I first heard of Final Fantasy V in EGM. I’m not sure what the year was, but probably 1993. It was going to be called Final Fantasy III in the West, until it wasn’t. There was a reason that they didn’t bring it over, and that is a reason that I don’t know, and that both of us (me, and you, the lovely reader) could Google in 10 seconds. If I were to act like the rest of the Internet and arrogantly imagine a reason for what could be easily checked, I would say that the game was in many ways a step back from what Final Fantasy IV was, meanwhile VI was a shaping up to be a motherfucking masterpiece. That’s the conclusion my arrogant imagination brings me to.

Next time I heard of it was sometime in 1997 I believe, when I was a young tyke, just getting acquainted with the Internet. Final Fantasy V’s English ROM was probably the reason I wanted to get on the Internet. Before I didn’t give a shit. I remember at this time also going to videogames.com (I think this became GameSpot) to check out the latest Final Fantasy VII screenshots. I didn’t really give a shit though, because that December 1996 Gamefan already sold me on the game, and that was going to be that. I didn’t need to see things to something I was looking forward to. I was already looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, emulators at the time didn’t really do transparencies at all, so in this part near the beginning where you are in a ship graveyard, going underwater, you could not see anything underwater, making it near impossible to continue. I gave up then.

Then there was 1998 or so, when the game actually got released in English on the PlayStation. Being released only 6 years later ultimately in the grand scheme of life and whatever seems like not a lot of time, but it’s the difference of me being 9 and me being 15, so it half over half a lifetime. I didn’t play Final Fantasy V on PlayStation though. It had shitty shitty loading times, and even at the ripe age of 15, I knew that I was above that. I was also in my lovely phases where I didn’t really beat video games, I just played them until it was time to stop. I’ve recently begun to think that as one with an older brother, I was conditioned to think that end bosses in games were not something that I was capable of beating, despite beating them tons before. It may’ve been a short attention span.

In 2005 I broke all comfort zones, and came to the live in the ultimate comfort zone: Japan. I landed in Nagoya, sleeping on futons in the kenshu center, and going for walks on the look out for parks and places to buy video games. I found both, the park first (which was close to where people were harvesting rice the old fashioned way, a truly beautiful site), and then the video game shop, where I promptly without hesitation bought a kikkake for me being in Japan: Final Fantasy V. It was about 400 yen (4 bucks) I think. I also bought a Super Famicom with it.

When I got settled in my LeoPalace apartment in the south of Chiba, semi-furnished with a 20-inch CRT, I hooked up the Super Famicom and Final Fantasy V. I didn’t understand any of it, it was in Japanese, but I couldn’t stop thinking how fucking awesome it was that I was playing THE Final Fantasy V on A Super Famicom in JAPAN. So it goes I guess.

From 2005 until now, I have played Final Fantasy V four times, beating it once, which was yesterday.

The first time was in 2005, Japanese-less me, wondering why one 力 was big, and one カ was small. I got as far as I did in 1997, felt joy that the water was not transparent, and that I new what was going on, and then I stopped.

Between then and roughly 2007, I envoked the ancient Japanese tradition of ganbaru, and I studied Japanese quite a bit. I think I finished all those Japanese for Busy People books, which gets you to 3級, which is now N4 in the JLPT tests. (JLP tests?) With this new found ability and confidence, I went back to Final Fantasy V, and played with understanding all the hiragana, and understanding that 力 is the kanji for power, and カ is katakana. I remember not knowing what 次元 or 封印 meant. I looked them up, but even that didn’t help me, and I realized that I didn’t understand a lot more than just that, but I had not realized what I didn’t understand. The worst type of not understanding. Back on the shelf.

Then a lot of shit happened in my life. From 2008 to 2018 there was joy, love, pain, desperation, evil, empowerment, and much more. It’s all a much more interesting story than some dumb video game. In 2018 I had bought a Super Nt, a third party video game system that plays Super Nintendo and Super Famicom games via HDMI, and lots of sound and video options. After playing Elnard (the Japanese version of 7th Saga), I was ready to get into Final Fantasy V. I put it in. In 2018, I was very confident in my ability to know what a 次元 or 封印 were, I rocked past those parts with ease, patting myself on the back for being able to skillfully understand a game aimed at children after my 13 years in Japan. They didn’t use the kanji 鎧, but oh baby I would’ve understood it. I got deep into the second act of the game, but I wasn’t really digging it. It felt like work. I didn’t want to play it, but I wanted to have the game beat. I had a history with it, and like, I wanted to have some closure with it.

This lead to me playing the game, but also playing other games on my Super Nt. I have no idea if it’s only my Super Nt, but it can be quite hard to actually get games to work on the bastard. I have a special screwdriver that can over Super Famicom cartridges, and cleaning alcohol to wipe what needs to be wiped. If I do that directly before putting the game in, it works. If I don’t, there’s a big chance that the game will not work.

I’m not a technical superman, but when the game is being turned on, the save files get transferred into the RAM or something, and if it doesn’t turn on, and you turn the system off, there is a risk of the save files being erased. Not all of them, but some of them randomly. This is how my save file got erased. Fuck. I stopped playing then. I wasn’t enjoying it, and I didn’t want to start over.

The fourth and final time to play the game started last December. 2020 had been a year of finally beating games that I had started long ago. It was the theme of the year you could say. Suikoden II? Finally finished! Persona 4? Finally finished! Dragon Quest VII? It’s done like butter. Final Fantasy V was next, but like the time before, I wasn’t digging it. I was playing on my new 55 inch OLED TV, and everything felt wrong, rotten and stupid.

I moved the Super Nt into my office at home, and put my 27-inch work monitor on the floor an hooked it up. I lay down on a floor couch I have in my office, and got into it, and I really got into it. It felt like I wasn’t in the living room of a 37 year old, but I was in the bedroom of a kid (not in a creepy way), and I was able to play as much as I wanted. It didn’t feel like a chore anymore, and I felt lucky to be able to play through the game. I enjoyed the Job System, fighting battles, understanding the story with zero difficulty, and just going through the motions. When I got further than I had ever gotten in the past, it started feeling truly special, as this it felt like I was experiencing something amazing for the first time. I usually only appreciate the first time of something after the fact, but when you are in the then and now, and you know that you are going through some super good times, it is to be poetic, super good times.

I had wanted to finish it before I went back to work, having some amazing closure with my obsession with video games, and go into the new year a new man, focusing on things besides playing video games from 1992. I gave it a good go, but ultimately didn’t make it. However, last night, my first Friday night after the new year, I poured a full glass of wine, got into the world of Final Fantasy V one last time, and beat the evil Ex-Death (the name sounds less lame in Japanese, I swear). I saw our protagonists ride their chocobos and dragons into the sunset. I saw balance restored, and I had my video game closure.

Today is day one of my post-Final Fantasy V life. I moved my work monitor back on my desk. The Super Nt back in the living room where I won’t play it. I’m feeling content, and I’m ready to do something else.