Curse That Cursor

            Blink. Blink. Blink. That’s all that nasty cursor does. It just sits there and blinks. It’s no help at all. I sit here for ages, just watching it blink away when it’s supposed to have a beautiful stream of words flowing out from behind it.

            ...

            Okay, I’ll admit that it’s more of a jumpy, fragmented, frequently doubled back upon for corrections stream of words, but my point still stands. There are supposed to be words there and there are none. Couldn't the cursor be a little more helpful than this? Couldn't it do more than just sitting there, blinking?

            I know! It could be an inspiration coach. The word processor could sense when it is inactive and the cursor could morph into a dragon and fly around the screen, or start spewing writing advice, or, at the very least, fall over out of boredom. At the best, it could start writing all on its own.

           Hey, look! Words! I did it. I wrote a blog. Well done me.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Cursed Game Conquered!

            While this is a story about my misadventures surrounding a videogame, you really don’t need to be even remotely interested in videogames to enjoy it. The following is an amusing account of how, after 14 years, I finally managed to beat Final Fantasy VIII, the game I was cursed to never know the ending of.

            It all started when my brother bought a Sony PlayStation from one of his friends in est. 1999. The two of us went out to buy ourselves some new games to play on this exciting new system (yes, I know that the PS2 came out the next year, but it was new for us, okay?). Being that we were the age we were, we were buying our games from whatever allowance we had managed to save up, so, naturally, we were getting used games because they’re so much cheaper.

            I don’t recall for certain what game or games my brother bought (probably racing games), but I bought two games: Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII. I’d heard that it was a well known series, and even played Final Fantasy III on my Super Nintendo, so I was excited to try them out. Unfortunately, as the gaming console belonged to my brother, my play time was limited.

            When I did play the games, I found I was not disappointed – the Final Fantasy series is well known for a reason. They’re good. And their graphics are always cutting edge for their times – particularly their videos and cut-scenes (short videos that interrupt the game to tell part of the story, for you non-gamer types). The other thing about them is that they’re long. This specific game had four discs, while your average game of the times had one.

            It turned out that my brother and I both liked Final Fantasy VIII, and we played through the story at about the same pace. It was when I had reached a cut-scene on disc 2 that the curse struck for the first time. The game froze. Right in the middle of the video. No matter how many times we tried to get past, or how many tricks for repairing scratched discs we tried, neither of us could get past that cut-scene.

            Well, our pockets being rather shallow, we figured that we had gotten what we deserved for buying a used game and gave up on it. We were disappointed, but there was nothing we could do.

            A couple years later, when my brother and I now co-owned a PlayStation2, I decided I was going to take another shot at playing Final Fantasy VIII. I knew disc 2 was damaged, but I hoped that the newer system could possibly get past the scratched part in the video. It was worth a try, and the video did get further this time, but still it froze.

            Luckily, I now had a paper route, so I went out and bought myself a new copy of the game! I then played past the video, and continued along my game. All was well – until one day...

            Our PlayStation was still in use, even though we had a PlayStation2 – after all, that way my brother and I could play games at the same time without annoying each other. With the new disc available, he’d started playing Final Fantasy VIII as well. But something went wrong. Somehow – we don’t know how – a small patch of the disc he was playing managed to melt itself onto the system. Frustrated, and really wanting to play his racing game, my brother forced the game out of the system and broke the disc. Would you care to guess which disc it was? That’s right. Disc 2.

            It shouldn't have been all that bad – after all, I could still continue playing on my other, rather scratched disc 2; it just meant that I wouldn't be able to play the game a second time and get past that video. Except that there was a slight problem with the old PlayStation memory cards (this was before the systems had their own memories) that would sometimes cause them to wipe themselves of their save files. Can you guess what I discovered the next time I went to play...? The curse had struck again.

            That was it, for me. I gave up on the game again and eventually forgave my brother for breaking the disc. Then, another two years later, I decided to try again...

            I went out to a pawn shop and bought another used copy of Final Fantasy VIII. It was worth a try, wasn’t it? When I got it home, I opened the case to take out disc 2 (I’d already played the game up to where it got stuck) and stared in disbelief. The case was for Final Fantasy VIII. Discs 1, 3 and 4 were all for Final Fantasy VIII. But disc 2, the only disc that I needed, the cursed disc, was from Final Fantasy VII.

            What was with this game!?!?

            I went straight back to the pawn shop and told them my story and they were kind enough to let me take a different copy of the game (we checked to make sure it had the right disc first). I took that disc home, put it into the system, and...! It froze in the middle of the video again. Seriously.

