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Final Fantasy

Hironobu Sakaguchi's last try at a hit

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Square's 1987 Famicom role-playing game, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi as what he treated as his last attempt at a hit. It let the player build a party of four from six classes, cross the world by ship, canoe and airship, and fight battles in which both sides were on screen. It was a hit in Japan, Nintendo published it in America in 1990, and it began a series that is still running.

Final Fantasy was made by a designer who expected it to be his last game. Hironobu Sakaguchi’s earlier games for Square had struggled, and, as Retro Gamer put it, “if it failed, he’d quit the games industry and try something else”. It did not fail. The Famicom role-playing game became “an instant hit, mainly in Japan”, and the start of what Retro Gamer called “Square’s resuscitation as a company”. Over the next ten years its sequels made Square the other great name in the Japanese role-playing game, alongside Enix’s Dragon Quest.

Fast facts

  • Developer: Square.
  • Director: Hironobu Sakaguchi.
  • Platform: Famicom (Japan), NES (North America).
  • Released: 18 December 1987 in Japan; July 1990 in North America, published by Nintendo.
  • Europe: no release until the remake Final Fantasy Origins in 2003.
  • Genre: JRPG.

A last attempt

The story of the name is well known, and it has more than one version. In 2009 the composer Nobuo Uematsu told Wired that the title came from Sakaguchi’s own situation: he would have gone back to university if the game had not sold, at a time when Square itself was struggling. Sakaguchi has played that down. In a 2015 talk at Ritsumeikan University he said that the team wanted a title that shortened to “FF”, that the first choice, Fighting Fantasy, was already taken by a series of gamebooks, and that “anything that started with an F would have been fine”. He did agree that “we had our backs to the wall” while making it. The popular claim that the game rescued Square from bankruptcy goes further than these accounts do.

Sakaguchi gave the title a meaning of his own later. Talking to Edge in 2007, he described how his teams put every idea they had into a single game, so that on release “our minds were empty and dried out”. “In that sense,” he said, “the title of Final Fantasy really means something: this was, and is still now, my way of creating games and challenging myself.”

Building on Dragon Quest

Enix’s Dragon Quest had shown in 1986 that a role-playing game could be a hit on the Famicom. A member of Square’s original team, who drew graphics for the first game, told Retro Gamer in 2012 that Dragon Quest had combined Ultima and Wizardry with manga culture, and that after its success “Mr Sakaguchi had an ambition to create something which would surpass it. That is how Final Fantasy started.” Retro Gamer saw the first game building “somewhat on Enix’s Dragon Quest in basic combat mechanics”, with a “largely open world map and relatively freeform class system” on top.

The difference starts with the party. Final Fantasy begins with the player choosing four Light Warriors from six classes: Fighter, Thief, Black Belt, Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage. Nintendo Power counted “more than 50 variations” of party and warned that “not all are good”. Later in the game each class can be changed for a stronger one, the Fighter becoming a Knight, the Thief a Ninja, the Black Belt a Master and the mages Wizards. This one-off class change is not the job system that let characters switch jobs freely; that came with Final Fantasy III in 1990.

Fights put the monsters and the whole party on screen together, so the player could watch each order being carried out. “In Final Fantasy you will see the actions you command actually carried out by the characters,” Nintendo Power told its readers. The game kept the turn-based menus of its models. Square’s real-time Active Time Battle system did not arrive until Final Fantasy IV in 1991.

A world to cross

The plot sends the four warriors to restore four orbs that once governed Wind, Fire, Water and Earth; crystals and orbs of this kind became a recurring thread in later games. The world gradually opens up. Retro Gamer described players going “from slowly moving through the world on foot” to ships and “later, airships”, which became a trademark of the series “as they offered full, instant exploration of the world”. Nintendo Power promised a game “so big that you’ll have to travel by ship, canoe and blimp to cover it all”, with more than 200 kinds of enemy, and a battery to save progress because “this is not a game that can be finished in a few hours”.

