I had already reached my 20s when the original came out, but I fucking spent hours on that and FF8, which both had imagination, style and beauty to burn - not to mention smashing soundtracks. I was hooked on my Speccy 48K as a kid to start with, but certainly wasted a chunk of my adolescence and a bit of adulthood on games - it's why I don't play 'em anymore (not that I think adults shouldn't play video games or anything.).
On a side note, the Advent Children film is pretty bad.