Most of the first times posts deal with people's first times watching anime, and that makes a ton of sense given the site. Unfortunately, there is nothing notable to say about my first anime watching experience. Cartoon Network put DBZ on and I watched, end of story. As is the case with many of life's experiences the first time is not always the notable one, but it is subsequent interactions that really count, as was the case with myself and anime.

However, I never would have even gotten into anime if I hadn't been predisposed to like it thanks to another of Japan's exports, the JRPG. And as to RPGs, it really was love at first site.

Before I get to the ever important Lunar, I think I'll start at the beginning with my very first time meeting the RPG genre. It occurred when I was six or seven. Our well liked babysitter had moved away and we were introduced to a new babysitter, my only memory of whom is that she was mean. Luckily for me, her boyfriend kicked ass. Aside from doing sweet things like hitting baseball in the back yard, he liked to play Nintendo, and he would bring over one of his games Exodus: Ultima (it's the third Ultima game). I instantly knew, despite my young age, that this was my type of game. The fantasy setting, a land darkened with evil, and four adventurers braving the odds to bring peace back to the kingdom. Exodus had all these nice touches that would be refined in later games. There was the hidden city of Dawn, which only appeared in the forest during a full moon; hidden weapons to scour the world for; and there was a whole other world that lay beyond a whirlpool, a foreign shore home to mystic powers. To say the least, I was impressed but it wasn't yet meant to be. Our complaints about the babysitter finally hit home and while it was great to never had to see her again, that also meant no more Exodus for me, it would fade from memory.

Age nine brought a huge change, moving. It is funny how early certain aspects of our personality are formed but by age nine you could almost certainly describe me as a gamer and soon my closest friend at school was another such person, named Robert. When Robert and I first got together I made an amazing discovery, he had Ultima: Exodus. There it was again, after a two year absence. It was the return of THE GAME. Unfortunately Robert and I had different feelings towards the NES because he discovered I owned a game he liked just as much as I liked Exodus, Excite Bike. I never liked Excite Bike, I thought it was boring. All you did was drive your little bike over a bunch of hills, how could that ever compare to wielding destructive magic in the name of justice? Whenever we got together it would be an argument between which of the two we would play. Eventually I made a dream trade, I gave him Excite Bike, he gave me Exodus, what a deal! (I still have it). Thus was the beginning of my love of almost all things RPG (I have had the unfortunate fate of running into the occasional bad RPG, I'm looking at you Lunar for the DS) .

Robert was always on the cutting edge of technology and while we both had Genesises, he also had that amazing piece of tech, the Sega CD. One of the first games he got for the Sega CD was Lunar: the Silver Star. When I went over to his house he'd play it and show it to me, but I never go the chance to play it myself. Nonetheless I was blown away. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The sprites were far more detailed and animated than what was in Exodus and it has these amazing animated cut scenes. I remember the first cut scene he showed me of a large white dragon rising above the party in a crystallized cave. Incidentally Lunar was both my introduction to the JRPG and Japanese style animation (albeit pretty crude animation, it would be revised for the re-releases of the game). Unfortunately like Exodus I was separated from Lunar too soon when Robert moved away and it would be years later when I had a Play station 2 before I got to truly experience the game for myself. Still Lunar had opened my eyes to the JRPG and Japanese animation, sowing the seeds which Final Fantasy III (VI) would cultivate a few years down the road, but that's another story.