TV and nothing else until they finally gave in and figured out that was not the cause.

I'd say if it wasn't for Final Fantasy I would have lost my mind completely in loneliness.

I guess that's why I really do not like the new Final Fantasy games because you really do not have a world to explore and call it your own.

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His Divine Shadow

Got Lexx?

Click to vist FFF.

Well, my story is simple. If it wasn't for Final Fantasy I wouldn't be married to the love of my life.

We met on the POL forum when Squaresoft (Yes, SOFT! Not Enix) was doing that stupid online guide thing for Final Fantasy IX. Anyway, we met on there and became friends and talked on messengers. This was the first internet type thing either of us every encountered up to that point. So after years of being friends online, she goes to college.... where I live! So we meet up and start to date each other then fast forward 10 years of being together and we are married!

Thanks Squaresoft!

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GS Forums: Come vist!
"I have no wish to change the world."
”Ramza Beoulve

I used to be a very closed and anti-social person and used to push other people and others away, because I wasn't very happy with myself or life at all.

But then I went online and I've met some really awesome friends who also love Final Fantasy as much as I do and I'm starting to become a much warmer and more open person because of that.



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Top Three fave Final Fantasies Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy V [ GBA ]

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Well, my story is simple. If it wasn't for Final Fantasy I wouldn't be married to the love of my life.

We met on the POL forum when Squaresoft (Yes, SOFT! Not Enix) was doing that stupid online guide thing for Final Fantasy IX. Anyway, we met on there and became friends and talked on messengers. This was the first internet type thing either of us every encountered up to that point. So after years of being friends online, she goes to college.... where I live! So we meet up and start to date each other then fast forward 10 years of being together and we are married!

Thanks Squaresoft!

I remember that! Was it the hidden sort of forum? I remember finding the old one sort of tucked away. Man that's an excellent story!

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I used to be a very closed and anti-social person and used to push other people and others away, because I wasn't very happy with myself or life at all.

But then I went online and I've met some really awesome friends who also love Final Fantasy as much as I do and I'm starting to become a much warmer and more open person because of that.

Sorry to hear that but I am glad these sort of sites had helped you as well.

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His Divine Shadow

Got Lexx?

Click to vist FFF.

I've written about this a few times, primarily in CoNniversary messages and the like. Final Fantasy, as a concept, has become inexorably tied to the Caves of Narshe in my mind, as I've had the two hand-in-hand now for far longer than I ever had the game series on its own, so I have to preface this quote by saying that in context, one simply has to substitute "CoN" for "Final Fantasy" to grasp the overall sentiment.

Quote (From the Tenth CoNniversary Message)

Ten years ago, I had no idea that a collection of webpages was going to become a career. I was just killing time one summer, the kind of time you have to kill when you live in the middle of nowhere. Since that day ten years ago, caves and mines and holes in the ground have followed me everywhere. The site went with me to University. The site was there when I got engaged, and later married. The site followed behind when I moved halfway across the country. The Caves got me my first web job, and that was a bare three years ago. I daresay the site will be with me forever—even if one day it does not exist on the web, the education it provided and the people it brought to me will.

The lessons I learned in creating and refining this site also got me my current job, and I don't think anyone who knows me or my line of work would doubt that I've come to benefit significantly from that little turn of events. Take that full circle: I have a fulfilling and happy life, old-man grousing notwithstanding, and a major reason why is because I've been here at CoN for ten years.

To be clearer - Final Fantasy, after playing it for a good eight years or so, led me to create CoN. CoN made me a web developer. Being made a web developer has given me a career that I (mostly) love and that career has allowed me to live in many different places, meet lots of interesting people, and have a good life - touch wood - for me and my family. The path is straight from one to the other. QED.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Final Fantasy VI (and IV and V, secondarily) happened to be the things that drove me to join internet fora and IRC at first.

This has led to a pretty much continuous web presence for myself, over the past ten years.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

VI, VII and X almost made me fail university, which fits into the general procrastination that colors my life =]
I'm not sure that counts as a change..

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens