Joshua Kennon

Lost Odyssey by Mistwalker Studios

For a long time, I wanted to be a video game programmer.  When I was still in elementary school, I saved up the $200 or so dollars for an entry-level version of Microsoft Visual Basic, went to trade shows to buy software on 5″+ floppy disks, and worked on creating my own version of the original Legend of Zelda in Microsoft Basic.  At some point, however, my obsession with finance overcame everything and the idea of sitting in a skyscraper, reading stock reports, and compounding money for the sheer joy of building something eclipsed the video game dream.  The reason was simple: I realized that if I achieved the empire on the financial side, I could someday just buy or establish a video game company.  If I became a low-level code monkey, on the other hand, I couldn’t have the other.  It was a case of having my cake and eating it, too.  Perhaps I should have known my idea of fun was spending hours playing Duck Tales on the original NES, shuffling Uncle Scrooge around the world to acquire treasure.

Looking back, Squaresoft, and later Square Enix after the merger, released a series of games including Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Kingdom Hearts that eclipses nearly ever other development house in terms of pure quality and fan obsession.  The only notable exception would be Nintendo, which owns the original hall-of-fame franchise covering Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Samus Aran of Metroid fame, Link and Zelda from The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong.  The problem with Square Enix is that it seems like the last unbelievable game that was released under its banner was Final Fantasy X.  That was nearly ten years ago.  I was in college.  That should put it in perspective. (more…)