Having the likes of Mario, Zelda, Mega Man and the numerous other figureheads of gaming to choose from, we felt that Final Fantasy was the perfect place for us to start our history series. Just as Mario can be considered the face of platforming (and of gaming in general), Final Fantasy is widely regarded as the benchmark of the role-playing genre. But before all the Materia, Eidolons, Chocobos, Moogles and oversized swords came into play, Square was on the brink of collapse. And the title "Final Fantasy" was originally intended to live up to its namesake as being Square's final fantasy-based title.

The end of the year usually revolves around reminiscing about the past, learning from prior mistakes, holding yourself to a new standard and moving forward. There is no other series that exhibits this concept as much as Final Fantasy. Hironobu Sakaguchi and the team at Square were on the verge of financial ruin. Much like the formulaic stories of the series' early entries, it took four warriors of the light to save everything.

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Square: Beyond the Brink

Square, a development and publishing company, emerged in 1983 and was formed as the computer software division of the Denyusha electrical company (which could have been what Final Fantasy 7's Shinra company could have been paying tribute to). Square was created by Masashi Miyamoto as a means of him avoiding having to follow in his father's footsteps at the helm of the Denyusha company. Miyamoto thought that PC software creation should have story writers, graphic designers and programmers working in unison on one project as opposed to the previous standard of having a one-man-gang of game development. Eventually, Hiromichi Tanaka and Hironobu Sakaguchi each dropped out of college so that they could develop games at Square full-time. Tanaka and Sakaguchi would eventually become two of the most important names in Final Fantasy history.

From 1984 to 1987, Square released nearly two dozen lackluster titles. The only three games that warranted enough interest to be ported over to the United States were Rad Racer, King's Knight and 3D World Runner, and even those three titles' sales were abysmal compared to the peers of their respected genres. Hironobu Sakaguchi repeatedly tried to pitch a fantasy-based title for Square to develop, but it was always shot down. It wasn't until the widespread success of a certain Enix-based RPG that Square would even consider doing a fantasy title. Ironically, this game would go on to be Final Fantasy's number one rival throughout history -- Dragon Quest.

Rad Rader & King's Knight
Rad Racer / King's Knight
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Final Fantasy: The First RPG?

Many younger RPG fans believe that the original Final Fantasy was the first role-playing game ever created. This is certainly untrue since the genre was well underway before Square's inception. There were already a handful of mainframe computer-based fantasy games being developed throughout the mid seventies, such as pedit5, Dungeon and dnd. Personal computer RPGs were also being developed by the early 1980s, such as Temple of Apshai, Dungeons & Dragons (PC) and Akalabeth: World of Doom (which would be the precursor to Ultima). Nearly all of these titles are a testament to the success of the original, tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons and were merely ways of capturing D&D's widespread popularity on a portable, personal level.

Ultima and the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons proved to be two of the largest influences on Hironobu Sakaguchi for him to want to create a fantasy title. And while most of the '70s and early '80s role-playing games borrow from previously-established mythologies from the likes of Conan the Cimmerian and The Lord of the Rings, Ultima and D&D left the most noticeable impressions on Sakaguchi, which we would later see manifest in Final Fantasy's mechanics. For example, in Ultima, magic spells had to be purchased from stores, with the number of spell uses corresponding to how many times you actually bought the spell. The long, dungeon-crawling segments of Dragon Quest can be attributed to D&D, which definitely trickled down to being an ongoing trend throughout most of the Final Fantasy series. Dragon Quest, like its contemporaries, boomed in Japan and had a relatively-small following on home consoles in the States. But Nintendo Power magazine kept it in its "Top 30" lists and was nominated for a handful of awards by the end of the year of its American release (known in the States as Dragon Warrior).

By the time Dragon Quest was released in Japan, Square's finances were at a critical stage. Most of the games Square released throughout the early '80s were met with underwhelming sales, often costing more than their actual revenue. With the sun setting on Square, Miyamoto and his cohorts decided to finally give the OK to Hironobu Sakaguchi to make his fantasy game due to the fast-paced profit Enix made with Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest proved that there were Japanese players who wanted to play D&D-based fantasy games (which were primarily a hit in the west).

Dragon Quest & Ultima
Dragon Quest / Ultima
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Production: Assembling the Party

Sakaguchi and his team were given the green light to make Final Fantasy due to Dragon Quest's recent success, but they ran with many of its ideas. Dragon Quest's character design and game artwork were done by Akira Toriyama, who was starting to become a mainstream success due to his Dragon Ball manga. Similarly, Sakaguchi appointed Yoshitaka Amano to do the character designs and game artwork for Final Fantasy. Yoshitaka Amano was known for creating and drawing Gatchaman, Tekkaman and Casshan. The artwork he did for Final Fantasy became a staple of the franchise's promotional material and was much like the covers he previously did for the Vampire Hunter D book series. Amano's infamous watercolor style would go on to define the series' characters for the following 25 years.

