Gosh, where do I start about how I’m feeling right now. It’s hard to put into words. I started this journey almost eight years ago and I never thought I’d ever get to this point. I just finished Disc 1 of Final Fantasy VII. I started playing FFVII on my old PS1 years ago. Then when I sold my PS1 and most of my games for a PS2, it was one of the only games I hung onto because it was different from all the other games I had ever played in my entire life. It was a world with living, breathing characters that you grew with and cared for. You laughed with them, you cried with them, and you felt brave for them just when things began to look their darkest and today I did just that.



No, I no longer have a PlayStation (1, 2, or otherwise) or my original copy of the game which I entrusted to one of my best friends in Toledo, OH who is a gamer, and hopefully he still has it, but if not, Matt, I understand given how valuable the game was when I gave it to you. For the past five years now, I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VII on and off again thanks to a FFVII fan right here on Facebook (whom I will keep safely anonymous) who offered to burn me a copy of the PC version of the game for the cost of shipping it to me. After being without the game for about six months because I sold my PS2 and gave my friend my PS1 copy of the game, my PC copy of the game arrived and I was ready to begin my adventures with Cloud and the gang once again.



It was like they had never truly been away. From the moment I fired the game up I knew this was going to be a special experience. It was going to be a chance to finish something I started three years ago at that point and try harder using some of the knowledge I had gained playing the game the first time around from FF fans I knew while I was away at school (Matt, Mike, Paul, and Chris). The first thing I decided to do and one of the first mistakes I made the first time I played the game was that I wasn’t ever going to back down from a fight. No matter how hard the game’s enemies or bosses got I wasn’t going to let my party run away from a battle and therefore forfeiting precious experience points for all my different characters.



Rule number two: NO CHEATING. The first time I cheated in FFVII was with my PS1 using a Gameshark to up my stats and produce limit breaks all the time. I got all the way up to Rocket Town with the GS until the game glitched, corrupting my memory card and thus flushing a couple of months of cheating down the crapper along with all my other save games. On the one hand I was pissed when it happened because I had gotten so far and not to mention I also killed all my other save files for my other PS1 games. On the other hand, it was a lesson in the classic adage that cheaters never prosper and I was somewhat glad that I would be able to give it a legitimate try again after learning the hard way. And given that I was now going to be playing the game on the PC, the temptation was going to be even greater this time with the advent of completed save files, training programs, and the like available at my fingertips online. But I decided to stand tall and not give in.



Rule number three and the only reason I’ve gotten so good at this game is because ever since I beat the first area of the game and got out of Midgar and onto the main overworld of the game, I’ve done a fair bit of leveling up with all my characters (especially Cloud, Tifa, and Barret) every time I reach a town with an inn that I could use as a base of operations for recharging my Hit Points and Magic Points and saving my game after doing a substantial amount of leveling. I have followed this rule for about four years now and I’ve made it to level 55 with Cloud and all my other characters not trailing too far behind him. On the other hand, I could’ve just moved on whenever and not gotten as much experience and then had my ass kicked every time I went into battle, but I decided to play it safe, take my time and learn the game and get good at it before jumping head first into one of Jenova’s forms or worse…lol



Which brings me to today: the day I’ve been waiting seven long years for. The day I’d finally be given the privilege and the honor to weep over the death of Aerith Gainsborough at the hands of the evil Sephiroth and his seven foot Masamune in the Forgotten City. And the thing that surprised me the most about this is even though I was just another victim to having Aerith’s death spoiled for me by the same group of fans at college that taught me how to properly play Final Fantasy and every other game fan with a keyboard: I still cried. And yes, it’s still as silly as the time I cried in the movie theater while watching Clonetroopers kill Jedi in Episode III, but when “Gentle Heart” (Aerith’s theme music) kicked on and Cloud said to Sephiroth that Aerith would never laugh, cry, or get angry ever again, I los

That was a long assed post and I refuse to read it all.

I miss that old disc 2 message. Reminds me of my PS1 days, which was my favorite system of its time.

Did You ever fuck up when Your supposed to put disc 2 in and accidently have to start again from your last save point on disc 1?

...and here I thought this was going to be about classic computer gaming. I've hardly played any CD/DVD based games, and none that required multiple discs. I do however remember having to flip floppies in old computers, right in the middle of a game.

Using a guide is cheating.

Mass Effect 2 has two discs.

LA Noire has 3.

And also Lost Odyssey. Does FF13 have more than one disc too?

Usually when I see two disc games these days, most of the time it will be just some extra bonus crap. I don't really buy too many new games these days though.

Doom 3 had three discs

Some PC games (The American Girls Premiere, McKenzie & Co. CD-ROM, The Baby-Sitters Club 3rd Grade Learning Adventures, etc) require disc 2 to play