I love reading everyone's histories with the franchise, especially since everyone always seems to start in a different place, with a very different perspective. I'm another post-FFVII baby here. I think I must have gotten into the franchise a few months before FFX-2 came out, I remember seeing advertising for it. I saw FFVII at a video rental store, and rented it because I'd heard good things about it. Of course, I kept extending the rental for about three months! I bought a ratty pre-owned copy of FFX, later picked up X-2. I was on holiday with my family in another city when I saw a pre-owned copy of FFVIII in a gaming store, and then proceeded to waste a bit of the vacation playing it, whoops. Of course, I overlevelled everyone whilst being shit at junctioning, so I got stuck in the Lunatic Pandora with only one save file. It took me years to go back and restart it. I'm now obsessive about backing up saves and making multiple save files.
FFXII was the first mainline FF game I played on release, and I adored it, also played it for months. I bought my PS3 for the Japanese release of FFXIII, and with owning a PS3, was able to finally play FFIX, FFVI, etc. Of course, I've played a lot of the junky spin-offs, sequels, and sub-series along the way, and thankfully World of Final Fantasy has surprisingly been a very funny breath of fresh air after a bit of a prolonged shitshow in the spin-off department.
I'd love to play the SNES (hell, even the GBA) version of FFVI. Never played I or II, still haven't finished III, even though the DS remake was really charming. I need to finish V, too, which I really liked. I kept hoping they'd do mini-remakes for V/VI like they did for III/IV. Dang it, Square.
At any rate, I'm excited for FFXV, and to revisit FFXII via TZA next year.