Origins of Final Fantasy Kingdom
In the latter half of November 2005, I was playing an emulated version of Final Fantasy III. I was stuck on where to go, after hitting Goldor Manor, and decided that any one of the sites out there could probably tell me where to go. (Don't ask me why I did not think to go to Gamefax.com)
Well, to my surprise, all those Ultimate Final fantasy sites out there were missing one game...III. Not to mention that they were missing other titles, like Mystic Quest, Tactics, and Crystal Chronicles. Later that night, I was telling my friend about how I thought that it was stupid that these games were massively missing from these Final fantasy sites. And he simply told me that getting upset about it would not do any good. I replied that I was not upset, just figured if you were going to make the claim, then you should showcase all the games. And his answer was: "You can't do anything about that. I mean come on John, what are you gonna do...build a website?"

It was right there, that I decided it was time to do so. I was going to create a site that had all the Final fantasy titles in it. So I set out to do so. The first site was hosted by tripod, and was a "free" site. I knew nothing about site building, nor did I know anything about the coding you could use. But luckily there was an editor to make everything for the novice in me to get things started.
I began setting everything up, and within a few hours, I had set main pages for I-X. Within a few days, all those pages were complete. I went hunting for some logo's to use, and came across Final Fantasy Logo's. I asked to use his logo's, and if he would be interested in becoming an affiliate. He agreed, and not only did I get some great logo's to begin with, but my very first affiliate.
Things were going along well, until December 6, 2005. The night was bad enough, cause I nailed a deer on the way home from work. But when I sat down to work on my site, I went to load a few video's, and found I only had 20MB of disk space. I was upset. So I began looking for another home. It was then that I came across Free Yellow. They were within my budget, provided more than ample disk space, and were very friendly and helpful. I soon had everything I done on the first site moved over to them.
On December 16, 2005, I registered Final Fantasy Kingdom, and purchased the domain. I was moving up. I now had my own domain name, and hey...no banner adds, or pop ups. I was a happy camper.
First sites, and heartbreak
By mid March, I had completed 75-80 pages. I had found the best affiliate I could have in Video Game Sprites, and most of the older games were now ready for creation. I finished Final Fantasy at 2:13am on April 1, 2006. It was a big event for me. I had completed a lot of different things, but that was my first complete site. VII followed the next day. Everything was going my way...or so I thought.
When I came home from work on April 13, 2005, I went into my site, to find every single image missing, and several pages gone.Most of VII, VIII, and IV had been removed. All my images were no longer there. When I asked what had happened, I found that a virus had nailed the site, and wiped most everything out. I was crushed. I decided to not continue on. I was not going to redo everything I had spent almost 5 months on.
New Beginnings
After about a week or two, My friends convinced me to give it another try. On April 21, 2006, I began Final fantasy Kingdom again. This time, I began with the idea of keeping each title separate from the main, with links back and forth. I also decided that each site would be done with two colors from their respective logo. Within two weeks, I had finished Final Fantasy. Two days later, Final Fantasy II joined the gang. Soon following was III, and IV. Three days after I finished Final fantasy IV, I moved back to my home town. There was about a month without internet, and nothing came of my site.
New Home, great things
In late July I got back online, and began working on Final fantasy V. This came with a grasping of HTML coding, learned from Myspace. It proved to be a great idea. The site had a more professional look, and feel to it. It was better received than any other to date. I then thought of returning to the other sites, and re-doing them. But I instead went forward. In September, I was given the OK to register my logo, thus making it solely belonging to Final fantasy kingdom. In late September, Final fantasy VI was added, and late October saw the return of Final Fantasy VII. By January 19, I had completed VIII. It was going so smoothly. People were picking up on the site, and visits were beginning to rise. Then it came. An e-mail to halt everything again.
I got an e-mail from a guy, on the 3rd of February. In this e-mail I was accused of taking different peoples sites, and placing them together. "Your sites are all different colors, and there is no similarities to them." He based this on the fact that All of my sites could be reached without going through the main site. (I guess he failed to see that all the different sites began with finalfantasykingdom.net) So I halted working on IX, and began a complete overhaul of the kingdom. I decided everything was going to be done in the same color scheme, as well as giving everything in regular type, instead of caps. I also wanted to place new things in almost every site. This was my chance to go back, and make the first 4 sites look a whole lot better.
Of course, this did not mean I was not going to make new sites. Between February, and October 2007 I completed three advance titles, and Mystic Quest as well. I hope to have the overhaul complete by VIII's one year anniversary. Right now I have only VII standing in the way.
New banner, new look, new company
On August 24, 2007 I created J.L. Inc. This is my website company, where Final Fantasy Kingdom is the first site in its location. On September 3, 2007, I bought a new house, with an office to work on my site. The new house offered more comfort, and calmness than my older house, and I have been able to get things accomplished far faster.
As of December 7, 2007 Final Fantasy Kingdom has seen the overhaul of all but one site. And now has seen the addition of 7 titles in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Also there have now been additions of On the Way to a Smile, and Maiden Who Travels the Planet, translated by me, and Typed by my friend Joe. The site now holds a total of 19 sites. This is definitely something of an accomplishment for the Kingdom. And with the overhaul of VIII getting underway, it will not be long before we can resume the main series once more.
Present: New year, overhaul complete
On January 20th, 2008, (one year and one day after originally completing Final fantasy VIII)Final Fantasy Kingdom's overhaul was finally complete. It was a difficult thing to do, but now that I can look back at it, I know the effort was well worth it.
There has also been a few new affiliates added, as well as several links placed in my link exchange. The family has suddenly begun to grow, and it has become a great feeling to know there are so many other friendly people in the internet world.
What does the future hold now? New titles for the first time since August/September, and the first main title since last year! Let us see what the future holds.
Crisis and the continuation
As of April, the completion of the Finest Fantasy for Advance is complete. It was a proud moment for me to finally finish in full a section of the kingdom. Though there may be minor things here or there added...there is little more that can be done for them.
There has been a 90% completion of IX, marking the first main title to be done since last year. Recently I have begun the work of X, X-2, XII, and have set the stage for XIII. Two weeks ago, I finally got Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and thus the section has begun to expand. As I draw near a completion of the main released games, my thought have begun to drift to what I will do next. Fore the last year, the set ups for the Kingdom Hearts series has been on the back burner. But I am not sure if that will be the first spin out. I have a great admiration for the Chrono series, as well as Xenogears. Only time can tell what is going to happen.