Editorial

First published in GRIND I, pages 4–7.

On 18 September 2012, a user named Dick Tree caused a sensation on the GameFAQs forums: he promised to spend hundreds of hours in the first reactor room of Final Fantasy VII and keep fighting enemies until the two characters controlled at the start of the game (Cloud and Barret) reached the maximum level 99. For each battle won, the heroes of the JRPG adventure gain 80 experience points apiece. And to reach the maximum level, each of them would need 2,452,783 experience points.

Anyone undertaking such a Herculean (and somewhat Sisyphean) task would have to face 30,659 almost identical battles, each lasting roughly a minute even when the enemies are crushed in a single hit. And obviously, the whole thing would have had to be spread over several days, and the game would have needed saving as often as possible to avoid losing hours of work to a power cut.

GameFAQs users were impressed by Dick Tree's promise and the effort it entailed: they started posting daily in the thread dedicated to the initiative, and some even placed bets on the author's consistency. Many were convinced that, eventually, anyone would realise the task was pointless and abandon it to spend their time on something else.

But Dick Tree seemed convinced of his mission – he even warned the sceptics that he had completed the mission once before, and this time he would document it in photographs to show everyone he was keeping his promise. After a few days, screenshots started appearing (taken with a mobile phone pointed at a CRT monitor, because we're still talking about a PlayStation 1 game).

Within two weeks, impressive proof of progress appeared: Cloud was level 46, and Barret had reached 41. But after this post, Dick Tree went inactive for two and a half months. Then he returned and apologised, saying he no longer had his PlayStation console and would get it back in a week. Shortly afterwards, the same Dick Tree announced he had restarted the project from scratch, without offering any explanation as to why.

SA

Later, he posted screenshots taken on a new TV, which included characters reaching level 52. But even this small progress, which took several months, was followed by a disappointing announcement: Dick Tree now has other commitments keeping him busy, but he believes he will have more time during the summer.

Almost two and a half years later, on 17 January 2015, the project was still not finished. So a GameFAQs forum user wrote a short post under the pseudonym CirclMaster: “Fuck Dick Tree, | should do this”. And over the following days, he started uploading screenshots of his own progress.

“Dick Tree should have stayed out of this topic, because he cannot win. Either | get to level 99 first and beat him in his own topic, or | successfully goad him into finishing despite his trolling. For the record, either way I’m staying the course and reaching level 99.”

- CirclMaster, February 2015.

By June 2015, having passed level 50 with both characters, CirclMaster started streaming his daily efforts to fulfil the challenge Dick Tree had originally promised. He created a Twitch channel and, over the months that followed, fought monsters that respawn every few seconds in exactly the same spot.

By March 2016, CirclMaster had passed level 76 and reached a growth rate of one level every 2 weeks. That's when he had an accident involving his shoulder and announced that his progress would slow down as he tried to play one-handed. It was also then that Dick Tree returned to the forum and started insulting CirclMaster, reminding him that he was the first to complete the task (though he never produced any proof).

But the miracle happened on 7 April 2017, during what had already become a traditional Twitch stream: CirclMaster managed to get Cloud and Barret to level 99 in the first reactor with enemies in Final Fantasy VII. Over 2 years and 3 months, the mysterious forum user spent 525 hours in-game performing a repetitive task. He kept at it even after an accident that later required shoulder surgery, and showed everyone that the mission Dick Tree started is achievable — with patience, dedication and consistency, anything becomes possible.

Afterwards, a user named Skub revived the thread Dick Tree had started, to ask the man behind the challenge what he thought about someone else beating him at his own game.

Dick Tree answered flatly: “He did a good job, but | did it first”.

The magazine is out!