Hello to you.

So, the Final Fantasy series. An aquired taste, I know, but I've always loved them. The characters, the storylines, the sense of purpose, the team management, casting spells on goblins, a fantastic set of games and I really enjoy playing them. But for all that, I've never actually managed to finish a game...
Until now.

Yeah, I managed to finish Final Fantasy 1, GET MEH! I've had the game for about 4 years on my Gameboy Advance SP, and I finished it this morning, oh yes. The ending was a bit rubbish, for all the power the SP was supposed to have they might at least have done a bit more for the final scenes of the game, but the last boss was suitably impossible, I never should have been able to beat him. And when I finally did, I had a big cheesy grin across my face, which very rarely happens when I'm playing games anymore. So, that's 1 out of the way, now let's move on to 2...

What else? Oh yes... I've been having my usual cynical thoughts about the music industry once again, in the light of last night's Battle Of The Bands contest in Wolverhampton. Basically, to make it as a band in the music industry you need to be either a) doing something nobody has ever done before, which happens once every 4 or 5 years, or b) doing the same thing everybody else is doing, which is essentially all the bands that spring up in the intervening time. I'll moan more on the Crashpoint blog, suffice to say for now that I have even less patience for Indie music than I did before, and I didn't even think that was possible.

BOTB aside, incidentally, Crashpoint has managed to record another demo, and it is the best recording I have EVER done. Unfortunately with my usual approach to things I forgot that the post office closes at 12:30 on Saturdays, which has delayed the copywrighting process at least until Monday. Until that's sorted out, the people who get to hear the CD are the ones who happen to be hanging around when we play it. Just a few more days guys.

Apart from that... Well, there are some quite significant things going on in both my life and some of my friends right now. As some of them are actually very serious I'm not going to go in to too much detail here, but it's made me think a lot about how I conduct myself both professionally and socially, how much I value my friends, and how much they value me. One or two people know what I'm talking about here and if you do then please respect my wish not to have the facts disclosed publicly on the internet. But having seen things going on, I'm starting to get a much more realistic- if terrifying- perspective on life and things that go on in it.

My Final Fantasy fixation aside, it might be time to put to bed this 'Story-book Ending' ideal I've been living in for the past 23 years.

We'll see.

matt486