Seventh Inning Stretch

Wow.   It's hard to believe that we're up to round 7 of the Blog.   We're practically finished, we are. Final Fantasy 7 still has a special place in my heart.   I was 17, a plucky young junior in High School, and we spent our weekends alternating between playing Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and Final Fantasy VII. It was my first RPG team sport, if you will.   I even remember when one of our clan was penalty boxed and exiled from the house when he erased the save game that was thirty hours in.   Whoops. For those of us who came from sprite-based games, it was amazing popping in that first (of THREE!) disks, and seeing these... people (blocky people, yes, but stay with me) on screen. People!  They... looked realistic.   A little pointy, but realistic all the same. This was huge!  No longer were storymakers bound by the limits of pixels!  We could have fantastic creations, each one more beautiful than the last. You'll soon hear me decry this fantastic innovation as the giant-ass sword through the heart of what makes the series great, of course, but still, at the time, this was huge in a good way. I'll start my journey later this week; I've got a lot of crazy work stuff coming up due, including major deadlines in my first quarter-million dollar project, as well as some wacky home renovations during the holidays, but rest assured, you, the reader, are at the forefront of my mind.   [Interesting fact:  While in a meeting for said work project, the lead programmer's cell phone rang and it was his wife.  Her ringtone?   Totally FF related.] Plus, if I play my cards right in this playthrough, I'll have the opportunity to use the hoyay and racism tags in the same post.   How awesome is that?

The real thing isn't really less ridiculous.