The Complete History of Final Fantasy

foreign on the 18th of December 1987 a Japanese video game publisher called Square released a game that they hoped would revive their ailing fortunes and lift Them Up From the Ashes of mediocrity it was by no means a large resort but for some Time Square had been adrift in a sea of uncertainty few of their games had fostered any kind of lasting appeal and their search for the answer highlighted just how much they were struggling to find their feet in the ever-evolving landscape of the Japanese video gaming industry this new game would be their anchor a foundation upon which they could build and grow and following its initial success countless spin-offs and sequels would be spawned each one building upon the rich Legacy of that original game as of March 2022 that Legacy stands to the tune of over 173 million copies being sold something that has solidified the franchise amongst the pantheon of gaming greats that anchor had become entrenched and immovable allowing square and subsequently Square Enix to become a juggernaut within the video gaming industry but it all began with that fateful release back in December of 1987 with a game that was simply called Final Fantasy [Music] by 1987 Square had become an established publisher and developer of video games in Japan they had found initial success on personal computers producing numerous text-based adventure games Cruise Chaser blastian Alpha would serve as shining examples each push boundaries bringing something new to Market but after witnessing the continued success of Nintendo's family computer the company was encouraged to move away from the tried and tested the only challenge was that they lacked the experience to do so in an effective manner Square had become accustomed to creating games that suited a more mature audience but the famicom was attracting an audience that was younger and more vibrant and the types of games that appealed to this new audience were not text-based Adventures or early role-playing games they were high octane action-based experiences that could satisfy the Cravings of this younger audience and give them the arcade experience from their living rooms in spite of this the employees at Square were undeterred they had faced challenges before and a belief was instilled that there was every chance a silver bullet of a game could be made and that this game would help them to realize the potential for huge financial returns associated with developing games for the famicom Square signed on with Nintendo as a famicom developer on the 24th of June 1985. this made them something of a Trailblazer as they were one of the first Japanese developers to sign with Nintendo but it would take some time until Square were ready to truly commit to the system one of the main challenges was that Square's personal computer games had seen a dramatic upturn in performance their first game called the death trap was created by a group of part-time employees with hironobu sakaguchi at the helm it would end up generating around 120 000 US Dollars upon its release in October of 1984 and a success would prompt the production of a sequel Again overseen by sakaguchi will the death trap 2 featured the same core gameplay and narrative premise but this time the scope was much more ambitious Square went heavy on graphical Innovation and it's believed that the death trap 2 became Japan's first animated PC game when it launched during the middle of 1985. these technical features when combined with a new approach to product marketing would see the death trap 2 end up generating approximately 2.4 million US dollars a 1 900 increase in Revenue compared to its predecessor with the death trap 2 launching around the same time as the agreement had been signed with Nintendo squares plans to develop for the famicom were placed on hold they would still support the system releasing a port of fexter but most of the Newfound Capital was used to further invest in producing games for personal computers it saw skilled Freelancers hired to either support existing staff or replace those that fell by the wayside and Partnerships were explored to further Elevate the quality of the games they were producing Cruise Chaser blasty and Alpha served as evidence for this new vision for cruise Chaser blasty Square would collaborate with a respected animation house called nip on Sunrise and due to the scale of the initiative Square even adapted the story into a manga and planned to release an original video animation to further expand the universe for sakaguchi this was also a first opportunity to showcase his interest in the role-playing genre as instead of making another adventure game Cruise Chaser blasty was created as a first person role-playing game based around Mex for Alpha which would be overseen by a close friend of sakaguchi called hiromichi Tanaka Square will continue to evolve the quality of their interactive text-based Adventures it would see time and money invested in cutting-edge technology with the final product combining complex animations sound effects and music to create a dynamic and engaging video game both games will be well received helping Square to consolidate their position as an up-and-coming video game developer and publisher and to ensure their trajectory continued to move in the right direction three crucial decisions were made prominent staff members such as sakaguchi and Tanaka were rewarded with full-time contracts the office would be moved from hiyoshi to Ginza an upscale part of Tokyo and they would start developing meaningful games for the famicom these steps showed squares Ambitions but there was one slight issue when the deal had been signed with Nintendo Square was reportedly the seventh company to do so fast forward a year later and 26 separate Publishers have produced gains for the famicom with a majority of them outside of a few outliers like Square managing to release at least two games whereas Square had waited these Publishers had seen the opportunity and attempted to take full advantage as a result Square were left playing catch-up but even still there was a confidence within the company that they would be able to wrestle market share away from their competitors by producing compelling arcade-based experiences and to ensure they had the best chance of success for their first famicom game which would be called King's night they assigned some of their top talent it would see hironobu sakaguchi assigned as director with kazuko Shibuya and hiromi Ito assigned to work on the artistic vision would then be assigned as the composer and due to a lack of experience working on the famicom Square collaborated with Works a third-party development company who had previously worked with them on the famicom port of fexter the control King's night would resonate with the famicom audience instead of building on their experience with slower more methodical games the plan was to create a vertical scrolling shooter and the reason for this was simple the scrolling shooter genre had seen a huge boost in popularity throughout the early 1980s thanks to Japanese arcades and that popularity had spilled over to the famicom this had been led by a range of ports with 1942 and twin B both selling over a million copies each and Publishers had started to produce famicom exclusive games in the genre often based on existing IPS even though they didn't have a license to leverage Square's leadership believed that if they could create a compelling vertical scrolling shooter success would be easier to achieve but sakaguchi didn't just want to create a derivative experience at the time many shooters were either based within a modern day war setting where a futuristic space setting neither sub-genre was all that appealing to sakaguchi when looking for alternative sources of inspiration a game called nightmare stood out unlike its contemporaries nightmare was set within ancient Greece as such instead of using guns and lasers its protagonist would shoot arrows and use swords upon launch nightmare would be lauded with many Publications recommending it to their readers due to its innovative visuals and overall quality of gameplay and due to how well it was received there was a feeling that it would serve as the perfect blueprint for sakaguchi's vision for what a vertical scrolling shooter should be it would see a similar style of gameplay adopted but for King's Knight a broader cast of characters would be created sakaguchi would also layer over role-playing mechanics something that facilitated the creation of a brand new genre that was dubbed the formation RPG this decision further emphasized sakaguchi's desire to create role-playing games but with King's Knight not being well received by critics or fans the leadership team at Square would end up pushing sakaguchi to be more direct with subsequent games beyond that even though sakaguchi did have a desire to make a more complete role-playing game neither he nor close members of his team had the required technical know-how in order to make it happen at the time famicom cartridges did not have any kind of method for saving data and there was a belief that role-playing games due to how long their stories were and how long gameplay sessions can end up being would need some kind of method for saving otherwise players would get frustrated by not being able to pick up where they left off as such sakaguchi had no real choice but to tackle other action-based genres such as the rail shooter and driving simulator and although there was still room for Innovation this would come in the form of technical aspects as opposed to intricate gameplay mechanics a sakaguchi toiled away trying to make a Smash Hit for the famicom other mines in the company were hard at work creating games for the famicom disk system Nintendo had developed this peripheral as a way of helping to reduce the retail price of games taking direct inspiration from personal computers it would see the initial system have a hefty price tag but the games themselves would retail at about half the price of a typical famicom game it would also be possible to buy blank discs which could then be taken into stores to have brand new games loaded onto them for as little as 500 yen for consumers this was a game changer brand new games could now be purchased for 90 less than the typical retail price and the Hope Was That by removing the price tag it would lead to increased demand Publishers