My Final Fantasy Origin
February 27, 2026
Final Fantasy V was my first Final Fantasy.
It wasn't my first RPG. I was a child of the 90s--I had Pokémon. But when FFV showed up on my radar, I was only just barely on the cusp of connecting the characteristics of this style of game with an idea of genre. I didn't exactly know what RPGs were just yet.
The house I grew up in was always full of computers: computers in the dining room, computers in the basement, computers in pieces on the kitchen table, computers wired into the entertainment stand, engaged in some inscutable ritual of communion with the giant satellite dish in our backyard, the end result of which was that we got American Cartoon Network on our TV without paying for it. Sometimes the shows were in Spanish, but the closed captioning worked fine.
Perhaps it was a lack of initiative or a gap in my curiosity, but despite my surroundings I did not actually accumulate a ton of computer literacy until I went to university. As kids we did not have our own computers--there were a series of "family" computers, upstairs and downstairs, and there were unspoken restrictions on who got to install software (not the kids) or otherwise meddle with the machines (not the kids) beyond basic Internet access and the five-or-six games that were installed at any given time.
I didn't exactly know what an emulator was just yet.
Even if I had, I also had not quite cultivated an idea of old games having a nostalgic appeal. Much as it had been with computers, there were always videogame consoles in the house, as far back as I can remember. Initially there was a ColecoVision, which my parents maintain I broke. After that, an NES borrowed from an aunt and uncle. Moving forward to a point in the timeline where I was reliably forming and retaining memories, a Super Nintendo appeared, and I played a lot of that. But when some years later a Nintendo 64 showed up to take its place, the SNES was boxed up, put in storage, and eventually donated. My brain had not yet attached itself to the idea that the "old" system might be something that I might want to go back to--and evidently this idea did not cross my parents' mind, either.
Owing to this persistent but somewhat transient relationship with videogames, my first brush with emulation wasn't actually on a computer--it was on a console. For Christmas in 2000 we got a Sega Dreamcast. By now you may begin to notice a pattern in my family's entertainment budget. If there was a category of thing that was easy to pirate media for, that was the thing we got. The Dreamcast was trivially easy to pirate games for. Accompanying the Dreamcast under the tree were several boxes of CD-Rs--around fifty or so. Good Christmas.
Not all of that pirated software was commercial. One mysterious disc was labelled DreamSNES. A brief primer: DreamSNES was a Super Nintendo emulator (specifically a port of SNES9x) that ran on a Dreamcast. You burned the emulator together with a bundle of roms straight onto the disc. The emulator was rudimentary but had the ability to record your saves on a per-game basis to the Dreamcast's Visual Memory Unit. To the uninitiated this seemed a bit like magic.
Somewhere in the crevices of my brain a single neuron reached out and shook hands with another, long-dormant, when I popped in the disc. Memories were stirred to the surface as I browsed a plain-text list of familiar names. A new thought began to form--old games were cool.
There are some important technical constraints to keep in mind here. Software emulation in the early 2000s was still pretty rough around the edges on PCs, and considerably farther behind on home consoles. DreamSNES ran at an average framerate that hovered between the teens and single digits. I'm saying it ran like bootycheeks.
Initially this didn't really bother me--remember that I had no real frame of reference for what "good" emulation was supposed to look like. To me it was playable, if only just. I rediscovered Super Mario World and Zelda. But the dalliance didn't last.
In connecting with old favourites, I saw other, unfamiliar curiosities in the romset. The selection was haphazard and the naming conventions were not consistent. One title was just a mysterious abbreviation: "FFVj".
It and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest were the only FF entries on the disc. I clocked them for what they were, but I did not pursue the curiosity at the time. I had no prior history with these games or their series: until the Dreamcast we had been a Nintendo-only family through my childhood, so Final Fantasy VII had not yet shown up in my life either.
For the moment FFVj remained a passing curiosity, and it remained that way for a couple more years. I had English class, Dragonball Z, and Ocarina of Time to keep me busy.