In America

Nintendo published the game in North America in 1990 and treated it as a major release. Nintendo Power announced “the summer of Final Fantasy”, ran a treasure-hunt competition through the summer with suits of armour among the prizes, and published a full strategy guide that autumn. The American cartridge came with an 84-page Explorer’s Handbook of maps and hints. The series numbering soon drifted apart: Final Fantasy IV was sold in America as Final Fantasy II because it was only the second game in the series released there.

What followed

In Japan the first game sold about 520,000 copies. Each sequel started again with a new world and new characters. Final Fantasy II (1988) gave its heroes names and personalities and introduced the Chocobo. Sakaguchi directed the first five games before moving to producer. Final Fantasy VII (1997), on Sony’s PlayStation, took the series round the world and had sold 9.2 million copies by late 2002. By 2014 Edge put the series’ sales at more than 100 million. The sixteenth numbered game, Final Fantasy XVI, came out in 2023, and by March 2025 the series had passed 200 million copies. Players in Britain had to wait longest for the original: Retro Gamer noted that it “wouldn’t find its way here until 2003”.

Sources

  • Retro Gamer issue 108, November 2012, pp. 56–62, Samuel Roberts, “Final Fantasy: the complete history”: Sakaguchi’s “then-final attempt” and his promise to quit; the game built on Dragon Quest’s combat, with an open world map, a freeform class system and airships; “an instant hit, mainly in Japan” and “Square’s resuscitation as a company”; no UK release until 2003; Final Fantasy II’s named characters and Chocobos; Final Fantasy III’s class system; Active Time Battle in Final Fantasy IV and its US title; Final Fantasy V as the last Sakaguchi directed; the interview with a graphics designer on the first game on Dragon Quest and Sakaguchi’s ambition to surpass it.
  • Edge issue 182, December 2007, pp. 48–50, “Remembrance of things past”: Sakaguchi on putting every idea into one game and what the title Final Fantasy means to him.
  • Edge issue 225, March 2011, pp. 15–16: Sakaguchi “cut his directing teeth on the first five instalments”.
  • Edge issue 263, February 2014, p. 108: the Final Fantasy series had “sold more than 100 million units to date”.
  • Edge issue 119, January 2003, p. 13, “Square and Enix join forces”: Final Fantasy VII’s sales of 9.2 million.
  • Nintendo Power issue 11, March/April 1990, p. 42, “The summer of Final Fantasy is almost here!”: the party of four Light Warriors, “more than 50 variations”, more than 200 types of enemy, ship, canoe and blimp, the battery save, the 84-page book, the battle screen and the class upgrade.
  • Nintendo Power issue 12, May/June 1990, and issue 14, July/August 1990: the Final Fantasy Treasure Quest competition. Issue 16, September/October 1990: the strategy guide due in October.
  • Nintendo Power Strategy Guide volume 17, Final Fantasy (Nintendo of America, 1990): copyright line (© 1987 Square, TM & © 1990 Nintendo); the four orbs of Wind, Fire, Water and Earth; the six classes and their upgraded forms.
  • Steven Hansen, “Final Fantasy was almost called Fighting Fantasy: Creator explains actual reason behind the name”, Destructoid, 26 May 2015 (web, secondary): Sakaguchi’s Ritsumeikan University talk on the name, Fighting Fantasy and “our backs to the wall”; its summary of Uematsu’s 2009 Wired interview. https://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-was-almost-called-fighting-fantasy-creator-explains-actual-reason-behind-the-name/
  • Wikipedia, “Final Fantasy (video game)” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the Japanese and North American release dates; 520,000 copies sold in Japan; Final Fantasy Origins as the first PAL release in 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_(video_game)
  • Wikipedia, “Final Fantasy” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): crystals and orbs as a recurring element; Final Fantasy XVI (2023) as the sixteenth mainline game; sales passing 200 million by March 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy

See also

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