flocked to take advantage and with the storage and medium being much more familiar to square instead of waiting around like they had done with the famicom they went all in immediately such was the level of Square's commitment that multiple games were planned for development they even found it and helmed the disc original group a publishing arm that would see them distribute gains on the famicom disk system for similar sized Japanese developers such as crystalsoft system sarcom and hummingbird soft the first game released by square for the famcom disk system would be Crystal Dragon it was honed by hiromichi Tanaka and by leveraging all the experienced Tanner and his team had gained from developing adventure games or personal computers as well as aggressive traditional and guerrilla marketing campaigns Bristol Dragon would end up selling over 500 000 copies shortly after launch another employee at squared called kazuhiko Aoki started work on an ambitious project that was meant to be called saikon densetsu the emergence of Excalibur deciding to take a big chance Aoki planned psychedensetsu as a party-based role-playing game despite not being given full permission to do so the story was planned to be rooted in high fantasy with players taking control of a party that consisted of four interchangeable characters the scale of the game was also planned to be beyond anything seen before and having become enthused by all of this Square's publicity Department launched an advertising campaign before development had even started during which it was revealed that the game would come on five discs something that would have seen saikon densetsu releasing as the largest game ever produced for the famicom disk system unfortunately once members of the senior management team took a closer look at the project instead of asking Aoki to scale back the vision they chose the DraStic action of canceling the game outright before any significant progress was made the fate of saikon densetsu was emblematic of The Wider sentiment towards role-playing games within Square there were developers such as sakaguchi and Aoki who adored the genre and wanted to explore and experiment with possibilities but there were others within the management layer who felt that creating role-playing games would not be a prudent financial decision they instead believed that players wanted fast-paced action games and the famicom best sellers list supported that view by mid 1986 35 games had sold more than 1 million copies on the famicom in the early years the majority of these have been published by Nintendo But as time went on third-party Publishers had begun to step out from Nintendo's Shadow it would see companies such as Hudson soft Capcom and Konami released now iconic games such as Bomberman ghosts and goblins and gradius and even though the literal genre differed they all had a strong Focus towards action Bomberman for example was an action puzzle game ghosts and goblins was a 2d action platformer and gradius was a horizontal side-scrolling shooter the very epitome of action these games highlighted the general Trend and it will be further emphasized by games like the Legend of Zelda and heidelide neither game had been designed with the famicom in mind with the Legend of Zelda releasing in Japan on the famicom disk system and hydeloid being ported over from personal computers but they each showed that the action genre could be fused together with the adventure and role-playing genres to create compelling experiences it also showed that developers who had the opportunity to take risks would be rewarded but with square seeing diminishing returns from their support of the famicom disk system they chose to focus their efforts on initiatives that they believed would reduce the risk as much as possible as such they focused on creating adventure games for the famicom disk system explored the creation of licensed games and kept the famicom as their platform Ace in the Hole where they would experiment but in a controlled manner after the publishing of King's Knight this saw sakaguchi oversee the creation of a rail shooter called operation jump out and a racing game called Highway Star but while the team toiled away on these new efforts something quite unexpected was happening within the Japanese video games industry on the 27th of May 1986 an unorthodox publisher by the name of annex had gone to Market with a game called Dragon Quest unlike other Publishers who often published games developed by their own internal teams or select Partners NX operated on a more fluid model they would instead ask the Japanese public for ideas to competitions offering cash prizes for the winners the first major run of this concept saw over 300 programming hobbyists submit ideas 13 were successful with Enix publishing them all within the same window but amongst those 13 two stood out the first a puzzle platformer called door door was submitted by a 19 year old individual named koichi Nakamura NX paid Nakamura 500 000 Yen for the submission and with it going on to sell over 200 000 copies it granted Nakamura access to a sizable amount of royalties the second a tennis simulation game called love match tennis was presented by a 29 year old individual named Yuji hori a freelance writer for weekly Shonen Jump for coming first in the competition hori was paid 1 million yen the equivalent of 5 000 US dollars following this initial wave of releases both Nakamura and hori would continue to work with NX later that same year they collaborated to create the bortopia serial murder case an Innovative and influential visual novel that would even Inspire the likes of hideo Kojima to want to make games Nakamura were then found his own development studio called chonsoft in 1984 but NX will continue the relationship and this would lead to another collaboration with hori that would end up becoming one of the most influential Japanese video games of all time Dragon Quest Keen to continue innovating NX decided to send Nakamura and hori to Apple fest a North American Conference dedicated to all things Apple many Western developers would showcase their latest games and NX hoped that the pair would gain exposure to new weight of thinking the trip would have the desired effect as two franchises stood out Wizardry and Ultima both games had made waves throughout the early 1980s with each franchise having three engines within the first three years of the decade but even though they were developed for the Apple II and both hori and Nakamura had specialized in making games for Japanese personal computers the pair were intrigued by the famicom and decided to take a big risk at the time role-playing games weren't all that popular in Japan and they were certainly not popular on home consoles this in itself represented a real challenge as they will be pushing against the supposed demands of the market but hori felt as though Japanese Gamers deserved the chance to experience the Thrills that Western role-playing games offered and he set about attempting to figure out how they could create a more japanese-centric adaptation of the genre throughout the initial planning hori was adamant that Dragon Quest should deviate away from some of the already released role-playing games by becoming more accessible they wanted it to be enjoyable for anyone who owned a famicom and was curious as opposed to being restricted to only being enjoyable by the so-called hardcore Gamers of the time they also wanted to create a very clear distinction between arcade action-focused ports that had proliferated onto the system which were designed to make players have frequent game overs based on this hori vowed to make a game where players could enjoy it Long play sessions without having to worry about seeing a game over screen something that would be complemented by a simple control scheme that would make use of a command-based menu system they also hired an artist to create Promotional and in-game assets as well as the box art as they believe this would help the game feel more cool and approachable that artist would be Akira Toriyama who at the time was a rising star having started to gain some Renown for his work on a relatively new manga called Dragon Ball upon its release though enix's worst fears were realized Dragon Quest did not resonate with the Japanese public and initial sales were so low that there were fears that NX would even make a loss in response hori went on the charm offensive with the Japanese public writing a string of articles in Shonen Jump magazine aimed at explaining the concept of role-playing games those who were then intrigued enough to purchase found themselves hooked and over the next six to nine months the combination of new articles and Word of Mouth helped Dragon Quest to overcome its slump and become a must-have game for the famicom fast forward one year and Dragon Quest have managed to sell more than 1.5 million copies becoming one of the best selling games on the system and it not only proved from a technical perspective that it was possible for role-playing games to be made on the famicom it also proved that they could sell and sell well thank you the success of Dragon Quest was just what sakaguchi needed he had been enjoying Western role-playing games for some time as had other members of the team at square but due to a combination of factors even though attempts had been made to produce the type of role-playing game he himself would want to play there was limited appetite within Square to be proactive in supporting the production of this type of game and this was especially true following their decision to shift their focus towards developing for the famicom however towards the start of 1987 there became a realization amongst the Square's management team that things were not going as well as they had hoped this realization led to certain barriers being broken down and it presented an opportunity that sakaguchi would attempt to seize with significant gusto within a few short years Square had produced a whole host of video games and made a lot of money this had them been used to hire a raft of full-time employees and invest in high-end office space within one of the most exclusive business districts in Tokyo but despite the huge levels of investment squares Revenue did not increase in any kind of meaningful way to turn around their fortunes the president of square a man named masafumi Miyamoto made an intriguing decision he