One game in particular called The Legend of Dragoon that came out on the Playstation X in 1999, is probably and will always continue to be my favorite game of all time. It was given to me as a gift from my dad, I remember as I blankly stared on its small plastic casing, I thought nothing of it—it seemed like another feeble attempt at those Final Fantasy games, but I was seriously wrong in thinking that! I set it aside for a few days in hesitance, only to realize how truly addicting the game was the moment I started playing it. It had become one of the first RPGs I ever played, let alone liked…imagine that.
That game literally pulled the attention of me and those around me. It even manage to get my dad’s attention, in which he would occasionally wander into my room to see what I was up to, then sit down next to me and watch me play it. He would come by and watch me more and more each day; it was funny how it got to the point that if I ever had to leave the room for anything (work around the house or otherwise) we’d almost freaked out. My dad would offer to take up my position until I got back, keeping the game going until we reached the next save point all the while leveling up my characters. It’s really funny to see him get so involved in a video game.
Well time went by; I finished the game (it had a great ending sequence!) and thought I was done with it. Only to find that I had kept the urge to play it again and again, I must’ve beat that game about 7 times before I really realized how involved I was in it and how much it actually had an impact in my life.
Since then I’ve finished several colored, inked or pencil sketched works inspired by the game or story, otherwise fanart. I’ve actually started writing a fanfic that lasted about 64 pages before it died; which is hard enough considering I really don’t like to write that much. And here recently I have found a club on Deviant Art that is entirely devoted to the game. I enjoy drawing fanart for the club and the themed contests it hosts; I even found that one of my entries made it on the front page of the website. Being that Deviant Art is a huge international art website with thousands of new artists each day, you can imagine how hard it is to make it to the “Daily Feature” of the front page! I was overjoyed about that!
I will most likely continue to create, design and write down new ideas, fanart and character designs based from the game and one day hope to achieve my goal to produce the first manga book in honor of the game. I have even joined a petition (yeah I know, as “nerdy” as that sounds…) that is trying to get the Sony Entertainment Company to make a sequel to the game despite how old it is now. My pitch to the idea is that in maybe making the comic, after receiving Sony’s permission, I can help suggest to the company to consider the sequel idea by promoting the game and gathering more popularity for it with the manga concept. And who knows maybe one day in time I might even take a part in the development of the second game if they ever decide on making it.
~Marci Miller a.k.a Nobuko