I wouldn't think about that mysterious abbreviation again until late 2002 or early 2003. My temporal frame of reference was that the United States had just invaded Iraq. It's funny how the timelines align there. At the same time that I was beginning to understand what an RPG was, I was also beginning to understand imperialism, though it would be many more years before I connected the idea to that particular word.
I should probably play Trails at some point.
Anyway, I was fifteen years old and quite morose. I was beginning to entertain the notion that the country I shared a border with was governed by evil people. I started doing badly in school. In my malaise, I found myself searching for a story to play through, that I might somehow play through it.
I found the DreamSNES disc again. I put it in.
Butz Klauser is a wandering adventurer--his closest friend is his chocobo. He lives in a world of swelling leitmotifs and primary colours. He ambles about unburdened by material cares or close companions.
Then a meteor lands in some woods nearby. A princess is waylaid. A funny old man crawls out of the smouldering boulder with no memory of how he got there. The wind has stopped. The king has gone missing at the shrine. Something is up.
Things kind of just happen from there. Three companions become four after an attempted ship robbery. An abrasive pirate captain joins the cause. Somewhere down the line, destiny enters the picture.
I feasted on this setup, drip-fed to me as it was through the basement TV at eleven or so frames per second. This was annoying in Super Mario World, a game I still remembered enjoying as a little kid, but I had no prior frame of reference here. I didn't know how fast the music was supposed to play. I didn't know how long battles were supposed to take.
I played the game.
In truth, I played it rather badly--and perhaps more honestly. The Crystals chose four heroes to defend the world from the return of evil, and endowed them with the blessings of warriors long past. I unlocked the Job System. I leapt in without looking. Butz became a Knight. The princess Lenna took up the dagger and became a Thief. Old Man Galuf assumed the mantle of a White Mage. Captain Faris brooded under the shadowed brim of a Black Mage's pointed hat.
There were many things I did not understand. When a stray tentacle struck one of my heroes and their hair turned white, I didn't realize that their stats were plummeting, even as their blade glanced feebly off a monster's hide. When I found the bonemail halfway through the game it took ages to figure out why the character I gave it to could no longer recover health. Every boss was a chokepoint, as I struggled to adapt my meagre tactics to new challenges.
I played the game. I argued with my parents. I shoveled snow from the driveway, and from my elderly neighbors', under a cold blue sky streaked with cirrus. I hummed "Four Hearts". I watched the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrate on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, taking its entire crew with it. I went on my first date. I played the game.
In much the same way that I was playing through it, the heroes in Final Fantasy V go through it a lot along the way. In much the same way that I failed forward through the game, the heroes fail forward through their quest. They are unable to protect a single one of their world's four crystals, and after that they even lose an entire second set. Friends and acquaintances fall along the way.
Yet FFV is never a dour game. It remains steadfastly comedic and joyful even in hardship. To me, its swelling leitmotifs and primary colours feels less naive and more aspirational, and I think, even as I was learning about RPGs and recoiling at imperialism, that I was absorbing this attitude at an autonomic level.
Its heroes are never deterred, either. They get back up again. They keep going. The world never ceases to be worth saving, even when it takes a second, third, fourth try. Even when wicked-hearted husks with the milk of human kindness freeze dried out of them rule the roost and call the shots. Even when an evil tree doing Dark Souls II cosplay tries to pull it into the void.
I don't think I actually quite finished FFV on DreamSNES, but I did finish it. At some point, I discovered emulation on PCs, and was treated to a much more fluid experience of the game I had come to love. I actually thought it ran a little too fast, having grown accustomed to DreamSNES' belaboured single-digit stutter. I would go on to immerse myself in other FF games--VII was delightful, though VIII didn't quite take.
Yet V is the one that lingers in my memory, the one that looms large in my heart. Maybe that's just because it was the right game at the right time. Maybe it's because it was my first.
But everyone's gotta have a first, and Final Fantasy V is mine.
