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Comment by Trasmatta | Hacker News Reader

SMRPG has an interesting place in my life. I got it when I was 12, and it sort of kickstarted my "online life". I started posting on the SMRPG GameFAQs message board, which was sort of my introduction to the internet. I made a lot of online friends there, some of whom I would stay up for hours and hours chatting with on AIM. One of those, I stayed friends with for about 15 years, until he disappeared one day.

Sometimes we would hang out on AIM and see who could answer questions from newbies the fastest. ("Which Final Fantasy is Culex from?" being a favorite.) Other times we would just talk about life. I remember talking with my best friend from those days (the one who disappeared) on the night the US invaded Iraq.

Nostalgia goggles and all, but I miss those days of the Internet.

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I know most people will say they transitioned from Digg to Reddit in the 2000s, but I feel like GameFAQs was the spiritual precursor to Reddit because there was a board for every game and even more general boards for most interests.

It had to be one of the most popular Web 1.0 sites around

I enjoyed this, thanks for sharing. That's sad about the 15 year friend disappearing.

Thank you! I hope he's doing okay, wherever he is. He did this a few times, where he would disappear, then come back later with a new username, saying that he had to get away for awhile for emotional reasons. This time he never came back again, though. I have regrets, and feel like I wasn't a good friend to him near the end. I just hope he's happy.

So...Which Final Fantasy is Culex from?

Edit: looks like I was wrong. I genuinely believed this for 26 years.

Which 4? There's 11 of them

GP said 4!, which I assume is 4 factorial, or 24. It looks like the 24th game in the series was Final Fantasy Origins:

https://thefinalfantasy.net/games/

Your edit makes me so happy that the "Culex in Final Fantasy" rumors still persist to this day

I hope a new generation of SMRPG players gets to experience that now for the next 26 years

The fight with Culex re-uses the boss music from FF4, though. (Even if he never appears there.)

I’m guessing that’s why I had the association. Thanks for reminding me!

Culex exists in a superposition, being present in both all Final Fantasy games and none, at the same time

None. He's original to Mario RPG. The allusion to Final Fantasy is just an easter egg.

I had absolutely no idea. I always saw him referred to as a final fantasy boss. I guess in mario rpg he's from that universe, but he's not actually from the universe. Crazy.

Culex uses the Final Fantasy 4 boss battle music, so some people mistakenly think he is from the game but it's just the music. I've played through FF4 over 10 times and he definitely is not in it ;)

FF4?

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