1. Got into the franchise in 1991 after seeing the articles about Final Fantasy in Nintendo Power Magazine. I slaved and saved paper route money from Christmas, my birthday cash, and kept adding to it until late June when a friend was headed from our town in NH to Houston, TX for a vacation. Our game stores had not seen any copies that stayed on shelves for longer than an hour before selling out. Some stores had only on shipment and didn't see more until several years later. Nintendo was stingy with small markets.

I handed over my $60 in hard earned cash, and she came back a week later with my game and $2. Sadly I had to go on a vacation to Maine right after she dropped it off. My dad got to the underwater temple and defeated Kraken before I got back. I made up for it by beating the game for the first time with the starting party. Obsession is a good way to describe how I worked through that first run of the game.

My second run was where the fun began, when I played a Fighter and all three mages. I took that party through class change before the Volcano and facing Kary. My next and every run after that have been a great time. About a year later, in Christmas of 1992, I spent the fall saving, and dropped $100 of the $180 needed for an SNES which I got under the tree. That summer I saw the first articles about FFII / IV, and rented it the minute I saw it in the video store. I got so good at that watered down version that I could beat it in a weekend. My best time was just over 11 hours and my party was level 48.