decided in principle to divide the company into four teams but in the initial instance each team would only consist of one person a team leader it would be their responsibility to come up with a compelling game concept and present it to the entire company which by this point consisted of around 50 people the teams would then be formed by using a democratic system as each employee would be given the freedom to choose the idea that they wanted to work on as one of the chosen team leaders sakaguchi thought hard about what to present for some time he had been wanting to build a compelling role-playing game but after the company shifted Focus towards the famicom this was considered impossible that was until the release of Dragon Quest it not only shattered preconceived notions around the technical limitations of the famicom but proved that role-playing games could be a huge Commercial Success on the system with Dragon Quest 2 surpassing the original in almost every way sakaguchi felt the time was right for square to tackle a role-playing game themselves and so he presented his vision for a role-playing game to the entire company declaring that their ambition should be to knock Dragon Quest from its perch after seeing their presentations only three people decided to support sakaguchi's vision due to how successful Dragon Quest had become the rest felt that sakaguchi's Ambitions were just too bold bordering on arrogant and disrespectful the majority instead chose to support the game presented by hiromichi Tanaka which proposed creating a side-scrolling action game based on the alien movie franchise this was not an ideal start but the seed had at least been planted and even though sakaguchi was able to only convince a few people that a compelling and successful role-playing game could be made on the famicom that was still better than convincing no people after the dust settled sakaguchi and his small team were relocated to another building a warehouse with just two rooms here instead of working on the role-playing game sakaguchi had presented to the company the majority of the team started working on Highway Star an arcade Star racing game that was more in line with what the leadership at Square were wanting to see at the time however not everyone was assigned by sakaguchi to work on Highway Star an individual calls koichi ishi was separated from the rest of the team tasked with doing initial planning on the role-playing game and while he occupied one of the rooms by himself even creating a makeshift Cuba called out of some foldable conference tables to make it feel more professional everyone else was cramped into the other room to work on Highway Star this was a real sink or swim moment for ishi having joined Square towards the end of 1986 ishi had very little experience within the video games industry and he almost didn't even proceed through the interview process as sakaguchi was quite shocked to see someone turn up looking like a thug wearing a leather jacket with peacock-like feathers attached but ishi turned out to be the very literal manifestation of not judging a book by its cover as the interview progressed ishi showed sakaguchi his notebook inside were tons of cute character drawings and wondrous Concepts they blew sakaguchi away and he became convinced that what is she lacked in experience he would make up for with creativity after being assigned to work on the role-playing game ishi was more than aware of the scale of the task ahead after all Dragon Quest had been a Monumental success and sakaguchi wanted this new game to try and take its place as the King of the Hill having already played Dragon Quest and other games in similar adjacent genres like The Legend of Zelda Wizardry and Ultima ishi's first task was to establish what he liked and disliked about each of those games alongside this ishi also began to formalize the many ideas and illustrations that had found their way into his notebooks over the years and he thoroughly enjoyed figuring out how these would translate into a digital format one of the ideas that had featured with a high degree of prominence focused on five elements and how they should be integrated into a world where supernatural beings were prevalent the idea was to introduce four elements that were grounded in reality and these will be enriched through the medium of fantasy The Fifth Element was then planned to be something unconventional but after careful consideration this fifth element which was meant to be dubbed Mana was removed the four elements that remained would become associated with crystals and they would end up becoming a focal point of the narrative they would provide an impetus for the four protagonists guiding their Journey around the world to fight four powerful bosses each of whom guarded much larger crystals alongside this is she introduced a suite of Design Concepts that will be retained as development commenced such as creating a diorama inspired world map the introduction of a title card that would show The Game's prologue had concluded and that the game's first boss Garland should also be the game's final boss another important decision would relate to the battle system many of the popular role-playing games irrespective of where they had been developed in the world had either seen combat play out in the field or in a separate first-person battle scene as she felt this was restrictive and instead proposed a side-on view that would allow players to see their entire party on one side of the screen and the array of enemies they were facing on the other this decision would allow for more Spotlight to be placed on a simplified class system as each job as they would become known would have a unique visual style and by having a side-on approach players would see how their formation stacked up against that of their enemy by the time Highway Star was wrapping up ishi had been working for a few months on the role-playing Concepts Some solid foundations have been created but there were numerous challenges ahead even still sakaguchi was incredibly driven to make this project succeed and wanted to be as efficient as possible with the remaining time they had for years it had been his dream to make video games but neither King's Knights nor operation jump out or games that played to his strengths as a creator with both titles struggling from both a critical and Commercial perspective and Highway Star suffering a similar fate sakaguchi made a promise to himself unless this next game performed well enough to prove that he had what it took to make it within the video games industry he would quit return to University and get a more sensible job with the team being so small it became a necessity for everyone to chip in irrespective of their strengths and weaknesses they just had to make it work asakaguchi would later share the mentality of the team at the time was that there was no guarantee this game would make it there were a lot of worries a lot of unstable factors going into this project the notion of mucking in was evidenced everywhere it meant that despite kazako Shibuya being the designated artist within the team ishi for example learned how to do pixel art so that he could help out and this led to him also working on creating the user interface to create something compelling he created thick borders around the menu boxes using the iron pipes from Mario Brothers as an inspiration it would also be ishi who came up with a now famed White Glove cursor which was inspired by a game called crack out but as talented and driven as the team was they also knew when limits have been reached and there was a feeling that if the game were to stand out and be seen as a genuine competitor to Dragon Quest external help would be required to enhance existing skill sets and create something unique the two major areas that this applied to were the narrative and the artistic Direction sakaguchi had worked on numerous narratives during his time at square but his role would vary sometimes he would come up with a wider Concepts and work with writers to help formalize those Concepts into something coherent while other times he would take ownership of the entire process for this game sakaguchi decided it would be best to seek external help so they commissioned a professional writer called Kenji tarada and tasked him with taking the concepts created by both ishi and sakaguchi and incorporating them into a compelling narrative Beyond this even though Shibuya had become the go-to person for sprite work at square and was an incredible artist in her own right if she felt that they needed something more they needed an illustrator as she had been studying illustration for some time using them as a source of inspiration and outside of artists such as Rodney Matthews and Roger Hildebrand is she would almost always come back to a Japanese artist called yoshitaka Amano Amino was nothing short of an artistic Prodigy from a young age he just wanted to draw and such was his fascination with drawing that he didn't want his creativity to be burdened by rules and regulations it saw Amino reject the opportunity to attend four more art classes as he instead wanted to learn and explore by taking his own path this path would see him join the prestigious tatsunoko Productions at the tender age of just 15 years old and such was his talent that the head of tatsunoko Productions tatsuro Yoshida would end up being his mentor Amino would end up staying at the company for over a decade but even though he was given a chance to work on franchises such as Speed Racer and gacha man and enjoyed his work the Creative Drive inside led to him yearning for something else it saw armino start to explore with more experimental art styles and he became inspired by Western artists such as Frank Frazetta who had created awe-inspiring covers for comic books years of study led to Amino becoming convinced his future at Laos where and so after leaving tatsunoko Productions he became a freelance illustrator it wouldn't take long for someone to recognize his talent and ammonia was hired to work on Vampire Hunter D alongside this he also started to release books that contained his works and one of the first called maten would end up leaving a lasting impression on ishi when thinking about illustrators ishi therefore recommended to sakaguchi that they speak to Amano but having no clue who Amino was sakaguchi rejected the notion as he wanted to hire an artist of great