Bub’s second video game was Final Fantasy VI, which was also his first foray into the Final Fantasy franchise. As evidenced by the picture, and as the Generation Z kids say, he was “down for the life”. He thought he was helping the characters that I was controlling by putting his hands on top of them when they moved, which was adorable, and I managed to get a picture of it. That’s still one of my favorite pictures…

Not only is it one of my favorite games because of the compelling storyline and diverse characters, but I liked it because it was the first Final Fantasy game to have a female as the main character. I’m always down to play a game that has a female as the lead character, and I liked the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy for that reason. There was also the fact that as soon as we could go there, we went to Dinosaur Forest and pulled the old “Ragnarok Trick”, which involves using Ragnarok’s Morph ability to turn Brachiosaurs and Tyrannosaurs into items in the World of Ruin to get the full experience for the battle without actually having to fight them (or fight them minimally), getting a lot of experience in a short amount of time. This is an easy way to quickly level up characters, gain AP once you can equip Espers to them, and prepare for the final boss battle. Or you can just do what I like to do (am I the only one that can do this? drat), equip your Bub — play a video game with your primarily non-speaking autistic child in your lap or near you — and have him direct you via primarily non-verbal communication or press buttons with assistance from you, and have Kefka go down so fast that you barely get any time to appreciate the background music playing during the final battle. I actually had to find it on YouTube to listen to it, that was how short the final boss battle was. You see, Bub has a knack for helping make final boss battles easier as long as we do not walk into them grossly underleveled and have enough items to last throughout the battle. I think our battle lasted like six minutes.