The Effect of Role Playing Games on a Girl's Education
I don’t remember the exact year, but video rental stores began renting out video games as well as movies, and when my little brother and I tired of Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, we’d head over to the video store to find something new.
I was salivating for Super Mario Brothers 3 in 1990 when it came out, I had been SO disappointed in Mario 2, which I had beaten in two days. I dragged my mother to the video rental place to get it and to my chagrin, the owners of the store had the gall not to have it in stock. Well, I had a fit. I wanted THAT GAME. NOW. But my mother, soul of patience she was, simply suggested another game. Well they didn’t have anything that even closely resembled Mario Brothers, all they had was what looked to me like a mediocre puzzle game called Kickle Cubicle, but I thought- oh well.
That was the beginning of my video game addiction. I bought everything I could get my hands on. When Final Fantasy 2 for the Super Nintendo came out, I used to sit and watch my boyfriend play it, and I decided it looked really different from anything else I'd ever tried before. I bought that, then anything else I could find Square put out. I lined up with all the other geeks and pressed my nose against the game store's glass counters, pointing at the 85 dollar cartridge. THAT GAME. NOW.
All of this led up to my crowning moment as a gamer- Final Fantasy 3, or VI to you purists out there. It was as though God himself had come back to humanity in video game form. The opening music as Terra trudges through the snow in her jet black mech still sends shivers down my spine. Now in 1994, I was 15, and rebellious as you can get. When I got ready to go to school one morning, I looked longingly at that cartridge sticking up out of the SNES and I thought- I'm not going. So, I left in great fanfare, then darted around the side of the house and hid in between the air conditioner and a magnolia tree until my parents left. Then I went right back in and played Final Fantasy until they got home and called me downstairs for dinner.
Ever since then, I have skipped more classes than I like to think about to beat some role playing game or other- Xenogears was the worst offender, I think I played that game, refused to leave the house, and survived on nothing but take out for a week and a half until it was beaten. They just don't make role playing games like they used to- or maybe I'm just an old lady with responsibilities and not enough time to beat anything anymore. Sigh.
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Originally Posted by FoxyGamer