Renown much like Enix had done when they commissioned Akira Toriyama to work on Dragon Quest after searching on his own sakaguchi found an artist he thought would fit the bill that artist turned out to be Amino soon after sakaguchi sent a proposal to Amano and then proceeded to visit his studio with ishian Shibuya to discuss what it would be like to work on a video game it just so happened that even though Amino was unfamiliar with square and was tentative about working on video games he did want to work with fantasy as a theme with a deal signed the team at Square thought hard about how they wanted armono to contribute to the project they didn't want to place too many restrictions so as to not inhibit creativity but one aspect was stressed to differentiate Final Fantasy from Dragon Quest the artwork had to cater to adults as opposed to children to ensure this mature theme was consistent omno would be tasked with providing artwork for the game's box art and manual but perhaps his most important role related to the creation of a plethora of illustrations that ishi and Shibuya could then use as a reference for creating pixel art in game by this point the project was starting to gain some traction and when other projects at Square finished up staff members were more than Keen to see how they could contribute at various points you would see the likes of akitoshi kawazu hiroyuki Ito and Ken Narita join and they would each make significant contributions kawasu for example leveraged his experience playing and creating tabletop role-playing games while at University he would create the underlying gameplay mechanics that would bring ishi's character classes to life Ito whose main role was debugging would also end up having a direct impact on the turn-based battle system after seeing aside on view concept created by ishi he felt it resembled a typical NFL match with the opposing side would square off against each other making all their tactical decisions before the play started Narita would then be joined by kiyoshi Yoshi to program the entire battle system something that involved implementing the detailed design specifications provided by kawazu and Ito and this would be an interesting distinction as the involvement of Naruto and Yoshi on the battle system allowed Nasir jabeli sakaguchi's main programmer to focus elsewhere for all of nasir's talents having worked so long on action-based games he struggled to understand many of the concepts relating to role-playing games and with there being a language barrier as Nasir only spoke limited Japanese sakaguchi struggled to find a way to explain these Concepts in a way that made sense one prominent example was that Nasir couldn't understand the concept of hit points in his mind if someone got hit they should die immediately or at least lose a life it meant that even though Nasir was brilliant using Japanese programmers for these particular elements proved to be much more efficient Nasir was then tasked with working on the programming for everything else and that task would end up being massive in scale it would see Nasir not only have to figure out how to make proper use of all the visual assets and how the various scenes would connect but he would also be responsible for doing manual coding have every single line of dialogue and every single cutscene animation Nasir also pushed boundaries and even went rogue at times it was through his innovations that the airship functioned in such an effective manner as he figured out a way to have the screen move four times the speed without there being any kind of performance reduction and beyond that Nasir also had time to program the secret 15 puzzle minigame that not even sakaguchi knew about as well as an anti-piracy script that was able to detect attempts to adjust the source code and render the product inoperable each of these elements helped to make this project into something that was starting to feel quite special and after seeing what was being created more and more staff members wanted to join even hiramichitanaka would join after finishing up with a game called The Cursed Treasure of Cleopatra as for Takashi tokita towards the end it would see there being three programmers four planners four artists and five other people working in supporting areas and perhaps one of the most notable in this realm would be the game's composer naboro urematsu umatsu have been working with square since the release of cruise Chaser blasty but before that he had been struggling to make ends meet as a musician by today's standards umatsu was a late bloomer with his interest in musical instruments only coming at the age of 12. in the following years that interest blossomed into something else and it led to a teenage umatsu growing aspirations to become a professional musician even wanting to study music at University but as it was deemed an undesirable career his parents refused to let him go down that path as an act of defiance even though umatsu respected this decision choosing to study foreign languages instead he chose to study almost 500 miles away at Kanagawa University and he did so with the explicit purpose of continuing to pursue music outside of his studies after graduating umatsu chose to stay in the area producing numerous demo reels for prospective publishing houses and after some luck this relentlessness ended up Landing him a part-time position at Square after impressing on a few projects like Cruise Chaser Blaster and Alpha umatsu was retained as a full-time employee and with his Focus now clear he worked alongside toshiyaki imai to produce music for almost every single game they made there on after the scores umatsu produced would only contain a handful of pieces of music but due to the scale of this new game Not only was there an expectation that the volume of Music would increase there was also an expectation that the quality would need to increase too and asakaguchi himself had been an aspiring musician who had also been dissuaded from following that career path by his parents he had a particular focus on this area by the end of production umatsu had composed countless pieces of music with over 20 being deemed strong enough to make the final cut one of these would be a last minute request from sakaguchi and it would simply become known as the prelude due to this request coming right at the end of production it needed to be completed with the utmost haste umatsu took this in the most literal of Senses composing the prelude in just 10 minutes that's such a compelling and enduring piece of music was composed in such a short amount of time epitomized the shared talent that umatsu possessed and even though he would often be at odds with sakaguchi with them having constructive discussions about the quality and quantity of the work that umatsu composed it will be hard to argue with the end result as each piece of the puzzle fell into place it became clear that the game would be a captivating and meaningful experience but there was still one major problem to solve what the game should be called the only thing they knew was that the game needed to be based on alliteration this particular concept for naming games had been used quite a few times within Square itself but also with third-party titles where Square served as the publisher prominent examples of this would be King's Knight deep dungeon and rad Racer the name used for Highway Stars North American release outside of these names sounded cool in their own right the development team also wanted consumers to be able to shorten the name to just two syllables not least because this was what had happened with Dragon Quest which was often shortened to either drag queer or DQ where Square having already used the letters d k and R they decided to work with the letter F because they wanted to use the word fantasy after some deliberation they felt the name fighting fantasy would work quite well not only would this allow consumers to shorten the game down to the core sounding FF they also believed it would lead to them referring to the game as Phi fan with the name decided the legal team started doing their due diligence but they came back soon after with unfortunate news four years earlier a game book series called fighting fantasy had been created subsequently taking the World by storm the first three books were so popular within the UK that they occupied numerous spots at the same time within the Sunday Times as children's book chart and by 1987 over 8 million copies have been sold worldwide due to the similar themes between the two properties there was no way Square would be able to use the name without coming into some kind of legal trouble but they also didn't want to budge too much this meant they would keep the alliteration around the letter F and they would also keep the word fantasy as they wanted it to be front and center in the name as a descriptor of what the product represented after looking at numerous options the first word ended up being changed to final this would be apt as sakaguchi had vowed to make this his final game should it underperform and there was also a feeling that square as a company were on a negative trajectory but it was not meant to be all that symbolic instead the primary reason they chose the name Final Fantasy was that it sounded really cool foreign continued into the fourth quarter of 1987 Square started to increase their marketing efforts as they built up for launch this saw numerous methods of advertising utilized and within print Publications emphasis was placed on the involvement of torada Amano and Nasir as they were influential figures whose professional Works pushed into different consumer demographics alongside this and to ensure that no stone was left unturned Square also employed some more unorthodox approaches towards driving pre-orders for example a letter was sent to everyone who had pre-ordered psychon densetsu its intention was to inform them of the game's cancellation but there was also a significant amount of space dedicated to selling them on why they might want to switch their pre-order over to Final Fantasy instead as it would also be a narrative focused role-playing game with an emphasis on building a party as marketing efforts continued the next questions related to when the game should release and how many copies should be produced the latent success of Dragon Quest shocked numerous video game Publishers and developers across Japan and when Dragon