The Origins of this Blog

I believe I played my first Final Fantasy game when I was around 9 or 10 - it was Final Fantasy 7, for PC no less. I've been following the series faithfully since then. I'm now 24.

A few weeks ago when Final Fantasy Dissidia was released for the PSP and I picked up and began playing my copy it dawned on me just how much of the series I was missing, in spite of 14 years of play.

I've never actually played Final Fantasy 1 or 2, and have never beaten 5, 6, or 9, though I've played each at one time or another. Additionally, my memories of the story lines for such epic installments as Final Fantasy 4, 7, 8, and 10 have dulled over time, and I recall only the major plot points of each work. Staring down at my PSP I was astonished to consider, for the first time, the true scope of the series. Twelve games, not including many, many spin-offs, each with its own unique, elaborate storyline.

I found myself wishing that Square Enix would release a series of books or movies detailing each story, so that I could experience one after the other in a short enough span of time to have a complete mental image of the epic. Then I realized that such an image could in fact be attained by playing all 12 games, if I did it quickly enough.

The recent release of the movie Julie and Julia, wherein a young woman decides to cook her way through the famous Julia Child cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cuisine, and to blog about her experiences along the way inspired me to begin my own quest - to play my way through the entire Final Fantasy Series (excluding FF X-2, and FFXI) in a single year, and to record the experience here for any who are interested. Thus it begins.