September 9th, 1999. The day Final Fantasy VIII would come out. At this point, a little more than three months into shifting my focus to Star Wars websites and talking with Jen, the next major release of a media entity was staring me down. In the two year wake for Final Fantasy VII and the enormous amounts of fun I had playing that game release weekend with Chris, the anticipation for this installment was maybe not on par with The Phantom Menace, but was a close second.

Thanks to the increase of importance on the internet in everyone’s eyes over the last couple years there was some prerelease hype to be built up too. But as the date approached I had two major issues. One the habit of talking to Jen over ICQ required being pasted to my PC all day long for long but slow moving instant message conversations, and the PSX I got for graduation was having it’s issues loading games.

During Easter of 1999 during some of the video footage we have for the day we can hear Meghan comment on the long load time for a game, which I refer to as “several years old”, Tomb Raider II, taking forever to load. It would suck if a game I had been anticipating all year came home with me on the day of release and the PSX failed to load it.

The solution was obvious. On September 9th, I would have to also purchase a new PSX. So with Jen warned that to speak to me would require running up long distance charges on her phone, being as in 1999 we all still had to use land lines and the concept of free long distance calling was still about a year away from the masses, I got up and with dad as the driver for this adventure, went to Toys R’ Us at the Arden Fair Mall and purchase the game along with a new PSX, which now came with Dual Shock controllers.

Now I am completely redoing this section from my main write up, while searching for visual aids i found THIS LINK convering the Sega Dreamcast release. Now that might seem like a weird link to add here. But while I cared not and even mocked the Dreamcast at the time, it was set to be released on September 9th, 1999. So oddly enough we hit up the TRU video game section the morning they released the new Sega system to buy a PSX. We were also the only people there if I recall, I actually remember seeing all the Dreamcasts. Now I had my reasons for not caring about Sega, but I do distinctly remember feeling pretty smart when there was no rush at a major retailer in Sacramento for the soon to be failed system. But it did add to the overall day. As you can see at that pages coverage of the Dreamcast release the Babbages still has a setup for the FF8 release as well.

Of course, since it was Dad and I on the trip to get FF8, before I got home and could hook up the new system and play the new game, we did hit up the hot wheel isles for Dad and the Star Wars sections for toys. For whatever reason I relate the figure Gasgano with this trip, I don’t know if it was hard to find at the time and we bought one, or if I just happened to pick one up to open up for some display I was setting up, but I am pretty sure he tagged along on the way home.

Then began the Final Fantasying. September 9th was a Thursday. So, starting that afternoon I hooked up the new PSX in the front room on what was at the time the nicer TV, moved one of the gray chairs directly in front of the box about six feet back and began my time as Squal and his companions as they started their SEED tests.

Being that I set my own work schedule in these days, I just allowed the websites to run themselves and played late into the night. I don’t remember when fatigue kicked in, but eventually I had to save my progress and then wake up Friday afternoon and continue. Now this isn’t a history of the plot of FF8 so I will find a link here or embed a video that covers the game itself if anyone is interested. But Saturday I don’t remember if I had beaten the game or not, but I was probably pushing too because I was on a timetable. Because there is another part of this story I have left out. And that was that the NFL football season started on Sunday.

Off the loss last year, well it technically was in 1999, but off the heartbreaking 20-18 loss to the Atlanta Falcons the season before in the Divisional round of the playoffs. Where the seemingly unbeatable 49ers lost Garrison Hearst to a gruesome leg/foot break and then couldn’t quite comeback to move on in the playoffs against the eventual NFC super bowl representative. There was a lot of hope the Niners could get the holes filled and make another Super Bowl run this year.

So, the Jacksonville Jaguars and mom’s cinnamon rolls were on the schedule for at 1pm, so the hope was to stop time compression and save the world from Sorceress Ultimecia by kickoff. I didn’t quite make it, I do remember having to save somewhere in the Sorceress’s castle late Saturday night / early Sunday morning.

Now I don’t want to point fingers, but one of the reasons I could slightly off schedule for that self-made five day weekend was that Jen, taking my threat as serious, started running up her long distance bill and called more than once during that four day period to ask about my game progress on other things. I think it was at this point that if either of us hadn’t realized what was coming between us, that the veil had been lifted.

