7th Saga: Or the Day I Bested my Dad

Growing up, the man crew in my house went through Role Playing Games pretty quickly. Between the three of us we covered a pretty wide swath of random medieval themed adventures of random names. We played Dungeon Magic, Sword of Vermilion, Landstalker; you name it. One of the games that gave me a great story, though, was 7th Saga.

Yeah, you heard that right: shout outs to 7th Saga! 7th Saga was a game on the Super Nintendo where you chose between one of seven heroes on a quest with a large bounty. Along the way, you could team up with the other characters you didn't choose, and even had to fight them along the way. Your options included a Knight, a Cleric, a Wizard, a Robot, a Demon, a Dwarf, and an Alien. It was unique in that it was a linear progression game but your character choice dramatically changed the storyline along the way. For a Super Nintendo RPG, it was pretty neat. When we got it (from who knows where; Flea Market is my guess) my Dad and I were playing the game at the same pace. He was playing as Kamil, the Human Knight. A solid choice; Kamil could heal a little bit, attack a little bit, defend a little bit, and all around was the most well balanced of the seven characters. A very well educated pick. I, on the other hand, was nine years old, and so I chose the mighty robot TETSUJIN. I'm not capitalizing his name for emphasis; his name was always capitalized in the game for whatever reason, while other text was not. Tetsujin was a tank that didn't care for chat. He wanted power, and he wanted you out of his way; obviously I found him to be the coolest.

One day, my Dad came to me with a problem. He had finished a certain dungeon three times now, and every time he finished and came to the next town, the evil alien Wilme was waiting to kill him. In order to get into the Inn and thus rest/save the game, Dad had to beat Wilme. Every time he did, though, Wilme would pound his brains in. Dad couldn't figure it out. I made a bold claim at that point; I would defeat the evil Wilme. My dad scoffed. There's no way I could beat Wilme--I was just a kid. In times when Dad couldn't do things, the only solution was to work harder and level up more; not just to keep banging one's head against the wall and expect different results. A rational line of thinking, but he forgot who he was dealing with. My Dad went so far as to offer up a whole dollar in the incredibly ridiculous event that I actually defeated Wilme.

So I took him up on it. My dad finished the dungeon as he had done so many times in the past, and Wilme waylaid my path. Wilme certainly was formidable. He came with a quick, steady onslaught of attacks. Where my Dad though, would pause his attack and try to heal his wounds, I continued pressing the A button on the Attack option. I knew that Wilme's offense would always outpace my defense, as it had always done with my Dad, so I just figured I'd give stupidly constant offense a shot. I think you can guess what happened next:

Wilme was defeated, and Dad sat there in shock. I subtly reminded him of the bounty he had placed upon Wilme's head, and he, mouth agape, sauntered into his room to procure my Washington. That was the first time I had proved myself better than my Dad in anything, and say what you want, I thought it was a big step in my development, right along with the time I beat Metal Man after my brother had failed multiple times in a row. Thanks again Wilme, you stupid, stupid Alien.