I've been exposing Gaia to "her roots" lately. We've had a quick tour of some of the great videogames of the past, and I've been largely surprised by her reaction to many of them. Games that I thought she'd not like she has, and games I was sure she'd love, she's grown sick of quickly.

Now, I recognize that I'm not doing good science here. My own feelings toward the games could be having a huge impact on her reaction to them. I think that's particularly true of Bubble Bobble, for example, where my love for the game gets in her way my being able to evaluate her reaction to it. But for the most part, she's got a good head for games -- she should, she's been playing Super Puzzle Fighter since she was 2 weeks old.

So, imagine how my heart swooned when she took controller into her little hands and fought her first couple rounds of Goblins in Final Fantasy.

We're playing the GameBoy Advance version on the GameCube, by the way. For what it's worth, I'm told this version is more polished and considerably easier than the original verisons. I never played the NES version.

She named her characters for the usual suspects, (Pearl is her freind from school, who she said had to be a red mage-- "She's NOT a Thief, dehdeh. No way.") and she made me so proud when she chose the role of Warrior for herself.

The Final Fantasy games are a little tough on her, she (rightly) hates the idea of randomly spanwing battles, but once she became aware of the best way to win most of them (Rapidly pressing A until you win) she quickly found them annoying more than startling: "I just want to go to the castle. You fight, Dehdeh."
Also, she doesn't read passively, so keeping tabs on her party's health and navigating the menus was hard for her.

She loved that she and I were able to rescue a princess and be back to the castle in under an hour of real playing time, and she thought it was cool that we could walk around and talk to people in a town.

She also likes the music, and sometimes makes me sit around in a town or castle so she can listen to the music. She does not like the menu music. "DehDeh, what did you do? Put the castle music back."