The Origin Of Final Fantasy, Explained
Final Fantasy is among the longest-running and best-beloved video game series of all time. Its deep stories, unforgettable characters, and satisfying RPG gameplay resonate with players the world over. It's a series that has evolved alongside gaming itself, and in many ways following the history of Final Fantasy is to follow the history of the industry.
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For all its well-deserved fame, Final Fantasy could have ended up being little more than a footnote, a neat game and nothing more. Thankfully, that didn't happen, so saddle your Chocobo — this is the story of how Final Fantasy came to be.
Final Fantasy's publisher had been making games for a few years before the first victory fanfare ever played. Masafumi Miyamoto founded SquareSoft in 1983 with the intent of taking a corporate approach to video game design, as detailed in Daiji Fujii's 2006 scholarly paper Entreprenurial Choices Of Strategic Options In Japan's RPG Development.. While most games at that time were programmed by solo developers, either as personal projects or on behalf of a company, Miyamoto wanted to create games through dedicated teams, playing to each member's strengths to create a better product overall. To give the company a safety net, Miyamoto initially incorporated SquareSoft as a subsidiary of his father's construction company.
One of Miyamoto's first hires was undergraduate student Hironobu Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi was a third-year student at Yokohama National University and wanted to earn money to buy himself an Apple II. Miyamoto took him on part-time as a programmer and game designer.
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While SquareSoft's PC and Famicom games were successful enough that
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