Quest 2 released just eight months later they were shocked again unlike its predecessor which had taken some time to win over the Japanese public Dragon Quest 2 sold 500 000 copies at launch this made NX 2.75 billion yen overnight and due to the nature of the success many of the traditional and Challenger Publishers who had continued to create games in tried and tested genres had their eyes well and truly opened sakaguchi had sensed this shift but so too had many other creatives in Japan and one of the first Publishers to act would be Namco amongst the plentiful group of third-party Publishers to have created games for the famicom namcott a subsidiary of Namco were part of the elite they had published countless games with two of them even going on to sell over a million copies each and their formula for Success had been quite simple focus on action this would often see them Port over games that have been successful within the arcades but they would also fuse action with other genres even experimenting with a few action role-playing games such as the Tower of duraga which is noted for inspiring the likes of The Legend of Zelda and heidelight in 1987 their approach started to shift they would still focus on action-based games but namcott realized that interest was waning around classic arcade ports as a result they chose to focus more on sports games they also developed slower experiences including family Mahjong and SanMar the great detective a board game an adventure game respectively namcott would also publish dragon slayer 4 despite not having worked with Nihon Falcom on the previous three installments but perhaps their most intriguing move would relate to a game created in collaboration with a newly formed development studio called Alice following its release in 1986 a science fiction novel series Digital Devil story Megami Tensai had become a huge hit Keen to strike while the iron was hot its author Aya nishitani worked with the Publishing House tokuma shoten on facilitating the creation of multimedia adaptations the initial plan was for Nintendo to produce a video game for the famicom but even though it received provisional approval the board of directors of Nintendo vetoed the plan due to the source material being deemed far too mature for their brand it was subsequently offered to other interested parties and two groups one out Atlas who applied through Namco and telenet Japan it would see two video game adaptations of Digital Devil story megame tensei created Atlas and Namco would work on a game for the famicom while telling that Japan will create one for personal computers and to keep things interesting and ensure expectations were subverted the two parties agreed that not only should the two games be quite different they should be the opposite of what each respective player base would expect this meant the famicom version would be a traditional role-playing game that Drew heavy inspiration from Wizardry while the version created for personal computers would have a stronger focus on action at the same time the likes of hudsonsoft had also laid down plans for the creation of traditional role-playing games as had smaller Publishers such as hot B and Kenco this meant that the latter part of 1987 became a hotbed for console role-playing games especially as Publishers were desperate to release before Dragon Quest 3 which had been scheduled for the first part of 1988. released in September of 1987 Digital Devil story megame Tensai LED or became a new wave of console role-playing games three other games then released in October and Final Fantasy would be planned to release in mid-December just two days before another intriguing role-playing game produced by Sega called Fantasy Star this meant there was enough opportunity for Final Fantasy to stand out but by also releasing a little bit later than those other four famicom games that allowed consumers to not only become more familiar with role-playing games but also create some kind of Benchmark outside of Dragon Quest in this regard the development t-bit Square felt that Final Fantasy was destined to land well with consumers and as more and more people joined the project this sentiment only continued to grow but even though the development team had High Hopes the management team weren't sure how much that confidence would translate into actual sales and it led to many heated discussions about how many copies of Final Fantasy should be ordered for its initial shipment one of the main sticking points around that shipment number was the performance of sakaguchi's two previous games operation jump out and Highway Star both games were aligned with popular genres and employed advanced technology such as stereoscopic 3D Graphics Square believed this would be appealing and ordered hundreds of thousands of copies for each game but neither would live up to expectations and unsold copies that took up space in Square's Warehouse would serve as a constant reminder the other main issue was Square themselves due to a combination of poor management and games underperforming upon release the company's financial position had become precarious to ensure they did not overextend and make the situation worse the decision was taken to order 200 000 copies of Final Fantasy upon learning this sakaguchi was said to have been livid for many months he had lived and breathed Final Fantasy pouring his heart and soul into the game after all if this was to be his swan song within the video games industry he wanted to go out with a bang selling as many copies as possible he had recommended that 500 000 copies be ordered but after learning that square were only willing to backroll two hundred thousand less than half of its recommendation he would end up taking an incredible course of action instead of continuing to argue with his superiors at Square sakaguchi took a near finished version of the game and showed it to rival Publishers one of which was shuisha the famed Publishing House who amongst other things were responsible for the very popular Shonen Jump magazine after learning what was happening the management team at Square decided to be pragmatic instead of admonishing sakaguchi for his unethical actions they instead took the opposite stance as they believed it served as the ultimate Testament for how much passion and belief there was in the product and although they did not choose to order 500 000 copies at least not right away they compromised and committed to ordering four hundred thousand development on Final Fantasy would wrap in September of 1987 and that such a complex game was pulled together despite facing significant adversities along the way would end up being quite remarkable Not only was the initial planning done by someone who had never worked on a video game before it was also done with limited guidance because sakaguchi and other senior figures such as Shibuya and Nasir were unavailable due to their commitment to working on Highway Star because of this the reality was that full production happened within a period of just three months and even during that time when new staff members joined the production team they would need to get up to speed with the project before they would be able to make an active contribution that such a polished and Innovative game was created against this backdrop showed the sheer tenacity passion and commitment that existed within the team and the role that sakaguchi played towards instilling these values should not be understated after all he had been willing to put his entire career and reputation on the line because of just how much he believed in the project Final Fantasy would end up going to Market in Japan on the 18th of December 1987 and not only did Square follow through with making 400 000 copies available during the launch period they also showed confidence by installing a hefty price tag of 5900 yen this would not only make Final Fantasy by far the most expensive price point for a game ever produced by square in the famicom era it was also a significant increase on other leading games such as Dragon Quest 2 which had retailed for 5500 Yen and the famicom port of The Legend of Zelda which had retailed for only 4900 yen critics came out in support of these decisions as they praised the game famicom Sushin awarded Final Fantasy 34 out of 40 granting it a place in their coveted gold Hall of Fame to justify this across the four famitsu reviewers there was complementary feedback granted for the game's storytelling and general game design they also singled out the Innovative battle scenes and high quality graphics for mitsu also commended Square for even having the audacity to try and challenge Dragon Quest in the manner that they had especially as it did not come across as a simple clone and even enhanced numerous aspects family computer magazine another Japanese publication surveyed their readers across the various elements this led to Final Fantasy being awarded the respectable score of 59.53 out of 30. their readers felt the strongest aspects of the game were the characters the music and how engaging the design was throughout however even though it scored well they felt the weakest aspect was its originality these positive elements when combined with a solid marketing campaign helped to create a high degree of intrigue in and around the game's launch and as a result Final Fantasy managed to sell through its entire initial shipment that Final Fantasy performed so well was pretty significant for both square and sakaguchi as it Vindicated the decisions that have been made by both parties but it wasn't so much the volume of copies sold that warranted celebration what was more important was how much money those copies had generated the reality was that square didn't struggle to sell games instead they struggled to sell games at a compelling price point in 1987 alone Square had managed to release multiple games that would go on to sell more than 400 000 copies with the likes of crystal dragon and even operation jump out achieving this Milestone but where they had continued to struggle was the price point and the performance of Final Fantasy showed that they had finally found a meaningful property that could justify being sold at a premium it meant that even though the release of Final Fantasy was not a massive success within the wider context of the Japanese video games industry for square it was monumental after the production had stopped of new copies