Before the aspect of super emo romance stories and 5 minute long cinemas of summons, Final Fantasy was king of the standard, simple RPGs. My first experience with the legendary Squaresoft franchise came in the shape of a Nintendo cartridge of Final Fantasy. Having been a hardcore RPG player at the time, I expected the little game to be a fun distraction but it turned out to be one of my favorite RPGs of the time. Final Fantasy had elements that were subtle but put it over other games in the genre at the time. One of these elements was seeing my characters flip classes and literally grow unexpectedly midway through the game. My boy thief became a ninja man and my chibi black wizard became a full blown mature mage. I thought this was one of the coolest things ever, especially given the new skills they could attain with the growth.

One thing that was different about Final Fantasy was that it introduced creatures that could take your blow in one spell. I had never experienced this before and it put a sense of fear in me when it came time to explore. The boss fight at the end was also special in the fact that after kicking his ass he changed into something else a la Ninja Gaiden. This game was the granddaddy of such mega bombshells as Final Fantasy 7 and Vandal Hearts. If you can deal with dated 8-bit graphics and long victory dances then you should check out Final Fantasy, it was truly an awesome game.