Hi, everyone. First post, and glad to join the community.

I've been a fan of FF since III came out on the SNES. Then I played VII, VIII and IX on PS1 a long time ago.

I recently decided to (re)play all main FF games and have completed I through VI using a DS Lite. Now that I'm on to VII and onward, I'm not sure what to do. I'd appreciate any input in the cheapest way to continue my saga. I don't own any of Sony's consoles so I need to decide what to buy.

Here's my reasoning as of now:

As far as I've gathered, a 60gb PS3 would be the best thing to have, since it would allow me to play all games (with some glitches on IX, X, X-2 and XII?), but this console is expensive and hard to find, it seems.

So is my only option to get both a PS2 and a slim PS3?
I'd play:
- VII and VIII PSN downloads on PS3.
- Shift to IX through XII on PS2.
- Back to PS3 for XIII.

Or should I rather get only a PS2 for now and play VII through XII all using discs? Then maybe by the time I'm done, the PS3 will have gone down in price... Even with this, I've heard PS2s have problems playing PS1 games, but I've been having a hard time finding Final Fantasy-specific info on backwards compatibility and memory-card issues. I'd be getting an easy-to-find PS2 slim, unless you advise looking harder for an older one.


Sorry for rambling, but I've been thinking about this way too long. Any alternate suggestions or comments on this?