of Final Fantasy over 520 000 copies have been sold in Japan this generated almost 2 billion yen in net revenue a figure that was over doubled their previous best performing title it changed everything and square would be quick to adapt sakaguchi would also make their decision to stay at the company and due to the vital role that was played in the creation of Final Fantasy he will be tasked with spearheading the next phase in the evolution of square over the next few years Square would pivot from being a company that attempted to shovel out as many games as possible to being one that focused on quality over quantity and at the Forefront of this new approach would be Final Fantasy but even though Square now had a Clear Vision for how they could build out the Japanese side of their business and this Vision paid dividends over the next few years the major question that remained was how well they could transition this Vision over to taking advantage of the resurgent North American video game Market but the time Final Fantasy have released in Japan Square had already released a handful of games in North America but to do so they have relied on third-party Publishers they would see operation jump out published by a claim as a 3D Battles of world Runner and Highway Star will be published by Nintendo as rad Racer the 3D Battles award Runner would see modest returns but rad Racer turned out to be a huge hit in foreign markets selling well over a million copies it became a fan favorite and whenever Nintendo wanted to showcase the power and performance of their system they often used radracer both of these games had been overseen by sakaguchi and it meant the next logical subject for localization should have been Final Fantasy but the sheer scale of the game would end up being a significant stumbling block unlike more arcade-centric titles role-playing games featured huge amounts of dialogue and this would need to be understood and translated in such a manner that everything would make sense as an extended narrative as opposed to just the context of a particular menu or a specific scene with square choosing to move away from those arcade Centric titles the knock-on effect was that expansion into North America was put on hold in favor of consolidating their place within the Japanese Market they would create squaresoft incorporated as a wholly owned North American subsidiary in 1989 but the focus of this subsidiary was on the profitable localization of smaller projects such as King's Knight as opposed to bigger more complex titles such as Final Fantasy this was something Square found out the hard way as their own efforts to localize Final Fantasy would fall flat as a result Square would end up partnering with Nintendo masters of their craft Nintendo had become Adept at acting as a Gateway into the North American market for Japanese publishers Square themselves had benefited from this as radracer enjoyed more success overseas than it ever did in Japan for role-playing games were a different quantity as had been the case in Japan before the release of Dragon Quest in North America role-playing games were sophisticated products that were enjoyed by Gamers playing on personal computers not those who owned home consoles it would be Dragon Quest again that they hoped would be the catalyst retitled as Dragon Warrior to avoid infringing with an existing pen and paper role-playing game owned by simulation Productions Dragon Quest would launch in North America three years after its initial Japanese release but in an almost identical mirror to what had happened three years prior in Japan Dragon Warrior did not resonate with owners of the Nintendo entertainment system and it led to sales being very poor they were so poor that Nintendo would end up giving copies of the game away for free to subscribers of Nintendo Power Magazine but this initiative did lead to over 500 000 copies ending up in the hands of consumers the pole performance of Dragon Warrior could have been seen as a bad Omen for the localization of other role-playing games but Nintendo were pleased enough to commit a supporting Square on the localization of Final Fantasy when Final Fantasy was released in the middle of 1989 North American audiences were much more receptive Dragon Quest had again paved the way but unlike in Japan Rita gained what seemed like an insurmountable domination over the market due to being an unrivaled Trailblazer for so long this was not the case in North America Clayton warnham of video games and Computer Entertainment noted that Final Fantasy was role-playing Adventure at its best complementing the job system and extolling that the game design would allow for an exhaustive amount of combinations and challenges to be overcome rho Adams III when writing for computer gaming world was also excited to tell North American audiences about Final Fantasy for PC Gamers he compared it to the likes of Ultima 3 and Wizardry and provided a thorough breakdown of how the various gameplay mechanics worked even going so far as to suggest the optimum party of Two fighters a White Mage and a black mage this positive press when combined with a more tailored marketing campaign that applied learnings from the unsuccessful launch of Dragon Warrior allowed Final Fantasy to find a foothold in North America and that foothold would end up leading to over 700 000 copies being sold it was an incredible number not least because it exceeded the number of copies Final Fantasy had sold in Japan but beyond that the even more significant metric was that Final Fantasy had sold around 40 more copies than Dragon Warrior had managed in the same region and the importance of this would only be further emphasized when considering that Dragon Warrior only managed to find its way into so many homes because copies were literally given away All Things Considered Nintendo and indeed Square could not have hoped for a better North American launch and by the end of 1989 Final Fantasy had been established as the preeminent role-playing series on the Nintendo Entertainment System as the life cycle of both the famicom and the Nintendo Entertainment System Drew to a close Final Fantasy proved to be a huge hit its combined sails across Japan and North America were approximately 1.22 million positioning it as one of the best selling games to have been released for the system and it was awarded numerous accolades such as coming ninth with infamitsu's Game of the Year Awards and second within their RPG category only losing out to Dragon Quest 3 but beyond just sales of the game final fantier created a lasting cultural impact in Japan through the production of supporting content and this related to not just the creation of merchandise but also physical events that will be used to celebrate the franchise and even the production of alternative Adventures that could be enjoyed by those who were not fortunate enough to own a home console in the years that followed Square explored numerous initiatives and one of the first coincided with not just the one-year anniversary of Final Fantasy but also the release of its predecessor Final Fantasy 2 on the 17th of December 1988 this saw Square opened an official Final Fantasy Store in Tokyo's bustling Shibuya award inside fans will be able to purchase a wide range of merchandise this would include some more traditional items such as posters pencil cases and t-shirts through to some more unique items such as video game soundtracks throughout the 1980s Hardware had Advanced to the point that composers were able to produce music that had real substance there were still significant limitations but these advances saw music become as much a part of the experience as the graphics and the gameplay recognizing this shift an Innovative music publisher called Alpha records decided to take action but it wouldn't be the first time they would take such a bold risk in 1978 they published the first album by yellow magic Orchestra famed for its use of real video game sound effects to make music fast forward six years and Alpha innovated Again by releasing a vinyl album that was dedicated to video game music it was simply called video game music and it contained a collection of now legendary pieces from the likes of Pac-Man xevius and Gallagher such was its success that the following year they published The Return of video game music and the year after that the best of video game music in 1986 Alpha would then partner with the likes of Konami Hudson Tecmo and Capcom to produce publisher-specific albums and Nintendo would also take notice releasing the Super Mario Brothers original soundtrack on cassette and vinyl but what made this particular release quite special was that alongside the main Overworld theme as it appeared in game the album included an Orchestral Version of the same theme Square would also get in on the ACT releasing soundtracks for cruise Chaser blasty and Alpha and as 1987 progressed other Publishers would start to release albums that would accompany the release of their individual properties but even though Final Fantasy featured more music than any other game produced by a square to date the decision was taken to hold off releasing any kind of album related to Final Fantasy with square opting to instead wait until Final Fantasy 2 had been released by this point video game music had become much more popular and it was not uncommon for there to be world over 10 video game music releases happening every month and to highlight just how popular video game music had become there were seven other albums released on the exact same day that square and polystar released their Final Fantasy 1 and 2 combined soundtrack what was known as all sounds of Final Fantasy 1 and 2 was released on the 21st of December 1988 and it was made available for people to purchase on CD and cassette for almost everyone involved this would be a landmark album Not only would it allow players to hear music from the original Final Fantasy in its original 8-bit format without having to play the game but anyone who purchased the album would also be treated to some unused pieces of music that did not make the Final Cut beyond that all sounds of Final Fantasy 1 and 2 would feature a special track it was called farewell FF world and unlike every other track on the album it was not worked on by naburu umatsu instead it was arranged by a musician called michiakikato and it would feature modern instrumentation but the most