Final Fantasy (video game)

Did You Know?

• The game's working title was Fighting Fantasy, but trademark issues and Square's dire circumstances prompted the name change.
• Four hundred years before the game's events, the Lefeinish people used the Power of Wind to craft airships and a giant space station called the Floating Castle.
• The webcomic 8-Bit Theater, created by Brian Clevinger, parodies the game and became popular in the gaming community starting in March 2001.

Development

Hironobu Sakaguchi had long wanted to create a role-playing game, but Square initially refused due to expected low sales. Only three colleagues volunteered to join the project, as Sakaguchi was considered a rough boss despite his unsuccessful creations. The development team, called the A-Team, consisted of seven core staff members. Sakaguchi recruited Koichi Ishii and Akitoshi Kawazu, with Kawazu designing the battle system and sequences based heavily on Dungeons & Dragons and Wizardry. He introduced elemental weaknesses to fire and ice, which had not appeared in Japanese RPGs before, and advocated for players to freely choose their party member classes at the start, believing that character creation was where the fun of an RPG began.

Versions and re-releases

Final Fantasy has been remade multiple times for different platforms, often packaged with Final Fantasy II. The first re-release was for the MSX2 in Japan in December 1989, published by Microcabin; it had nearly three times the storage space of the Famicom version but suffered from loading times, with minor graphical upgrades and improved music and sound effects. In 1994, the compilation Final Fantasy I・II was released for the Famicom in Japan with few graphical updates. The WonderSwan Color remake, released in Japan on December 9, 2000, updated the 8-bit graphics, added full background images in battle, and redrawn character and enemy sprites resembling those from Super Famicom Final Fantasy games. For the PlayStation, Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II were re-released separately and as a combined game; the collection was released in Japan in 2002 as Final Fantasy I & II Premium Package and in Europe and North America in 2003 as Final Fantasy Origins, featuring more detailed graphics, a remixed soundtrack, full motion video sequences, art galleries of Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations, and a memo save function. It was re-released in the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimate Box in December 2012. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 added four new dungeons, an updated bestiary, and other minor changes.

Reception

Final Fantasy was well received by critics and commercially successful. The original Famicom version shipped 520,000 copies in Japan, and Square's publicity department reported 600,000 copies sold in Japan by 1994. The NES release sold 700,000 copies in North America, totaling 1.3 million copies worldwide by 1994. As of March 2003, all versions had shipped 1.99 million copies worldwide, with 1.21 million in Japan and 780,000 abroad; by November 2007, a PlayStation Portable version had shipped 140,000 copies. IGN editors ranked it the 11th best NES game, praising its class system and vehicle travel. GamesRadar ranked it the eighth best NES game, noting that while Dragon Warrior introduced the genre, Final Fantasy popularized it. Retro Gamer readers voted it the 93rd top retro game in 2004, with staff observing that despite poor visuals and a simple quest, many consider the original the best except for Final Fantasy VII. In 2006, Famitsu readers voted it the 63rd best game of all time, and GameFAQs users ranked it 76th in 2005. Nintendo Power placed it 49th on its Top 200 Games list and 19th best NES game in 2008, citing its role in establishing console RPG basics such as epic stories, leveling, random battles, and character classes. Time Extension included it on its Best JRPGs of All Time list in 2023.