            But I wasn't giving up! I switched it for my other scratched and used disc and the video went a little further before freezing again, so I switched discs again! The video went a bit further, then froze again. One last switch and I was past the video of the cursed game! It was a wonderful feeling.

            So, I played through the game, quite enjoying it up until I reached the final battle. Now... the last battle in any Final Fantasy game is pretty intense, but the game designers outdid themselves this time. I’ll spare you the details and simply say that I was fighting this battle for over two hours before I died and got the dreaded Game Over. Needless to say, I was not happy. Still, to my credit, I tried the battle several more times before giving up this time round.

            I learned in later years that there were two major things that led to my downfall. The first was that the monsters in the game level up when your characters level up, which means that the more powerful you get, the harder the game is to play. The other was that, in Final Fantasy VIII, unless you really understand all the spells and various systems in the game – which for most people means having a walkthrough beside them – it’s next to impossible to actually beat the final boss.

            However, over the last couple weeks, I finally managed it! I’ll admit that I was looking up some of the more finicky parts of the game as I went along, and I definitely had a walkthrough open telling me roughly how to win the final battle – it should say something that the guide went along the lines of “Use these spells to boost the effectiveness of these attacks and hope for the best”. It was a long and grueling battle, but I won! And you know what? It was worth it.

            It was worth the time spent on the game. It was worth all the aggravation and frustration. It was worth buying three copies of the game. And, more than anything else, it was worth the wait. The ending video of the game brought a phenomenal and touching conclusion to the game’s story, which I never would have appreciated when I was younger. I also caught all kinds of amazing plot twists that I’d never noticed the previous times I played through the game.

            I've said before that playing a videogame is like controlling the main character of a book and this one is no exception. Incredible as the story in this game is (and as much as I want to “borrow” some of the plot twists), this is one case where I don’t think it could have been more effective as a book. Or a movie, for that matter. It’s small wonder that this game series is so popular. They just need to make the end battles a little less grueling.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

 

The Curse of the Writer

            The curse of the writer is that you just have to keep writing. You just can’t stop. No, really, I mean it! The more you write, the more you have to write.

            I've heard accusations hurtled at J.K. Rowling saying that she’s just written her newest book because she wants more money, which is ridiculous. She wrote it because she’s a writer, so she writes on even when she no longer needs to.

            You see, the way it works is that you start off with an idea for a book. As you write that book, you come up with a great idea, character, or scenario that just won’t quite work for what you’re writing, so you put it aside. As you write, that idea grows and expands in the back of your mind until you have a whole new book waiting to be written! The worst part is that the number of books you plan to write grows exponentially.

            I actually started with a trilogy planned, although it’s not the trilogy I've written. This trilogy is waiting until I feel I'm experienced enough to write it and make it all that I hope it will be. Anyway, so that’s three books I started with living in my head. The first book I completed, To Slay a Dragon (working title), started as a school project that grew. By the time I was done writing it, I knew it was going to be a trilogy. So, I now had one book written and five more planned, bringing the total number of books in my head to six.

            While writing my second book, I brought back a character who’d had a cameo in my first book. I loved working with this character so much that I started sketching out the story of his life and wondering what kind of book it would make. As well as that, by the time I’d finished the second book, I’d also come up with a really cool idea for a stand-alone in my series (this is the one I'm currently working on). So, that’s two books written and six planned, totalling eight in my head.

            Moving on to the third book I was thinking that these ideas must surely die out soon, right? How wrong I was. First, my wife and I started a roleplay where we took turns writing our characters and the events going on around them. It was meant for fun, as well as an excellent writing exercise, but the more we wrote the more we realized that we were starting another book. Then, while I was throwing some minor characters into my third book, I was writing up the character backgrounds and discovered that one of them had a whole book there! Finally, just as I was finishing my third book, my brain started playing with some puns and spat out another book at me. That’s three books written and eight more planned for a grand total of eleven books.

            Better make that twelve because, less than a month into writing my fourth book, I started thinking it will need a sequel. I hate to think how many books I’ll have planned by the time I'm finished writing it!

            So, if you’re thinking of becoming a writer, think long and hard about it, because you’re getting yourself into a job that will never end. That’s probably the only regret I have. I view everything that has happened to me in my life as part of what led me to where I am today, but I think it’s fair to regret that I won’t live long enough to empty my imagination.

            To that end I must ask, has J.K. Rowling ever let on to exactly how Dumbledore and Flamel made the philosopher’s stone? I wouldn't mind some elixir of life.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.