So, indulging in my need for beautiful young ladies. I allowed my gaming to slow down and by kickoff I was slightly short of my goal. Oh well I had pastries and the Niners, what could wrong.

So, the game ended up being a gut shot. I didn’t know at the time what was about to unfold for the season, next week they would win and the assumption is we just pulled another 1997 season and all would go well. Even though the game went poorly I was able to get back to FFVIII and save the world from time compression, which is probably a big thing to do when you’re upset that the Niners just stumbled out of the gates.

Beating the game wasn’t the end of the game though. This was not a one and done kind of thing, I didn’t just drop that kind of money to burn out after four days. Thus, I would use the internet to begin to find what I had missed the first time through along with downloading the mp3s from the soundtrack. To date the FF series had always made its way musically into my/our world, hell Marty was still playing FFIV songs on the piano, and by 99 that game was near 8 years old.

The intro to the game would become one of the tracks I played a lot. Embarrassingly playing it while messing around with the Darth Maul lightsaber’s Dad brought home from D.I. was a weird fun thing to do between upload and downloads and other wait times on the computers. During Christmas when all the electronics were hooked up in dining room that may have been a side fidget.

Final Fantasy VIII itself will continue being a title with some history moving into 2000 as well. It’s spark with running up Jen’s long distance phone bill wouldn’t be its only influence on that relationship, allowing the title to get a stronger emotional tie to my personal life than just a good game. But that is a story for another year.

March 26th, 2000. Maybe March 27th. This night ties back to September 9th of 1999. Here is where the story of Final Fantasy VIII continues. That night after we bid farewell to the Karls and Jims and Brendans of the world, Jen and I retired to my bedroom. That night, Jen wanted a hands on look at the game. She wanted to know why I was willing to forgo ICQ for a video game.

Half and hour later and she was through her SEED test and tamed the Guardian Force Ifirit. We turned the game off at that point. This was a busy trip and we had some morning plans that needed to get rested up for, possibly going to San Jose to start the trip with Junby and everyone back down to southern California, I don’t remember every detail of the trip anymore. I just know we stopped there that night.

But the game wasn’t forgotten. I packed the PlayStation on the game and once all the trips and travel were over Jen and I had a month or so there in San Diego of lazy April days. So, Jen picked the game back up, and played. And then played some more. And then like I would find out she could do she played the life out of the game.

Now she too was saving the world from the Sorceress and loving it. Then in June I had to go back up to Davis when one of her roommates decided she didn’t like a big sexy man around. Well I am not a gentlemen and brought my stuff back up with me. And here is where in the span of what seven months? That FFVIII got someone to buy a new PlayStation. Okay maybe it was 8 months, since the PSX she bought was the PS One, which was a slim and smaller version of the regular and dual shock systems, which came out on July 7th, 2000.

So maybe I was more of a gentlemen than I thought and let her use mine for our first time apart during the weird year that was 2000. Meaning it was the second time I went back up that she needed the game so bad she bought a system and another copy and peeled her save game to it. Over this time Jen would grind out over 100 hours on the game. Destroying my time in a single save. She developed a problem, but a good one.

When I was back in northern California for my times, we would use Windows98 built in video conferencing software, Microsoft NetMeeting:

Imagine the above picture, except two 22 year-olds. I also believe our chat configuration was more focused on the video part and less the list of people on the chat. But me with Dad’s broken camcorder plugged into my video capture device and Jen with a cute webcam with feet that we bought her, would wake up in the morning. Get online, setup a video conference then I would do whatever and she would play FFVIII on her green bean bag chair while we talked about whatever for hours.

Her fandom became larger than mine even. Maybe. This would spill over big time once Comic-Con would roll around later in July. Because of the way I have things sectioned off right now, some of this will get run over again.

With Comic Con 2000 being the first one since the US release of the game there were a lot of new FFVIII toys and merchandise available at the con this year. Jen and I being impetuous decided on Sunday when prices at the con dropped to start buying Guardian Forces figures.

