Maybe Final Fantasy IX is my favourite game of all time because of my early exposure to – say this along with me in your most pretentiously flowery accent – the theatre.
Hoping their kid wouldn’t be the type to sit inside doing nothing but playing videogames, my parents often took me to our local theatre, where I saw professional actors perform everything from Shakespeare to Mamet long before I’d even heard of a Japanese RPG. By the time a friend loaned, I must’ve been psychically primed to love a game that begins with a crew of actor-thieves putting on a play called I Want To Be Your Canary before kidnapping the princess-in-distress and setting off on a world-spanning adventure.
