[Spoilers Within]

It doesn't matter who you are. As long as you're a gamer, you've got some precious early memories of what was some kind of early side scroller or adventure game on an old, clunky console that plugs in through your tv aerial or uses rewindable tapes with ridiculous loading times.

My generation of gamers belongs on what I like to think of as an outer rim of modern day gaming. PS1, Dreamcast, Mega Drive II, GameBoy etc.

The main question applied here is one simple thing. Not your first game, nor necissarily your favorite. Not the most groundbreaking of the old days or the best retro. Simply...

What game from way back when moved you the most, built in a deep passion?

For me it was - and I don't care what ANYBODY says to me, it outdoes VII phenomenally - Final Fantasy VIII. To me that game featured the best music I've heard and that still mostly rings true to date. Combining this to characters with depth as opposed to 'open personality to develop bonds through similarity' let me reach out to the one that was actually most like me and make a deeper bond than VII even could produce.

In my mind the Junction and Proto-Magic systems worked like a charm. Sure early on in the game you had little to work with but as it progressed everything unfolded. Mentioning the Guardian Forces (GFs, for short), I found the amount of them in this game fantastic with the pretty twist of Doomtrain which gave me a memory of the ghost train in VI. Alternatively in this game you actually had the chance to use a villain - Edea Kramer.

This game, as reinforced was an absolutely pivotal point in my gaming history. As a family tree blooms and expands my repetoir of games thrived and expanded healthily into countless numbers since across the genres. As for my Gamespot noted games... Bearly a thrid my friends, bearly a third.

Thanks for your time.