Dahne
03-13-2004, 02:55 AM
Back in the ancient days of 2D graphics and MIDI clown laughs, I was playing through FF3 (this was before I understood Japan as anything other than a distant, theoretical existence, like the theory of an alternate universe where raygun-bearing cacti hatch schemes to control the world's supply of coffee beans, so I knew it only by the American numbering system) again. This time, I ran across a townsperson I had never noticed before. He told me of a wonderful treasure, hidden somewhere in the Imperial Capital. I'd been through the plot before and never noticed anything like that. It must be a secret!
Keep in mind, dear child, this was an era far removed from the present day. We had no Internet, no instant GameFAQs relief for lingering curiousity. Our only sources of information were the trainsient magazines, that disappeared from the store shelves swiftly after their arrival, and other children, who proved to be often unreliable and sometimes just plain nuts. Some of gaming's best, most enduring urban legends come from the kid down the street who swore he'd seen his cousin do it. So my only recourse was to excavate the answer myself.
Vector, the Imperial Capital. I'd been there before. I'd convinced the soldiers to support my cause, if sometimes only after a solid whomp on the head. Ah ha! These I'd never explored! The toilets! Of course!
This wasn't quite as farfetched an idea asit may seem. Sound effects being what they were, flushing the toilets resulted not only in the expected watery woosh but something just afterwards which, to my ever-addled brains, could concievably be the sound of a subterrenean door opening deep within the bowels (heh) of the city. I also had attained, I know not when or where from, the certainty that I had seen a door in the back of the room at the very top of the Imperial Palace. So I ran through the castle, flushing and reflushing, utterly convinced that there was a set of switches being flipped back and forth by my actions which would, in the correct configurations, essay forth an item of great and wonderful powers such as only a secret passage opened by careful toilet manipulation could unveil.
Keep in mind, dear child, this was an era far removed from the present day. We had no Internet, no instant GameFAQs relief for lingering curiousity. Our only sources of information were the trainsient magazines, that disappeared from the store shelves swiftly after their arrival, and other children, who proved to be often unreliable and sometimes just plain nuts. Some of gaming's best, most enduring urban legends come from the kid down the street who swore he'd seen his cousin do it. So my only recourse was to excavate the answer myself.
Vector, the Imperial Capital. I'd been there before. I'd convinced the soldiers to support my cause, if sometimes only after a solid whomp on the head. Ah ha! These I'd never explored! The toilets! Of course!
This wasn't quite as farfetched an idea asit may seem. Sound effects being what they were, flushing the toilets resulted not only in the expected watery woosh but something just afterwards which, to my ever-addled brains, could concievably be the sound of a subterrenean door opening deep within the bowels (heh) of the city. I also had attained, I know not when or where from, the certainty that I had seen a door in the back of the room at the very top of the Imperial Palace. So I ran through the castle, flushing and reflushing, utterly convinced that there was a set of switches being flipped back and forth by my actions which would, in the correct configurations, essay forth an item of great and wonderful powers such as only a secret passage opened by careful toilet manipulation could unveil.