Lord Myk

When I was younger, my first RPG (role-playing game) was Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. My cousin had Final Fantasy and I had tried it a few times but I was young and had no idea what was going on with all the menus and whatnot and so I just ignored it, for the most part. I still wasn't sure what the genre meant until I Super Mario RPG in an issue of Disney Adventures and I saw multiple characters on the screen and just thought, "Oh, it must be multiplayer, so that means we can rent it when my cousin comes over and we can play at the same time." This did not work as intended as, like many RPG video games, this one was only meant for one player. Still, I played it as much as I could during the rental period and while I still didn't fully understand it, I was starting to and I eventually bought the game.

I still didn't fully understand it but I gradually figured out what was going on and so, in time, I beat the game and sometimes went back to play through it again. It wasn't until high school (or perhaps a bit after) when I discovered two things:

1. There was a secret area called Grate Guy's Casino where I'd never been.
2. There was a secret optional boss named Culex, based on the boss fights from the SNES (Super Nintendo) era Final Fantasy games.

The rumors were that Culex was the most difficult boss in the game, and while I had beaten it I'd also had trouble with another optional boss named Jinx and so decided that I didn't care about Culex all that much. Getting into the casino was far more important a goal, and I remember spending at least one afternoon trying to figure out how to get into the stupid thing until I gave up and went on with my life, occasionally thinking, "Maybe I should play the game again, try to get into that casino."

Luckily, the game got a re-release late last year and once I started playing it, I made the vow that this would be the time I'd get into the casino and see all its glory. I made my way through the game (which seemed much easier than I remembered, which is partially due to increased skill with RPGs and partially because they made some tweaks with the game) and got the item which would allow me access into the casino and, on a lark, the item which would allow me to battle Culex should I choose to do so.

Last night was the night I decided to finally enter the casino. I knew the method and got in there with little trouble, and after years of anticipation, I found a single little house with a single little room which even Grate Guy himself found boring. I played a matching game (in the SNES version, I understand it was Blackjack) and something similar but not a slot machine (in the SNES version, it was a slot machine) and finally a little thing in which Grate Guy wanted me to guess which way he'd be looking.

I was incredibly underwhelmed, and had I found this during my initial play-through of the game, I'd be quite put-out that I'd put any effort at all into finding the casino. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I got.

Filled with disappointment, I then went to fight Culex and while the battle took longer than anticipated because I also hadn't known during my initial play-through that one of Mallow's abilities (a little fluffy man who has weather-based magic) would bring up little tidbits when scanning an enemy and now I was trying to see them all and having this little man try to scan what amounted to a pixelated dark god with four magic crystals, each of which also needed to be scanned, resulted in most of my party being killed again and again and relying on Princess Peach to revive them. This actually made things easier as Culex and his gems ran out of FP by the time I was ready to actually fight them and so I defeated the fabled secret boss and felt like playing more 90's era Final Fantasy games afterwards.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes the things you've been trying to avoid for years wind up being more pleasurable than those that you've awaited and have built up in your head. Also, after I beat Culex I figured I could go fight Jinx (who is a little bug thing) and I did and beat him easily.

Also: I am going to watch the next movie soon, I just haven't had the time or inclination to do so.