appealing part of the track was that it would serve as a huge medley combining pieces from Final Fantasy 1 and 2 into a long Blended experience that was perfect for those who had fallen in love with umatsu's work over the two games at launch all sounds of Final Fantasy 1 and 2 retail for 2 348 Yen or just under 20 at the time and after selling over 12 and a half thousand copies it would end up reaching number 67 on the oricon chart generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of Revenue per square the success of the album showed square that there was real appetite within the fan base for products that would enrich enhance and extend enjoyment Beyond just the games themselves and that these additional products could be used to generate huge sums of supplemental Revenue buoyed by the commercial success of all sounds of Final Fantasy 1 and 2 umatsu himself started to explore what's possible within the Realms of audio Beyond just the production of albums that contained tracks from the games and one of its main sources of inspiration would be Dragon Quest unlike many other video game scores which were composed by relatively novice composers the Dragon Quest soundtrack had been composed by a famed Japanese film and television composer called koichi sugiyama sugiyama have been intrigued by video games and had even written to NX as a fan this then opened up discussions about a collaboration and after working on the soundtrack for a game called wingman 2 tsugiyama composed the score for Dragon Quest to say this score was groundbreaking would be an understatement as Beyond just the level of quality the way that sugayama created distinct Melodies around eight Central pillars would provide a template for other up-and-coming composers those themes would then serve as the backbone for a revolutionary occurrence asugiyama used his experience to collaborate with the Tokyo strings Ensemble to create one of the first recordings of video game music using a live Orchestra these recordings would be released on the 5th of October 1986 as the Dragon Quest suite and the following year on the 20th of August that same music will be performed live to sell out crowds at purpose-led video game-related classical concerts that the music of Dragon Quest had elicited such a strong response amongst consumers with nothing short of mind-blowing for a composer such as umatsu but after seeing how well received the music of Final Fantasy had been he started wondering if it would be possible for his music to receive the same treatment after numerous investigations umatsu decided to reach out to renowned classical composer katsuhisa hitori Hattori had worked on numerous film scores and Anime soundtracks anuomatsu felt he would be more than capable of helping to transition his compositions to a grander scale in the initial sense Hattori was not interested but after umatsu by his own admission begged him to work on the project Hattori would end up relenting and he worked with his son takayuki Hattori on figuring out how they could transition umatsu's 8-bit score into what would become known as the symphonic Suite Final Fantasy everything would come to fruition on the 20th of May 1989 as the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra performed seven pieces of music that had been arranged by katsuhisa and takayuki Hattori they would span across Final Fantasy 1 and 2 with 3 pieces being based on tracks from the original game and four relating to tracks from the second game many fans were present to enjoy the elaborate Renditions of these pieces but perhaps the person who was most affected was uematsu himself as he had created the original compositions he compared attending the concert to attending his daughter's wedding where he would play the role of a poor father who was going to marry his daughter away to a rich guy for those who were unable to attend or wanted to reminisce and listen again symphonic Suite Final Fantasy would then be released as a standalone album a few months later on the 25th of July alongside using music to increase the enjoyment of Final Fantasy Square also wanted to support people who enjoyed role-playing but didn't own a famicom or weren't interested in video games and they did this through the production of Game books the first book of this ilk released alongside Final Fantasy in December of 1987 and it would see Square partner with an established publisher who were well versed with producing this kind of content published as the 39th entry in kibunsha's very popular Adventure hero range Final Fantasy legend of the crystal succession will be a 235 page Adventure Game book that could be played using pen and paper it would also allow players to embark on a role-playing Adventure that wasn't predetermined much like the video game but it wouldn't just be a simple retelling instead legend of the crystal succession would act as a distant prequel focusing on the story of a boy and girl who were in search of the water crystal four months later a second book was published called Final Fantasy Heroes of the light but instead of being released by K buncher it was published by a rival company called futabasha Heroes if the light became part of futabasha's Own ever-expanding Adventure Game book series featuring as part of their 1988 lineup that included books about yeast base Harrier and Wizardry its format was very similar to Legend of the crystal succession but the premise of the narrative would act as an alternative retelling this would see The Heroes of Light focus on four new Warriors of light who were called toy ROM Marek and Gia they had each been blessed by a priestess adopting classic jobs like Warrior thief and Red Mage so that they could fight back against the evil forces of Chaos this book would again share its core mythology with the Final Fantasy video game but everything else would be independent even the world map alongside these two books Square also started to produce supporting literary works that were much grander in scope and one of the most intriguing was the Final Fantasy monster manual featuring a name that was a clear reference back to Dungeons and Dragons the monster manual would take a much closer look at the awe-inspiring artwork that yoshitaka Amano had created in support of the game and alongside General concept art based around the protagonists and The Wider lore this would see a significant amount of focus placed on their enemies for many years after Square used supplemental content such as merchandise books and even original video animation to expand the Final Fantasy brand as they wanted to focus on producing fresh and Innovative games as opposed to revisiting older properties there would be the occasional port to make sure older games could be enjoyed by those who had purchased newer platforms but seldom would these ports make any significant changes to the core experience but that all changed at the turn of the millennium Square was facing considerable Financial pressure due to how many resources have been committed to producing Final Fantasy the spirits within it saw them explore new avenues for revenue and with the handheld seen continuing to prosper there was a growing desire amongst consumers to experience Home console games on the go the only challenge was that square could not produce games for the Gameboy Advance having burnt that bridge when they decided to develop Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation as a result Square decided to align with Bandai Bandai had been producing home consoles for quite some time but they had struggled to make the same kind of impact as Nintendo or Sega to address this they partnered with Koto a company founded by the legendary Nintendo inventor gunpai yokoi their Hope was that Koto would help them to come up with a viable competitor to the Game Boy and what they came up with became known as the wonder swan the Wonder Swan did well enough upon launch but there were clear deficiencies they saw Bandai work on a quick follow-up the Wonder Swan color and to ensure it hit the ground running they partnered with a suite of Publishers to create a strong launch lineup one of those Publishers was Square who committed to producing a new rendition of the original Final Fantasy this new version of Final Fantasy will be remade from the ground up so as to appeal to both old fans and new fans alike and to make sure the game delivered on those objectives even though development was conducted by an entirely new team they were overseen by akitoshi kawazu koichi ishi and naburu umatsu with hironobu sakaguchi serving as one of the executive producers by doing this even though the visuals game design and music would be modernized any changes that were made will be in keeping with the original Vision the wonderstrone color remake of Final Fantasy would end up featuring brand new 16-bit graphics with an expanded color palette a new Sprites were drawn for not just the jobs but also the various NPCs new cut teams were also created that helped to flesh out the story in a way that was not possible on the famicom due to limited space and the soundtrack was rearranged with umatsu even composing some brand new tracks these changes helped to make this version of Final Fantasy much more in line with how Final Fantasy have been represented during the 16-bit era when it launched on the 9th of December in the year 2000 consumers loved it it would see 50 of those who purchased a Wonder Swan color during its launch month also pick up a copy of Final Fantasy and due to its quality this version of the game would become a reference point for almost every future re-release of the original game those three releases would come thick and fast an enhanced version of the Wonder swamp color remake was released on the PlayStation less than two years after which even included fmvs but the next major enhancement will come as part of the dawn of Souls compilation having managed to strike a deal with Nintendo Square were once again allowed to produce video games for their consoles and after fulfilling their obligation to produce original properties first such as Crystal Chronicles and tactics Advance Square got straight to work on pumping out ports of their older games the first of these would be Final Fantasy 1 and 2 Advance which was renamed to Final Fantasy 1 and 2 dawn of Souls for its Western release production will be overseen by Takashi tokita who had worked on the original game and