Don't bother with nostalgia. Leave it in the past where it belongs. The thing that both of us seem to forget is at the time, we were so engrossed in those games, without the modern internet, that we had written down tons of gameplay tips and observations. I used to keep a journal with me to play F7 and F8, because I was having trouble keeping track of all the places and fights where I would have to either draw a summon from a boss, or use a particular one for an easier management. Passion really makes you overlook the obvious frustrations. I tried playing some of those games recently - I still have my old consoles and collections. It's just not the same. The more I look at it, the only thing that I realize is different is myself. Also, in F8, there was that frustrating section where you're on that tiny gyrocopter fighting hand to hand with that guard until you push him off while the school is fighting behind you, and the irony was that I only won when I didn't block at all and just kept punching him nonstop.

Oh don't get me wrong, the setting of VIII was awesome. It was the junction system and AI level scaling that ruined it for me.

I was also barely a teenager around that time. I remember thinking that finally having a TV in my room was groundbreaking because I didn't have to share console time with my older annoying sister. We did have separate consoles, but we didn't have separate memory cards, so we were both still forced to play games at separate intervals until I finally got my own. Naturally, the fight that led to this happening was when my sister pissed me off so much I deleted her save game by overwriting it with my own. She later discovered that I was doing much better at it than she was, and I that wasn't much further, so she just picked up where I left off. Ah, the problems from the old days . . .