Hironobu Sakaguchi

Hironobu Sakaguchi is a Japanese game designer/director Who worked for Square (later became Square Enix) from 1983-2003, he is known as the creator of Final Fantasy. That was not what he originally planned to do as a career though as he originally wanted to be a musician but he ended up studying electronics and programming , joining Square as a part-time employee in 1983.

Fighting Fantasy

Back in 1986 following the success of Enix's RPG Dragon Quest for the NES, Square employee Hironobu Sakaguchi who had recently been promoted to a full-time employee as Director of Planning and Development, Square founder Masafumi Miyamoto had tasked his directors to come up with new games ideas and this is when Sakaguchi came up with an RPG game idea which was known as Fighting Fantasy but while Miyamoto was unsure about this RPG idea he agreed to allow production to go ahead but with only a team of 5 people with this Sakaguchi led the development while bringing in Gebelli, Kawazu, Ishii, and Uematsu to also work on the game, they eventually ended also getting help from another team at Square. Game development lasted around 10 months but due to trademark issues among other things the games title would eventually be changed. Sakaguchi had stated he had always wanted the game to have a name that could be shortened to FF so Fighting eventually became Final.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy was released in December 18, 1987 in Japan and was a huge success selling over a million copies worldwide going far beyond Squares original expectations. The first Final Fantasy story follows four youths called the Warriors of Light, who each carry one of their world's four elemental crystals which have been darkened by the four Elemental Fiends. Together, they quest to defeat these evil forces, restore light to the crystals and save their world.

Final Fantasy would eventually go on to be released and remade on several other consoles with the most recent version being the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster.

Conclusion

While Final Fantasy may have considered a long shot before development it proved to be a huge success and it started a long series of Final Fantasy games with there now being 16 main title Final Fantasy games and over 50 sequels, prequels, spin-offs and other Final Fantasy related games. Final Fantasy series has also had movies, anime, novels, manga, concerts and a trading card game.

If Sakaguchi hadn't have stuck with his beliefs and ideas and pushed forward to get Final Fantasy made we might wouldn't have had the amazing Final Fantasy games and other media we have today. which just goes to show you should never give up.

Lanah Tyra will be back next week with the next Final Fantasy Friday