kosuke Miyamoto had worked on the PlayStation Port they would work with a small contingent of employees from Square to provide direction to Jose their Outsourcing partner there would again be numerous tweaks made to audio and visual presentation as well as gameplay but perhaps the most noticeable part of the dawn of Souls version would be the soul of Chaos this will be offered as the collective name for a group of four bonus dungeons that could be found throughout the map each related to one of the four elements and they will become available to the player once the relevant chaos fiend had been defeated designed to test players these dungeons will be much longer than the traditional set from the feature a new suite of enemies pulled in from The Wider franchise such as shinriyu Omega and Gilgamesh upon release Final Fantasy 1 and 2 Advance would end up selling 140 000 copies in its first week on sale in Japan with almost 300 000 copies sold across its lifetime in that region for a few years dawn of Souls will be considered the definitive version of the original Final Fantasy but for the 20th anniversary Square Enix decided to pull out all the stops by this point in time the PlayStation Portable had delivered significant returns around the world and square Knicks wanted to take advantage of its power this meant heavy emphasis would be placed on visuals and it would see tetsuyonomura and koichi ishi assigned to supervise a team of artists who were responsible for delivering a significant overhaul of the game's Graphics yoshitaka Amano would even be commissioned to produce a brand new logo these elements helped to make the 20th anniversary edition of Final Fantasy feel fresh and they were complemented by another new dungeon that was called the Labyrinth of time this was introduced as a Stern test for players who had already beaten and mastered the soul of chaos it would feature four distinct flaws Each of which contained a puzzle that needed to be solved within a specific period of time at its conclusion players would then face off against chronodia a devilish super boss that would have its strength determined by how many blue and red seals the player had obtained throughout the course of the dungeon sales would not end up being as strong as dawn of Souls with only 140 000 copies shipped throughout its lifetime in Japan but it would end up as a PlayStation essential denoting that over 400 000 copies have been sold worldwide following the release of the 20th anniversary edition Square Knicks would continue to Port this version to other platforms including mobile devices and the Nintendo eShop where stereoscopic 3D Graphics were added due to how well the 20th anniversary edition performed it wouldn't be another 14 years until the game would see a meaningful re-grelease and this was produced for a very specific reason over the years Square Knicks had treated each of the 8-Bit and 16-bit Final Fantasy games as isolated entries by taking this approach even though the original gains were quite consistent with how they looked and played across the famicom and super famicom on Modern systems huge disparities have been created the pixel remastered series was meant to address this taking each individual game back to its roots but layering over consistent audio and visual presentation elements to oversee this Square Enix assigned yoshinara kitaze kazuko Shibuya and naboro umatsu with Shibuya even going back to fulfill the same role she did on the original game by serving as lead pixel artist there would still be numerous quality of life adjustments made to gameplay one of the most crucial elements was that this version of Final Fantasy would be a modern version of the original game as opposed to being a port of either the dawn of Souls or the 20th anniversary edition and for that reason quite a few of the new cut scenes would be removed alongside all of the bonus Dungeons and bosses despite having the focus being around ease of access and consistency of experience Square Enix chose to only release the pixel remasters on Steam and mobile devices it would take a further two years for them to be released on home consoles alongside the various re-releases of the original Final Fantasy Square Enix decided to go against the original Mantra of only having supplemental experiences produced in a non-video game format it would see new video games produced that would serve as extensions of the story seen within Final Fantasy meant to enrich and entertain those who wanted to see and learn more about that specific world the first of these games would be the Cydia Final Fantasy in its initial stages the Cydia was intended to be a fighting game focused around Kingdom Hearts however after progressing through initial planning the team felt it would not be in keeping to have Disney characters fighting against one another it would make sense however for Final Fantasy characters the premise would therefore be to create a game where prominent Final Fantasy protagonists and antagonists from across the franchise would come together and fight against each other but to ensure this made sense from a narrative perspective the team went all the way back to the original final fantasy kind of when dawn of Souls was released it included a small reference to a brand new character called Sid of the luffane this retcon was made to ensure every Mainline entry into the franchise adhered to the Trope of their always being a character called Sid and due to Sid of the luffay not actually appearing in the game as he was instead mentioned by an NPC it provided a unique opportunity for expansion when conceptualizing the story for desidia the scenario team thought it would be interesting to take the story of Sid further and this decision would lead to the creation of a brand new universe and a new iteration of chaos the Cydia would also introduce a wholly original version of the warrior of light as the warrior of light was more of a broad concept within the original game as opposed to a specific defined character this presented a small problem for the development team as to who the protagonist should be from the original game to work around this the development team decided to create a brand new character who will be based on yoshitaka amino's original concept art for the night class the warrior of light as created for the Cydia would then appear in another property that would have an unorthodox connection to the original Final Fantasy this property would be called stranger of paradise Final Fantasy origin and it would serve as an alternative Universe prequel where players would take on the role of Garland the main antagonist from the original game Beyond these two properties others would also exist with a connection to Final Fantasy Mobius for example would feature many of the same characters and plot Concepts albeit with a modern twist it would see the warrior of light affectionately named wall and a quest to defeat chaos but that would only be the start of that particular Journey Final Fantasy the four Heroes of Light would also reuse many of the same Concepts and that so many games have been able to expand and elaborate on the story in such a manner is a testament to the work done by sakaguchi tirada and the rest of the team all those years ago in spite of the restrictions they faced it goes without saying that Final Fantasy is and was a special game arriving in 1987 as a challenger to the established Dragon Quest franchise its success would not only convince sakaguchi to stay within the video games industry it would change the fate of the entire company and the lives of the many people who worked there Square would go on to become one of the biggest video game companies in the world and Final Fantasy would end up becoming the preeminent role-playing franchise and the likes of sakaguchi umatsu and Amano would go on to become household names in Japan recognized for their incredible contributions but none of that would have been possible without a bullish dream that epitomized what Final Fantasy would grow to become a franchise that challenged the status quo through Innovation dedication and commitment and daring to do what others could not or would not before closing out this video I'd like to give a big thank you to our patreon supporters for helping to fund its creation to put it simply without their support product Historia would not be able to exist in this kind of format we have used the money collected on patreon to pay for external support needed to edit this video to such a high quality but patreon supporters have also been at the very heart of the process shaping the documentary by using their exclusive voting rights to decide the content each chapter would contain if you would like to help make the next episode of project Historia which will focus on Final Fantasy 2 even bigger and better then please do consider supporting us on patreon at patreon.com forward slash ffunion I'd also like to thank Jane the editor of this video for stepping up and helping out we've been working together for some time on the channel but producing this kind of video is a whole different beast and I think the results speak for themselves John oath and tpr also deserve special thanks for allowing us to use their musical Arrangements throughout this video and our channel in general if you enjoyed the Final Fantasy Arrangements you've heard throughout then please check out tpr and John on Spotify and lastly I'd like to thank you all our amazing Community whether it's liking sharing commenting or watching these videos you continue to show up and make producing videos like this worthwhile these long form Endeavors are always a huge risk as they take such a long period of time to research write edit and produce but it's the direction we want to take the channel in and we hope this kind of content continues to deliver on your expectations [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Final Fantasy Union

Views: 211,437

Keywords: final fantasy, the complete history of final fantasy, complete history of final fantasy, history of final fantasy, history of final fantasy 1, history of final fantasy i, sakaguchi origin, uematsu origin, hironobu sakaguchi, nobuo uematsu, final fantasy documentary, final fantasy doc, original final fantasy, documentaries, documentary 2023, documentary, docuseries

Id: 6BAAzpEco8Y

Length: 82min 45sec (4965 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023