The perfect new web site of 2024 is perhaps, towards all odds, a Ultimate Fantasy 8 fan website.
Yeah, that’s proper: Screw your fancy new PS5 Ultimate Fantasies — religious Ultimate Fantasy 8 fan Phil Salvador determined to launch a website dedicated to what he views is the best Final Fantasy, one stuffed with very humorous articles and impassioned arguments.
In his day job, Salvador works as library director of the Video Game History Foundation, which suggests he’s regularly discovering and cataloging outdated video games publications and unusually conscious of how video games like Ultimate Fantasy 8 had been obtained, mentioned, and promoted. That, coupled together with his deep and abiding love for the sport and a penchant for bizarre URLs (like https://ff8isthe.best), meant that Salvador had greater than sufficient fuel within the tank to gas a complete web site in his free time.
Not too long ago, I met with Salvador over video chat to speak about his new website, which he nonetheless can’t consider has taken off to the purpose that he’s being interviewed about it.
This interview has been edited for readability and size.
Polygon: It’s wild this took off, proper? You simply confirmed up with a website and a put up that claims “Final Fantasy 8 fucking rules, eat my ass.”
Phil Salvador: Yeah, that put up appeared to resonate with folks. The explanation I began it was simply that I’ve been amused by all the assorted novelty domains which have been sprouting up within the final couple of years now that there’s extra endings you need to use for URLs. I had developed type of a popularity amongst buddies and colleagues for being an aggressive defender of Ultimate Fantasy 8 and thought it could be enjoyable to make a spot the place I can dump my ideas on it with out it seeping into my different work.
I believe what has actually clicked with me about it and perhaps the explanation it’s clicking with different folks is that there’s not likely any level to it. I like the thought of getting a web site that’s not monetized and never feeding into some bigger model or social media accounts. It’s only a place the place I write some silly issues every now and then and generally it’s sensible and generally it’s not. And I miss that.
There’s a really early web spirit to it, when folks had been on the market simply making web sites. That they had no dream of being discovered by those who didn’t already learn about it. I positively suppose persons are responding to that.
Yeah, the response I’ve seen is that lots of people wish to additionally make one thing comparable. Folks miss the interval in your life when you possibly can simply be inventive and make issues for the hell of it. I believe that’s one thing all of us have as youngsters and that sort of goes away as we grow old and should take care of tasks and paychecks.
![Left to right: Seifer Almasy, Rinoa Heartilly, Squall Leonhart](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/36VSZFYmAbgydxOkNPrSyIxO7XA=/0x0:1280x720/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1280x720):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13755209/ss_c85c33fee4eacfdce31c788c81bc9cf683b7d54c.jpg)
Picture: Sq. Enix
I really like this weblog as a result of it’s a spot the place I can simply write a put up that claims “eat my ass” and no person can cease me. If folks reply to that, that’s their drawback. I hope there’s a important reappraisal of Ultimate Fantasy 8 within the close to future, however I don’t anticipate that. This isn’t going to be the web site to do it. It doesn’t should be.
Certainly one of my favourite posts on the location, subsequent to the incredible magazine gag you unearthed, is your essay on how we’re stuck in 2007, the 12 months you argue an early YouTuber ranted in regards to the sport and helped push public consensus of FF8 from “universally beloved” to “divisive.”
One thing we are saying on the Video Recreation Historical past Basis is that if you wish to research a online game, having the sport isn’t sufficient. We expect you should perceive the way it was performed and understood. So with that article particularly, I believed it was actually fascinating going again by all of the magazines any time one would come by that was within the vary of when Ultimate Fantasy 8 was getting reviewed. I’d all the time flip by and see what the evaluation mentioned, and folks had been ecstatic about it!
I believe a whole lot of these items we take with no consideration. We simply attribute it to what was within the air on the time however for those who have a look at what was taking place in other places of gaming tradition, you’ll be able to see how that shift occurs. You possibly can see how concepts get established early on, and that’s what we’re making an attempt to construct. Our assortment is round issues that can assist folks perceive what position video video games have in tradition and the way it’s modified over time.
Yeah, your weblog crystallized that shift for me in a approach I hadn’t totally registered!
Yeah, I believe particularly within the print days when there have been fewer folks publishing opinions or views, it was simpler to reshape how folks considered stuff. One of many examples I really like is that E.T. for the Atari 2600 obtained OK critiques when it got here out. It wasn’t beloved but it surely was a sport that obtained two stars in the identical problem that one thing else obtained one star. What occurred, although, is as folks started to write down the historical past of video video games and interview former Atari workers, of us at Atari and round that space used E.T. and Pac-Man as scapegoats for what was taking place throughout the trade.
It’s change into pillaried and this type of baby of Omelas that we simply heap our abuse on in an effort to clarify the historical past of video video games. I believe it’s value going again and understanding how folks checked out it at completely different instances as a result of it’s by no means that minimize and dry. We would like a straightforward narrative and sport historical past isn’t that straightforward.
![Squall and Rinoa approach each other against a sunset for an embrace in this screenshot from Final Fantasy 8 Remastered](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QP9e4nNC0WNpWprMOsDk1sZkXco=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22823751/ss_28f59ce8d8f6d341ca6c3613e09d325ef926ffc8.jpg)
Picture: Sq. Enix
One of many core messages I’m gonna be writing about within the weblog is the concept that I believe one of many causes there’s been such a backlash to Ultimate Fantasy 8 through the years is that it’s a sport that’s about love and feelings and vulnerability. Early web tradition responded to the truth that Ultimate Fantasy 8 is predominantly a love story by writing it off or saying it’s silly. […] Now that now we have such nice range in who’s expressing their opinions about these items, now we have people who find themselves extra prepared to embrace that.
Squall’s arc in that sport is sort of mirroring the viewers’s standoffish posture to an emotional love story on the time, proper?
It’s about his character changing into weak. Squall and Rinoa are each coping with a whole lot of tragedy and loneliness of their life — Rinoa by no means actually belonged to her household and has been sort of combating towards that and pushing folks away from her, and Squall refuses to open himself as much as folks — and so they discover themselves and each mature by the tip of the story. I don’t wish to spoil the house scene with them, however folks will know this scene; it’s a stunning expression of individuals actually discovering one another.
You will have a call to action sort of hidden away on the location for folks to only do their very own model of this kind of website. Are you able to inform me somewhat extra about that?
I really like seeing folks be weirdly inventive on-line. I really like uncommon Twitch streams. I really like folks doing experimental issues with YouTube. I really like daring animation. I really like anybody who’s making an attempt to only do one thing as a result of they’ll and I really feel just like the web as a medium has fallen away as a venue for that. Clearly I got here of age within the early 2000s and there have been a whole lot of novelty web sites. Folks making bizarre single-serving websites or locations the place they’d put bizarre issues. I believe we’ve gotten used to the concept that the online is only a place you search to seek out details about one thing and never a venue for expression in the identical approach that an experimental Twitch stream is perhaps.
I don’t suppose we have to revert again to our relationship with the online because it was within the ’90s, however I believe that we are able to carve out an area for one thing like this. This website has been a enjoyable experiment as a result of I had completely no expectations for it. I used to be gonna write issues on it for enjoyable and ship them to buddies and bizarrely it’s caught on nearly completely by phrase of mouth. And that’s magical to me. I’ve tried Googling the location and perhaps it’s as a result of it’s new, but it surely doesn’t actually present up in search and I don’t actually care. The location exists. Eat my ass.