These large scale figures of the Key summon spells that you use to raise your characters stats in the game were also some of the more impressive looking creatures in the game and then of course in plastic form. Those three above, Diablos, Translucent Odin, and Tiamat were some of the figures we bought. If we hadn’t been rushing to find all of the main large sized GFs it would have been smart to get a picture of me lugging these things around the convention dealer room floor.

But we didn’t, so when I feel trying to keep up with Jen as she went from vendor to vendor all I have to remember that by is how scuffed my shoe was.

Then there was the other big CC2000 FFVIII incident. Saturday night with the Star Wars nerds. The day before our big money dump on toys at the con we ended a day hanging out with our Star Wars friends. At the end of the day somehow the idea for everyone to come back to the Apartment was hatched.

Now more than likely the idea of getting some food was involved. Also back in 1999 when we did the Myth trip we also ended the night at the apartment so somehow everyone meeting up there didn’t seem like a weird cramped idea. What the weird idea ended up being was Jen’s.

She so loved her FFVIII game that she wanted to show our friends, without the 20 hours of story reference that comes before, the games final battle and ending. So for the next thirty minutes or so everyone sat in various places in the bedroom while she defeated Ultimecia and then while Squall had to return from Time Compression. Not the most well-received activity of the day. Although in her defense Rick getting lost earlier in the day probably lost us more time than watching the game.

But that was the power of FFVIII, in a time when Star Wars was fresh and exciting again, with us two devoted nerds of it, we spent a share of time on this game instead of tunnel visioning the new Phantom Menace stuff that was out in the world.

As time would go on sure, the time either of us invested into the game would wane. The soundtrack would stick with us even past our relationship. The soundtrack after all was another item I used to endear myself to Jen back in the 90s when I gave her the piano MP3s of some of the songs to help her sleep. And maybe give her nightmares. So even past the fever play, we might jokingly sing some of the stuff from the game to each other while walking the streets of Mira Mesa.

But then 2000 will end, and by then somehow new stuff has phased in a bit. The lingering items in the coming years I will have with Jen is her collection of monster plushies from the game. In late 2000 Final Fantasy IX was rushed out for the people that didn’t want another FF VIII. We had pre ordered it from the local GameStop and I turned my attention to playing that game.

While I didn’t like it as much as VIII or VII in all honesty, I was still playing it. The problem was by the time it came out, both of us worked so free time was at a premium, and I never got to the end of the game while we lived together, so I don’t know how much she paid attention to the new title. Jen at the time had some adventure games to get through. I think she was trudging through the Gabriel Knight titles when IX came out.

So into 2001 I was now moved too IX and then of course the PlayStation 2 games I would get for the new system. I don’t know Jen’s part of the story during that time either, but this is where the ravenous phase of the game seems to have died down. Now don’t get me wrong, I still love the game, but there is this weird phase in franchise fandom where new titles come and go and the old loved ones instead of being distinct anymore are all part of the classic fare. So now Squall and Cloud are the same. Old whiney boys with big swords.

Fan art, cosplay and the like will always be enjoyed, and Jen’s tie to the alien PuPu wont ever be forgotten… Wait.. Final Fantasy eight… cosplay, 2000, embarrassing, Jen… wait I left a story out.

No, Jen didn’t do a bad Pupu cosplay. But the time is Anime expo at the beginning of July in 2000. We all just met a corucascantcity.net poster nicknamed Anthy Rose who flew out from some other part of the country to be at the Anime expo. She was a fair skinned girl and I think a couple of the other nerds we were with fancied her at the time.

Jen and I were of course using this time to hang out. So it was up in the Disneyland hotel where the event was being hosted at we all spotted a group of FFVIII cosplayers. The girls were cute, and somehow this group became the talk for a while. And eventually everyone moved on, or did it?

Well Jen investigated after the con was over and somehow figured out who some of these cosplayers where. In fact:

I still have some of the pictures she found. I think it turned out, my facts might be wrong here, that somehow Jen was like one degree of separation from them, and so Jen and I kept up with them for months, maybe it was longer, our weird online stalking is one of those embarrassing memories you kind of squish down once you get older and try and forget.