While playing Final Fantasy 14, Bear and I've met and made friends with a number of people who haven't had experience playing much of the older games of the franchise. A number of them, having only played the newer games of the series and have taken it upon themselves to go back to discover what they had missed out on. To my disappointment, some have mentioned that big hit classics such as Final Fantasy 6 didn't really do much for them. XD;; A number of them have mentioned playing the horrible Playstation ports or mobile remakes which I have previously expressed my utter disdain for, though I understand the convenience of them being more accessible or on a portable platform.

As a huge fan of a lot of older RPG's, I can't help but to wish for others to love and see what I see in those game, thus I've tried to come up with possible reasons of why it can't be so; maybe it's because they're playing a version that I think is a really horrible representation and doesn’t do the original game justice, or maybe they're not playing the game for enjoyment, but as a bullet point on a to-do check list to "catch-up" to current games of the franchise. Maybe the quick pick-up and put-down nature of mobile gaming has interfered with the feeling of immersion with the RPG's world. It's impossible to know due to the numerous involved elements, but I think it's pretty clear that a huge factor is that times have changed.

There are so many games out there now, so much accessible information, so many things vying for our attention and competing for our free time. As a kid in the 80's and 90's, game options were few and expensive so like many of my friends, if you got a game you were even slightly interested in, it was likely that you were going to spend a lot of time on it.

I would like to and can always blame Squeenix's releases of horrible looking remakes and ports, as a reason for people to not care so much for my beloved FF5 and FF6, but that might not even be a factor. One person Bear and I met in FF14 said they actually liked Final Fantasy 1 the most out of what he's played because he enjoyed the simple Dungeons and Dragons-like build your own party and exploration aspects of the game more than the story-telling aspect that became so prominent afterwards.

It's really hard for me to tell how much my love for the old games have biassed my judgment and how well they can compete against newer ones for someone who's grown up with a different generation of games, but I can't help but to want to share my excitement and love. I suppose all I can do is hope that people can appreciate the older games in a fashion similar to that of how one can appreciate good timeless literature.