Shyzer.com

I’m not sure how many of you are huge video game fans out there, but there’s something that I’ve been following for over a year and a half now that I am dangerously excited about. On September 14th, a DVD will be released that has been two years in the making and one that I’ve been waiting for since I was a wee little teenager. It’s a DVD that I’ve been waiting for long before Shyzer was even a figment of my imagination or before either of my smallest two siblings were even conceived. And yet now I only have three weeks until it finally arrives.

See the link “Video Games” over there on the left? Now honestly, how many of you have actually read through any of that? I probably haven’t updated any of those pages in well over a year (but they don’t really need updating per say) and most of the writing I did on them was some of the earliest stuff I did, but it’s still an important piece of Shyzer to me because it’s an important piece of my life. I grew up on video games and played them religiously. I was the kid who knew every cheat code there was and who my friends called up when they couldn’t beat the boss on level 4 of their game. I’d give any video game a shot once or twice if I came across it, but I soon began to seek out those rare video games that were an actual experience, one that you would remember years down the road.

When the printing press was invented back in 1450 (HA! I didn’t even have to Google that. See, I’m putting that History Degree to work every day!), critics felt it was going to be the end of verbal storytelling. When movies debuted in the early twentieth century, many critics felt they would be the end of books and the art of novels and stories. Well, as I scan my desk right now, I see three books stacked up on top of a DVD and earlier this evening I told a bedtime story about Pokemon to my little brother as he was drifting to sleep. The point I’m trying to make is that neither the art of storytelling nor the art of great novels and books was lost. All three mediums are still thriving and are fully accepted in society as an acceptable way to tell a story, from the awarding of Pulitzer and Booker Awards, to the Oscars, to….well, I’m sure we all have our favorite story told to us by our grandmothers when we were little.

However, there is one genre that is still viewed by many as “childish,” not appreciated for what it can produce, and thought of as pointless clutter. I’m of course talking about video games. But thankfully, this stereotype is starting to fade as more and more amazing video games are produced - not amazing due to their graphics or amount of killing and carnage, but amazing due to their stories. I don’t say this lightly, but I have played a few video games in my life that would rival some of my favorite books in terms of the story, character development, plots, and pure emotions involved. I’ve grown attached to characters in video games just as strongly as I did to the characters from The Stand. I’ve had the water works act up when things have happened in video games just like I did when…well, I can’t ruin that part of Harry Potter. You get the gist of what I’m saying though.

But like I said, this stereotyping of video games is thankfully ending as more and more great story telling games are becoming popular. Sure the genre has a long way to go before society fully accepts and embraces it and starts awarding awards to it, but video game companies are already recognizing the potential. Full symphony orchestras like the Boston Pops and the London Symphony Orchestra as well as popular bands and artists are working on soundtracks for video games. Writers and creative minds are employed in the thousands by various companies to help write script and dialogues for games. And graphic artists are continuing to improve their work on scenery and surroundings, all in the name of producing a brilliant storytelling experience.

But what started the trend? What swung the pendulum from only video game “nerds” appreciating these games to companies and mass amounts of people? Well if you’ve read my video games section, you know the answer to this is Final Fantasy VII. I won’t go into the whole spiel about how that game achieved this, because I’ve already done it on the page I just linked. But what I will say is that since 1997, I’ve dreamt of a sequel. I’ve waited patiently for a sequel. I’ve on some occasions prayed for a sequel instead of for good health or prosperity or any of that other good stuff.

On September 14th, my waiting and prayers will be answered in the form of a DVD titled Final Fantasy: Advent Children. (click the download button to go to a page where you can view the 2:30 trailer. Simply unbelievable stuff!). I’ll take a sequel in the form of a movie over nothing any day of the week. I honestly was skeptical of them actually completing and releasing this because as I said at the start of this short post that seemingly grew into a long ramble of my view on things, I heard about this almost two years ago. In mid 2003, Square announced that it was working on the project and that it would be completed by Summer 2004. Well, when that date rolled around, they said they were still working on it, but that it would be completed by January 2005. When I returned from Australia and it still wasn’t out, I started to lose hope, but then the announcement came that retailers were now being shipped the DVD and ordered to sell on the upcoming 14th. And trust me, I will be the first in line at our local Wal-Mart when the clock strikes midnight on September 14th.

But to make matters even more exciting, there is this little video of the opening sequence to Final Fantasy VII that was remade with current graphic technology and released by Sony. Why’s it so exciting? Well, I think that question is answered right around the minute mark of that video clip.

One can only dream.