What part don't you believe? Whichever part it is, I could probably furnish proof via screenshots or something. I don't make shit up, bruh.
Yeah I remember the first Phantasy Star was 60 bucks because I had to clean the yard for 3 months before my parents would buy it for me.
Think about how cool it was when you finally got it though. That's one thing I miss, putting in a huge amount of work for a game and then finally getting to play it. Took me a while to finally be able to play FF7 after it released because I was told I had to finish the school semester first. I convinced my mom to get it for me in advance so I could at least look at it and read the instructions. I'd been playing the demo all year so I knew how to play it and was borderline desperate to fire it up. Around Halloween I ended up sneaking it into the PS1 and playing it all night very quietly and got to the Chocobo Ranch. The next day I showed a chocobo to my mom (she loved them in FF6) and told her it was "the demo". She was like "o rly" and clearly knew I was bullshitting and had cheated. I kept going and got Yuffie, but I felt really bad at that point and stopped playing, put it back in the case and put it away.
The good news is she went back on the "finish the semester" rule later and let me finally have the game around...Thanksgiving I think? It was well before the semester ended, whenever it was. For some reason this one track in FF7 ("Yuffie's Theme", I think) makes me incredibly depressed when I hear it because it reminds me of the point in the game where I felt too guilty and turned it off. So not only did I feel bad about myself, I was turning off the game I'd waited a year for.
Well, that isn't a very good example of good memories that I miss, but I can remember plenty of other instances where I had to work really hard for a game before I could have it, and the feeling of finally getting said game was something nothing can replicate as an adult. Like when I had to rake for a couple weeks before my mom got me Secret of Mana. I rented it and got up to the Fire Gigas fight and wanted to see the remaining 95% of the game. Welp, rake those leaves. So while I was raking leaves I'd listen to SoM music in my head and pretend I was whacking enemies in the field. To this day I still like raking leaves because it reminds me of that.
We're also comparing them now with all our knowledge to the beginning when we never played them, didn't have the internet for spoilers/maps. The games themselves came with little info as far as classes, spells, weapons, etc. I remember our first play through of FF1 we though black belts sucked because we kept giving them weapons. We had hit the class change and ours was still using a staff or some shit. Than one day we took it off for shits and giggles and than 8 hits crit 600 dmg one shot monster and we're all like "holy #%#($#"
There was a guy on AOL back in the day named REL FFKing who was the biggest FF1 expert (and FF6) that I've ever met. He explained to everybody how Black Belts worked, that they did not in fact suck, and so on. He knew the mechanics of things like encountering Warmech way before the internet was abundant with things like that. He also knew every little glitch and exploit about FF6 and had a way to turn Gau into an indestructible killing machine. Wind God Gau he called it, and I think the name later caught on. Was very active on boards and the proto version of GameFAQs etc.
