Final Fantasy

1987 · RPG · NES

Overview

Final Fantasy (1987) is Square's Famicom role-playing game, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi and scored by Nobuo Uematsu, in which four Light Warriors restore the darkened crystals.

Deep Dive

The player picks a party of four at the start from six classes — Fighter, Thief, Black Belt, Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage — and cannot change it. Battles are turn-based and menu-driven, with random encounters on the map, and characters level up to 50.

Developer Story

Sakaguchi directed it, with Nasir Gebelli programming and Yoshitaka Amano designing the characters. It came out in Japan in December 1987 and shipped 520,000 copies there; Nintendo published it in North America in 1990.

Did You Know?

Its working title was Fighting Fantasy, changed because of the gamebook series of that name.
Uematsu linked the word "final" to Square's troubles, but Sakaguchi said "any word that starts with an 'F' would have been fine".