There is no doubt that Final Fantasy is the biggest JRPG franchise ever. The Square Enix series has marked several generations for more than 35 years thanks to a unique staging, tremendously emotional stories, a very careful gameplay and production values that practically no one can match in the industry.
A name that has left an indelible mark and that has been discussed on many occasions about its origin. 16 numbered installments later, zillions of spin-offs and even animated productions, it is not clear what motivated the Square team in the 80s to decide on such an iconic name.
Sakaguchi vs. Uematsu
In this topic there two opposing visions and precisely they belong to capital members in the creation of final fantasy. On one side we have Hironobu Sakaguchi, director of the first game and subsequent installments of the franchise, and on the other side we find the master Nobuo Uematsu, composer of the legendary soundtrack.
The main theory proposes that the situation of the company was disastrous during the 80s and practically no games were profitable for Square. With such an economic panorama, everything was bet on a new JRPG that was called final fantasy, alleging a dream hope that he would succeed. However, Sakaguchi has clarified that the name comes from the fact that he was going to abandon video game development, so he decided on that name for what was going to be his last work.
In contrast is Uematsu. He does not deny Sakaguchi’s position, he even corroborates it in the sense that he was about to retire, but he adheres to the unofficial version. Square was about to go bust and the workers clung to that burning naileitherbecause their positions depended on it.
One more nuance to the formula
Two opposite positions and to which Sakaguchi added one more detail. According to him, at the time a way was sought to create a name that could be abbreviated as FF in English. If we pronounce both letters in Japanese, we will get the sound “efu efu”, which sounds melodic to speakers of the Asian language. To add more controversy, you have to look at the word Final.
Since we are talking about fantasy universes, it made sense to use Fantasy in the name, but everything indicates that the reason for using Final arose to avoid legal problems. Final Fantasy was originally going to be called Fighting Fantasy and the obstacle was the role-playing books of the time with the same name that later generated board games. To round off the play, Sakaguchi explained that “any word that begins with F would have been fine”, so he remains in his line of insisting that the battered business situation had little to do with it.
In this case, Sakaguchi has a very valuable ally. Akitoshi Kawazu, executive producer of Square Enix at the time, adds to the vision that the director has expressed:
“It was something that was decided a long time ago, so my memory may be a little off, but I think one of the things we had decided beforehand was that we wanted a title that could be abbreviated as FF. That abbreviation has a special meaning. So we came up with a lot of different titles, and Final Fantasy was one of them, and from there I think we rushed to the decision.
There was some hesitation about calling something “final” from the start, but in the end we all liked it. As a side note, another option we liked was Fighting Fantasy, but it was the name of a series of gamebooks by legendary game designer Steve Jackson, so we scrapped the idea. I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t noticed and went with Fighting Fantasy.”
Was Square really broke?
The Japanese company decided that the future of video games was not so much on the PC, but on a machine as popular as the Famicom. There were disagreements within the company, as many Square developers considered themselves software creators and the console was little more than a toy. Even with this, it was decided to take that direction.
Square signed a third-party contract with Nintendo in 1985, after Namco, Bandai and other major brands had previously done so. A rubric that sought to consolidate the economic rhythm with Thexder and King’s Knight featuring as their first releases for the Famicom.
Square went on to form as an independent company, hiring several full-time employees, including Sakaguchi and they rented an office in Ginza. The exclusive Tokyo area could be afforded as a result of the 3,000 million yen billing from the launch of 13 video games that year. A tremendous quantum leap, considering they had only released two games in 1984.
Obviously, that level of production had a serious impact on the quality of the works and the profit margins were drastically reduced. The Famicom Dysk System also flopped, so Square’s projects on the peripheral went awry. Leasing became unfeasible, a new office in Ueno would be the center of Square, and half the staff were fired. Only 30 employees were present, so the founder Masafumi Miyamoto commissioned the four directors with new proposals.
The staff votes on it supported Sakaguchi’s initiative to try to replicate the success of Dragon Quest in 1986, so the project was given the green light, but on the condition that only five employees were involved. ten months later, final fantasy It was born on December 18, 1987 and 400,000 units were shipped in Japan, resulting in an absolute success that has lasted until today and saved Square from ruin.
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