Hironobu Sakaguchi | Code Like It's 198x

Hironobu Sakaguchi has said more than once that a game might be his last. The first time was Final Fantasy in 1987: his earlier games for Square had struggled, and he meant to quit the industry if this one failed too. It became a hit, and Sakaguchi spent the next fourteen years directing and producing the series that made Square’s name. He said it again in 2011, about The Last Story, and again about Fantasian ten years later. Each time he kept going. Retro Gamer saw a pattern in it: “he approaches each game as if it could be his last, encouraging his team to incorporate every possible idea rather than saving them for future instalments.”

Fast facts

Born: 25 November 1962, Hitachi, Japan.
Square: part-time designer from 1983; later director of planning and development, and president of its American arm.
Directed: Final Fantasy I–V (1987–1992), Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), The Last Story (2011).
Produced: the Final Fantasy series from Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII and others.
Founded: Mistwalker, 2004.

Square and Final Fantasy

Sakaguchi joined Square in 1983 as a part-time designer, while he was still a student, and rose to become its director of planning and development. Edge in 1996 called him “a founder member of Square”. The games he made first did not sell well, and Final Fantasy was, in Retro Gamer’s words, his “then-final attempt to produce a hit game”. It came out on the Famicom on 18 December 1987, drew on Enix’s Dragon Quest, and was “an instant hit, mainly in Japan”, the start of “Square’s resuscitation as a company”. The version of the story in which it saved Square from bankruptcy goes further than these sources do, and Sakaguchi himself has said the name was chosen mainly because the team wanted a title that shortened to “FF”.

He directed the first five games. Each began again with a new world and new characters, and each changed the rules: Final Fantasy III (1990) let characters switch jobs during play, Final Fantasy IV (1991) brought in the real-time Active Time Battle system, and Final Fantasy V (1992) made the job system far more flexible. Final Fantasy V was the last he directed. From then on he worked as producer. Yoshinori Kitase, who joined Square in that period and later took charge of the series, told Edge that Sakaguchi “wrote most of Square’s in-house releases” and mentored him: “His game ideas always came from a totally unfettered imagination; they were not bound by the conventions of previous known design.”

As producer he gathered bigger names around him. For Chrono Trigger (1995) Square brought Dragon Quest’s designer Yuji Horii and its artist Akira Toriyama together with Sakaguchi, whom Nintendo Power called the “third jewel in Square’s crown”; the game sold two million copies in Japan in two months. He also worked on Xenogears and Parasite Eve.

Final Fantasy VII

By 1996 Edge was describing Sakaguchi as the series’ “chief FF producer”, and his ambition as a “desire to create a game that looks like a movie”. That ambition took Final Fantasy VII from Nintendo to Sony. “We need about 1,500Mb for FFVII,” he told the magazine, “and we’re already squeezing it into two disks, maybe even three.” The game filled three CDs and took the Japanese role-playing game round the world. Sakaguchi later said the team had put everything into each game in those years, so that on release “our minds were empty and dried out.” Final Fantasy IX (2000), which he described as “a reflection of all the previous works in the series”, returned to the medieval look of the early games. IGN Unplugged called Final Fantasy X (2001) “the last of Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasy games”.

The Spirits Within

Sakaguchi’s biggest project at Square was not a game. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a fully computer-animated science fiction film, was made at Square’s studio in Hawaii, directed by Sakaguchi and released by Columbia Pictures in July 2001. Before release its cost was rumoured at $100 million; Computer Gaming World later gave its budget as $137 million against a US box office of $65.7 million. Edge judged that the film’s “catastrophic failure” “nearly crushed” Square, and later described Sakaguchi’s career as one of “massive successes” and “company-shattering disasters”.

He withdrew from Square’s management after the film and left the company as it merged with Enix to form Square Enix in 2003. In early 2004 Edge reported that he was living in Hawaii and acting as “a long-distance advisor” for the series, and had appeared on stage to give his blessing to Yasumi Matsuno’s Final Fantasy XII.

Mistwalker

His own studio, Mistwalker, was at work by April 2004. It kept a small directing staff, worked with freelancers, many of them Square alumni such as the composer Nobuo Uematsu, and contracted development to outside studios. In February 2005 Microsoft announced that Mistwalker would make two role-playing games exclusively for its next console, the Xbox 360. “Microsoft’s cutting-edge technologies,” Sakaguchi said, “will allow me to bring to life an array of ideas that I have had for many years.”

The two games were Blue Dragon (2006), developed with Artoon and drawn by Akira Toriyama, and Lost Odyssey (2007), developed with Feel+. Lost Odyssey’s hero, Kaim, is an immortal who has lived for a thousand years, and his forgotten past comes back through writing by the novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu; the characters were designed by the Slam Dunk manga artist Takehiko Inoue, and the game came on four dual-layer DVDs. Edge called them “conservative RPGs”, and Sakaguchi agreed that was deliberate: “The systems are the ones I first created years ago when making Final Fantasy games.”

