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And we quickly moved on from there…

Bub’s second foray into Final Fantasy, and his third RPG with me, was Final Fantasy VII. He was around two years old when we played this game for the first time together, although we’ve revisited it over the years since it became a clear favorite of his. The only exception is that I have never actually played through Aerith’s death in front of him. I always play through that part of the game when he is asleep, and then we pick up afterward and continue playing together for… what I hope are obvious enough reasons given his age and the fact that he is autistic. So far, it hasn’t bothered him any, although I might introduce that part of the game to him at a later date. Probably much later if any of you catch my drift. I’m not looking forward to that.

Being autistic, there are certain parts of games that I have to skip through playing with him that neurotypical kids his age might not need to have skipped through, and this is one of them (Snow vanishing in the Sunleth Waterscape in Final Fantasy XIII-2 was another one). I don’t mind it, but it’s good to know, and it’s better for both of us that I do. It makes the gaming experience go a lot more smoothly to skip over these speed bumps.

Bub enjoyed all of Final Fantasy VII — what he saw of it, anyway — and was even the one to trigger Omnislash to kill Sephiroth (and surprisingly, got to see Sephiroth die). I took his small hand, extended his pointer finger since we were playing the PC version of it together, and helped him press the button that would trigger Omnislash. So not only did I equip my Bub for the final battle, but I made sure that it was he that triggered Omnislash to kill Sephiroth. I guess he can thank me when he’s older for that if it’s important enough to him to thank me for. Or not. Either way, I’m fine with it. And seeing Sephiroth die didn’t actually bother him at all(, although seeing Aerith might have since she was someone that you were supposed to grow to like, and seeing the death of someone that you were supposed to grow to like is supposed to be sad and traumatic, hence why I have shielded him from it so far). Through playthroughs, he’s also made it clear that his favorite characters are Cid and Vincent, which should surprise no one that actually knows Bub. I expected him to take a shine to Red as well myself, but so far he hasn’t shown an inclination toward Red.

Since this is a game that he’s liked a lot, I’ve made sure that we have it on multiple consoles.

And we do have the (first part of the?) remake on pre-order! We’ve actually had it there for a little while.

It’s someone’s first Final Fantasy!

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.

Somebody loves Tales of Phantasia.

I remember when Tales of Destiny came out for the PlayStation. By that time, Tales of Phantasia had already been out for the Super Nintendo, and it seemed incredibly unlikely that it would be translated. It wasn’t until DeJap finished a fan translation of the SNES port that fans of the franchise, especially that one game, went wild that they could actually play and enjoy Tales of Phantasia in their own language. I was one of them. I was only a child when it happened, but I was a fan of the franchise, I desperately wanted to play the game, and it was huge that I — as well as many others — could finally enjoy the game in the English language. Sure, it took getting used to playing the game on the computer, but the learning curve was quick for me, and I enjoyed finally being able to play the game and listen to the soundtrack as I did so. And although the official Gameboy Advance port of the game was additional sweetener, it didn’t quite compare to the time and the effort that DeJap put into giving us English-speaking (and reading) fans of the game the most authentic experience possible. Still, though, a game is a game, and I enjoyably played it with my youngest son, Bub, while he was still a baby. It may have taken us a little while, but we did it… we defeated Dhaos.

The blow was only softened when we found out that we defeated someone who only came to our world — albeit in an extremely hostile manner — desperate to save his own world from destruction. I mean, he had his motive, even if it would have come at the cost of our characters’ home world. You have to recognize that.

Personally, I have always been a fan of Mint Adenade. I almost always have a soft spot for the healers.

Playing video games with my child.

Out of all of the friends that I grew up with, it honestly seems like I was the only one to stick to the “promise” that I made to play video games with my children, and to introduce them to the games that I grew up with and enjoyed. Of my children, one of them in particular enjoys playing video games with me. I started introducing them to him when he was a baby, because that calmed him down when he was breastfeeding and needed something to focus on — I positioned him so that he could see the Nintendo DS while laying on the Boppy and played a bit of Tales of Phantasia (since backwards compatibility by means of the Gameboy Advance port was absolutely wonderful at the time), and that was how Bub played a lot of Tales of Phantasia with me. And since he liked it so much, when he wasn’t breastfeeding, I would sit him up once he became a little bit stronger so that his back was up against my stomach and hold the game so that it was in front of him and we would play it that way. Being able to watch the characters on the screen enamored him.

Bub actually helped me recruit Suzu — one of the optional characters, and one of the most powerful characters if you look at it — into the party, and kill Dhaos. There’s also that. I mean, I give him credit where credit is due. He didn’t appear to have a clear favorite character in the game other than seeing enemies fly across the screen and eventually die, which is, as I call, “peak Bub”. He likes that in a lot of games though.

Seriously though, it’s games like these that make me appreciate when console manufacturers take the time to include at least some degree of backwards compatibility in their consoles. Some of us like to take a trip down memory lane and enjoy old games, and some of us like to play older games to begin with, you know?

This was also the first time that Tales of Phantasia actually came to Europe and the United States and, although perfect, it was the first chance that we actually got to play the game short of DeJap’s fan translation of the SNES port that fans were tremendously excited over when he finished it. I remember being one of those fans. I remember being a fan of the “Tales of…” franchise when it was still so niche that very few people had actually heard of it, before Tales of the Abyss actually put it on the map, before a whole lot of people began to like it. I’m not complaining about that, though. It’s a great line of games, and it’s good to be able to talk to fans who like it just as much as I do now rather than only sporadically be able to find them….

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