so reading this article

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=135708&page=1#

i actually remembered how i played my first Final fantasy game , and how was the experience moving on, this isn't a review thread, just how exactly it started, so share your own story, here is mine.

you see . i was a multiconsole owner from the start, i always wanted to own all the consoles , so i actually had  an Atari a Magnavox Odyssey (the VERY first one, was my dads) , and a FAMICOM NOT an NES , the red and white one you see. 

So back then i actually thought it was a different console from my friend's NES , hey i was a kid and didn't have internet! so don't blame me! xD 

so with it i was like the king of niche Japanese games, i bought a lot of Dragon Quests (it was actually called Dragon Warrior back then) and lots of beat em ups and lots of J-games, i LOVED them even though i couldn't read a single word, but i did understand some of the things that happen, so after playing lots of cool games, i found about this Final Fantasy II (IV) that everyone talking about (and by everyone i mean like two kids i knew xD) so i got very jealous because they own an NES while i own a Famicom ... which i thought was inferior to the NES at the time, so i went to find a game and then out of freaking nowhere a WILD Final Fantasy V appears.... wait a minute?! Final Fantasy V ? 5?!? but my friends have 2?  I MUST GET THIS ONE! TO RUB IT ON MY FRIENDS FACE! so i got it and surprise i actually lost a lot of time with my friends and more times enjoying teh eff out of the game, while it was still japanese i didn't give a damn, when i was a kid i actually skipped most of the dialog anyways.

so after awhile , my father bought an NES and my family began a Mario fever, this is the reason why i didn't like the original mario on NES , my family used to play ALL the time, and i didn't had much chance to play  other games, so i got really bored playing it over and over and over , we had only one tv back then, but me having the NES means i get to get the english games that i haven't got back then

i actually remember getting terribly confused by the numbering, (II was IV) , so i actually bought it twice by accident because i thought it was II and not IV, but i DID end up buying them all, can you believe it that i never figured out the storyline or anything that actually happens on FFIII until like 10 years (?) later when it was released in english on the DS? , yeah its silly i know  

oh and when my family bought the NES , the Super Famicom / SNES was released like just two weeks after that, that is yet another story of how my friend was teasing me with Super Mario World's AWESOME GRAPHICS, while i had inferior looking mario's, that game is still one of my favorite Mario games, but i actually didn't buy an SNES i bought a SEEGAA MEGA  Muthafucka! , and that awesome console wasn't region locked as well!  ... but thats another story xD

Friend of my fathers had a copy of FF8. I borrowed it and fell in love. Now I own every game released in the U,S,

Best series of all time IMO.

PS1. i had no idea what i was doing just pressing select and doing basic moves. this was back in like 1996 or so.

then in 2007 my brother in law showed me FF10 and that was it. i popped in the sega classic's CD and played the phantasy star games that were on it.

i enjoyed blitz ball so much i couldn't tell you. from them on RPG's become my new genre of gaming.

i've missed out on allot and it seems as if i'll never catch up. i can't say i'm a big fan of the direction the FF or industry is taking most RPG's but some seem ok. i'd love to have turn based RPG's come back, and more RPG's like VC.

my big bro brought home a ps1 along with ff7 in 1998. still playing it on psp

Seems everyone started playing it on PS1

My big brother brought FF7 used in some shop, he was reading reviews in magazines and all the magazines said the game was great so the brought it. First he didn't let me play so I watched all the story and events (even though I didn't knew a thing about english)
I actually recall grinding when he was not around, I really enjoyed the game. When he beat the game I started over again and got so hooked up I beat it like 5 times.
Since then, RPG are my favorite genre and began playing other FF games like Tactics (Awesome!) FF6, FF5, and the HD ones except 11 and 14

Awesome thread idea!
How I started was with final fantasy 8. I had advertisements when FF7 came out but was too young to understand what the game was. I had just purchased a PS2 in Grade 9 after owning a Nintendo 64 and wanted to get a few PS1 classics. I picked up FF8 and played it through. Loving it I picekd up 7 and decided that I wanted to try every game. Thus I played the games in the following order (sadly I remember):
1) FF8
2) FF7
3) FF9
4) Origins = 1,2
5) Anthology = 5,6
6) FF4
7) FFX
8) FFX-2
9) FF12
10) FF3 (NDS)
10) FF13

So happy to have played all of them!

Mom once bought me an official PS Mag, and lo and behold, it had a review of Final Fantasy IX and a walkthrough of it. I read it all, multiple times, and I fell in love with it, in my head at least (I still have the mag and cherish it). However, I didn't play one until FFX in 2003, the day I want to the shop to buy the game is still very very vivid in my head. I just came looking for a Final Fantasy, and being in the middle east, i haven't found any of the earlier ones, so I started with FFX, and what an awesome start that was.

And the rest is... an obsession!

hey i had a magazine similar to that when FFVII was going to be released, all the hype in the magazine was just too much xD they nearly always talk about FFVII and i remember theres like a whole article just talking about Cloud's Bike

I use to subscribe to Nintendo Power since about issue two or three. I would eagerly await it every month and spend that whole month pouring over every page. One month, a strategy guide came in the mail instead of the usual Nintendo Power and that strategy guide was for Final Fantasy.

I thought WTF is this stupid shit!? (in somewhat cleaner words since I was 9), I wanted my Nintendo Power, not some strategy guide for some crappy game!  I read the strategy guide but the game seemed pretty stupid so I skipped it.

That was my first experience with Final Fantasy.

My next experience was with Final Fantasy II (IV) on the SNES. My sister got it and made me play it. I was pretty shortly hooked and I loved it! I still remember the thrill of all the big moments in the game.

So that was my first real experience with Final Fantasy.

And with FFIII (VI) on the SNEs, it may have not been my first experience with Final Fantasy it was the game that made me know I wanted to make games for a living which made that one of the most important games ever for me.  I liked games before but it was the first game that ever really moved me.