Mid-Week Music - A Preface

Title: Memories of a Lost World
Musician: kgakira
Game: Dragon Warrior VII

As exciting as it is, sometimes people need a break from politics.

I know half my friends are rolling their eyes as I begin this post, but please bear with me. It's the most impersonal things that seem to find a way to become the most personal.

I am a child of video games. I always have been, and at least into the foreseeable future, I always will be. I have recalled the very first video game I ever bought with my own money to many people who have known me. It was a simple Nintendo game called Dragon Warrior. If you know me, this introduction is nothing new.

Dragon Warrior spawned a sequel and quickly became a series of games. The games were great and considered by many to be some of the best, but, at least here in the States, the games were not popular. I almost preferred it this way. The less popular a game is, the more it is mine.

In 1995, Enix America Corporation, the company that localized the Dragon Warrior games for North America, went under. Oh, the games continued to be made and released, but only in Japan. Without a company that could localize them (and long before the introduction of emulators, hacks, and fan translations), us of the English tongue went without.

Years went by (nearly a decade). I grew up, graduated high school, attended college, and even found my feet walking the muddy trails of Ireland. It was 2001 when I traded in my quid for Washingtons and Lincolns, and America welcomed me with more than just mother's hugs and kisses: Enix America had returned and was bringing Dragon Warrior VII - the first Dragon Warrior game in 6 years - to the Yankees. Needless to say, I preordered it as soon as I was able.

Unfortunately, 2001 was not a happy year for many, and the tragedy that befell the nation was, for me, a foreshadowing of something far more personal to come before year's end.

I remember my mom waking me up early in the middle of October. I had taken the semester off from school and was busy lazying around home. With an impressive amount of composure, my mom told me that my older brother was in the hospital. He had tried to kill himself and his friends were luckily able to stop him. Now he was in a psych ward for an indeterminate amount of time.

Well, indeterminate turned into just under a week. Then, November 2, 2001, just a few short days after his release, he was gone, never to come back.

Because my grandmother decided to start a road trip with her friends, and because my grandmother is a grandmother and didn't understand, use, or want a cell phone, it took several more days to get her the news. We weren't going to hold a funeral for her grandchild without her, so another week passed before the funeral.

During that week, everyone I had ever known in my entire life was suddenly within arm's length. It was as if the world had stopped spinning just to give me time to grieve. There was no work. There was no school. I never had to be anywhere where I had to keep myself composed and hide my sorrow. If I couldn't have my brother back, I would take the comfort that all this support and friendship brought as a distant second. But I knew this week could not last forever.

I feared the moment after the funeral, the moment when the world would begin spinning again. Everyone would go home and back to their lives. However, my mother, sister, and I could only go home. The lives we led weren't there to go back to.

I remember clearly thinking as I walked back inside that home with my suit still reeking of incense: "How the hell am I supposed to handle this? What do I do?" I looked down at my feet, and there was a small brown box marked "Amazon.com." My pre-ordered Dragon Warrior VII had arrived while we were out burying my brother. I knew it was just a game, and nothing seemed more trivial after how I had spent my morning, but I needed that game. I needed something new that didn't have painful memories and longing sadness attached to it. Everything in that house was touched by my brother except this game and I needed to look at something that didn't remind me of him.

The plot of the game is you are the son of a fisherman in a world that is made up of only one island in a gigantic ocean. You find out that there used to be continents and other islands, but they were destroyed a long time ago. After finding a way to go back in time, you and your friends rewrite history by stopping the various cataclysms that destroyed all the lands. Early in the game, during your travels in the past, a character named Kiefer, who is your best friend in the game, doesn't return with you back to the present, remains in the past, and you never see him again.

Dragon Warrior VII is a very long game, and I didn't want it to end. The game had carried me through everything from day one, but I had also invested too much to leave it unfinished.

After beating the game, as with most any game, you get to sit through the game's ending. After the ending, after the credits, even after the finale music has stopped, the game returns to you on a fishing trip with your fisherman father. You toss the net overboard and pull up an ancient stone tablet. On it is inscribed a letter from Kiefer to you, and it reads: "I'm still traveling... I don't even know how long it's been since you and I went our separate ways... If you find this, I want you to let my father know that his son has finally found his way in this world. And, I want you to know that we are friends no matter how far we are from each other."

I don't think I could've faced the world if the game hadn't ended with that.

---
Dr. Venture: You know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute.
Monarch: Get used to it.
Dr. Venture: I should tell her that I love her, but that point is probably moot.
Monarch: Are you reciting Jesse's Girl?