Directing again

Criticism from overseas that these games were outdated led Sakaguchi back to directing. The Last Story, for Nintendo’s Wii, came out in Japan in January 2011, the first game he had directed since Final Fantasy V. He wanted, he said, “to create a new battle system and to, in effect, abolish the equation I had from my Final Fantasy days”. Its development began with a year-long experimental phase in which the whole team argued over the systems, “like going back to the Final Fantasy V era”. Asked whether it might be his last game, he said that depended on players: “If too few people like my games, it’s a sign that my ideas are from another time.”

Mistwalker went on to make games for phones, including Terra Battle (2014). In 2019 it was among the first studios announced for Apple’s subscription service, Apple Arcade, and in 2021 it released Fantasian there in two parts. Its worlds were built from more than 150 handmade dioramas, photographed and scanned into the game, with music by Uematsu. Sakaguchi approached it as possibly his last large project. Square Enix released an expanded version, Fantasian Neo Dimension, on consoles and PC in December 2024, In 2023 he was already talking about a possible sequel.

His work has been recognised in the industry: he was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2000 and received the Game Developers Choice Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. By 2012 Edge counted his games’ sales at more than 100 million.

Sources

Retro Gamer issue 108, November 2012, pp. 56–62, Samuel Roberts, “Final Fantasy: the complete history”: Sakaguchi’s “then-final attempt” and earlier struggling games; “an instant hit, mainly in Japan” and “Square’s resuscitation”; his habit of approaching each game “as if it could be his last”; Final Fantasy III’s class system, Active Time Battle in Final Fantasy IV, the job options of Final Fantasy V and the last game he directed; his description of Final Fantasy IX.
Edge issue 37, October 1996, “Square route” (Square Soft feature): “chief FF producer and a founder member of Square”; his “desire to create a game that looks like a movie”; the 1,500Mb quote.
Nintendo Power issue 73, June 1995, p. 36: Chrono Trigger, Toriyama, Horii and Sakaguchi as the “third jewel in Square’s crown”; two million sold in two months.
IGN Unplugged issue 9, December 2001: Final Fantasy X as “the last of Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasy games”.
Computer Gaming World issue 200, March 2001, p. 36: The Spirits Within “directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi”. IGN Unplugged issue 3, June 2001, p. 64: release date 13 July 2001.
Edge issue 98, June 2001, p. 9, “Square shows its Spirit”: Columbia Pictures, Square Pictures, and the rumoured $100 million cost.
Computer Gaming World issue 252, June 2005: The Spirits Within, budget $137 million, US gross $65.7 million.
Edge issue 132, January 2004: Sakaguchi living in Hawaii as “a long-distance advisor”; his blessing for Matsuno and Final Fantasy XII.
Hyper issue 132, October 2004, news, “Not so final fantasy”: Mistwalker’s two RPGs, in development since April.
Edge issue 148, April 2005, news: Mistwalker’s deal with Microsoft for two exclusive RPGs, and Sakaguchi’s statement.
Edge issue 160, March 2006, pp. 48–49: the “catastrophic failure” of the film that “nearly crushed” Square; Mistwalker’s structure and Uematsu as a freelancer; Blue Dragon with Artoon and Toriyama; Lost Odyssey with Feel+, a novelist’s story and Takehiko Inoue.
Edge issue 182, December 2007, pp. 48–50, “Remembrance of things past”: Kaim’s thousand years; Shigematsu, Inoue and Uematsu; four dual-layer DVDs; “conservative RPGs” and the systems from his Final Fantasy games; “our minds were empty and dried out”.
Edge issue 225, March 2011, pp. 15–16: directing the first five Final Fantasy games; Xenogears, Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy IX; Mistwalker; The Last Story released in Japan in late January 2011; whether it would be his last game.
Edge issue 239, April 2012, p. 14, “Return of the king”: “massive successes” and “company-shattering disasters”; the first game he had directed since Final Fantasy V; overseas criticism of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey; the experimental phase; sales of over 100 million.
Edge issue 263, February 2014, p. 108, Yoshinori Kitase interview: Sakaguchi joined Square in 1983 as a part-time designer and became director of planning and development and its US president; Kitase’s memories of him.
Wireframe issue 11, April 2019, p. 14: Mistwalker among the studios signed up for Apple Arcade.
Wikipedia, “Hironobu Sakaguchi” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): birth date and place; joining Square as a student; leaving Square after the film; Mistwalker founded in 2004; Terra Battle; the AIAS Hall of Fame (2000) and the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award (2015). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hironobu_Sakaguchi
Wikipedia, “Fantasian” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): release on Apple Arcade in two parts in 2021; more than 150 handmade dioramas; Uematsu’s music; Sakaguchi’s view of it as possibly his last large project and his later talk of a sequel; Fantasian Neo Dimension, published by Square Enix in December 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasian