You don’t need a reason to help people. – Zidane

I have loved video games for as long as I can remember. I remember playing Crash Bandicoot 1 with my older brother and father, when I was 3 or 4. I remember trying to beat Koala Kong and getting frustrated, or trying to beat N. Breo and being scared by his horrendous bodily transformation. I remember playing Spyro the Dragon and thinking the Spyro’s voice was annoying, even as a child. I remember watching my brother beat Final Fantasy VII on Easter Sunday with all of our family over for a party, but we tried to hide in the back bedroom so he could try Sephiroth one more time. But when I hear the soundtrack to Final Fantasy IX – I’m there. I’m in the back bedroom of the house I grew up in, at the end of a long, winding road through the woods in central Kentucky. I’m sitting on the new beige carpet we had installed to replace the outdated blue carpet from the 90’s. I hear my Dad snoring in the master bedroom across the hall – he worked third shift back then. I can taste my Mom’s club sandwiches or cherry turnovers that she made so often we complained about them, but secretly wished she would make again once she stopped. My back is to the bunk beds, we shared a bedroom for the longest time, gray ps1 controller in hand with the chord, CRT television with the lines, 14” display, but no remote. We had to turn the TV to channel 14 for it to play the PlayStation, and the cables hung out the front. I can’t read super-well – I’m not sure how to pronounce Zidane or Steiner, don’t really know what’s going on in the story or why everyone is out to catch Vivi. But the soundtrack keeps me coming back. I must’ve been 7 or 8 at the time, 2nd or 3rd grade, learning in school about number lines and negative numbers, photosynthesis and the water cycle, but when I got home, I was a navigator – traveling this steam-punk fantasy world fighting monsters and saving the day. I was Zidane, rescuing the Princess from her evil mother, whisking her away in the night. I was Freya, returning home after a long time away to see the city in ruins and being attacked. I was Quina, running around chasing frogs and not wanting to grow up. I was a hero. 

But I don’t want to portray this as I just sat in front of the tv all day, no mom and dad wouldn’t let that slide for sure. We would go outside and play basketball or baseball, go walking through the woods behind the house or the nature preserve in the neighborhood. We’d go to the neighbor’s house and play on their swing set or reenact fight scenes from Star Wars. And when I moved on from FFIX and my perceived notions of it being a ‘kids game’, it always stayed with me in the back of my head. In fact, when I moved off to college and was looking at albums to download onto my iPod to listen to on the 3 hour drive back on the weekend, imagine my surprise when I found the official soundtrack on YouTube. I spent hours ripping those clips from YouTube and downloading them into mp3 files. I must’ve listened to that soundtrack so many times throughout the first 2 years of college making that drive – I even used some of the songs for background music for a presentation. 

The funny thing about memory is the association of memory with the senses. When I close my eyes and think of that opening soundtrack, or the menu noises, or the battle song, all of these memories come back and flood my mind. Final Fantasy IX has a special place in my heart, and is most likely the inception of my love for fantasy. I loved the blend of steam-punk and medieval, air ships and castles, and the crazy science fiction twists near the end. I would go on to play FFIX almost religiously, once a year I would start a new game and at least play to the start of disc 4. Truthfully, I almost never beat the game. I have played through it so many times I basically know the story beats by heart, but I can only recall beating the final boss once. Out of the dozens of times I started a new game, did the duel at the beginning against Blank, the chocobo hot and cold mini-game, got to the jaw-dropping Ipsen’s castle, I only beat Memoria once. But now, as an adult, two states removed from that childhood house, which belongs to someone else now, I think I can finally admit to myself as to why I rarely beat Final Fantasy IX – in fact, it’s quite obvious now. I didn’t want it to end. 

Thank you for reading through to the end, I know this is quite different from the other articles we’ve been doing on the website. I struggle sometimes with distancing myself from the more ‘book report’ or ‘scientific research paper’ oriented writing styles that I cultivated in college, and find myself creating a rather cold tone more often than not. One of my joys as I get older is to look back at the decisions and interests of my life and try to find the origins. I hope that by pulling the curtain back a little more than normal and presenting one of my defining influences to my interests in video games it will make it easier to understand why some games resonate with me more than others. Once again, thank you for reading this far, and I hope this inspires you to look back at your own ‘Memories Frozen in Time’.