Amano's iconic artwork of the franchise is only rivaled by its phenomenal melodies. This can be attributed to Nobuo Uematsu, who had already contributed music to 16 other video games prior to Final Fantasy (Dragon Quest was composed by Koichi Sugiyama, who previously created music for numerous movies, television shows and anime series). Uematsu's songs for Final Fantasy would go on be synonymous with the series, with Final Fantasy's opening song becoming the official theme of the entire series.

Vampire Hunter D / Final Fantasy
Yoshitaka Amano
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Story: Let's Do the Time Warp Again

(warning: spoilers for a 26 year old RPG)

Surprisingly, the overall plot of Final Fantasy was a lot more intricate than most people would have expected, especially when compared to its contemporaries. Like the first Ultima title, defeating Final Fantasy's main baddie attains immortality and your player must travel back into the past and slay him before his immortality is set (mind you, Ultima would already have been on its third title by the time Final Fantasy was released). Dragon Quest, on the other hand, is your run-of-the-mill save the girl/slay the dragon adventure.

Final Fantasy starts off with the four Light Warriors in a group, each bearing an orb. Unlike the ongoing crystal motif of its sequels, Final Fantasy revolved around four orbs which each embodied the full power of the elements 2,000 years prior. But now, the elements have died out and the crystals have faded. Your team must confront the four elemental fiends (much like the ones you encounter in Final Fantasy IV). After defeating these four demons, you find out that the fiends have created the super demon Chaos out of the body of the first boss you killed in the game, Garland, and sent it 2,000 years into the past. In the past, Chaos goes on to create the four elemental fiends (by siphoning the energies from the elemental crystals), which causes the world to be how it is at the beginning of the game. You find Chaos in the present, where he has already been living for 2,000 years. Defeating him there means nothing, since the fiends have already sent Garland's reincarnated body into the past where he becomes the demon, Chaos. This is an ongoing perpetual cycle of Chaos which doesn't break until the four Light Warriors travel back to the past to kill Chaos when he just arrived (and you thought the movie Primer was complicated).

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Classes: It's Not Final Fantasy Unless the Mages Wear Awesome Hats

At the beginning of your adventure, you are able to create a party consisting of six different character classes, putting multiple characters of the same class, if you preferred. The character classes, Warrior, Monk, Thief, White Mage, Black Mage and Red Mage. Each had specific roles, equipment and spells to use throughout combat. After encountering Bahamut, your character classes were then upgraded to an advanced class. The Warrior became the Fighter (able to use White Magic like a Paladin), the Monk became the Black Belt, Thief became Ninja, and each of the Mages become Wizards capable of top tier spells. These character classes would go on to be the reoccurring archetypes of playable characters for decades to come. These character classes were similar to the Base Classes you were able to chose in early versions of Dungeons and Dragons.

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 The World: One Step at a Time

Final Fantasy's overworld map consisted of two continents in the northern hemisphere of the world, and a huge one in the southern half. Exploration was paramount due to the fact that Final Fantasy was rather illusive in terms of telling you where to proceed next; you had to explore every corner and talk to every person whenever you were unsure of where to go. There was no world map item for you to use, at first. Instead, there was a cryptic, backwards "press select and B" message you found from a talking broom in Matoya's Cave about thirty minutes into the game.

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Geographical obstructions, such as rivers, oceans and mountains forced you to explore every constricted body of land you were on until you found the cave, dungeon or town you were looking for. It isn't until you save the town of Pravoka from Bikke and his band of pirates that you finally have a means of traversing the open sea. Unfortunately, your pirate ship couldn't navigate canals and rivers. So you never really conquered the waters until you acquired the canoe. Finally, you had to raise a sunken airship out of a desert in order to zip around in the fiendful skies. This method of having a boat for oceans, rowboat-type transport for rivers, and an ultimate payoff of an airship would be an ongoing trend through the Final Fantasy franchise until a certain yellow bird would be introduced a few years later...

Battles: Fight, Magic, Item, Run

Final Fantasy's influences, such as Dragon Quest, Ultima and the first Phantasy Star, each presented combat from a turn-based, first-person perspective where you would never see what your characters look like. Instead, you simply had an enemy on the screen, chose a command, and watched a sword or spell flicker in front of you. Final Fantasy revolutionized RPG combat by putting both the enemy and player parties on the screen at the same time. Most of the Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star and Ultima's first-person fights revolved around one person attacking a lone monster. Final Fantasy changed the genre by letting you see your group and the enemy group at the same time, trading blows between all of the ranks. And it also allowed you to fight up to 9 enemies at the same time, resulting in 4 vs. 9 scenarios. Toss in the turn-based combat, the ability to target any enemy, multiple creature-hitting spells, and Final Fantasy was a visible treat and one of the most engaging combat systems to grace the RPG genre.

Final Fantasy
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Magic: The Gathering of Charges

As previously stated, Final Fantasy's original magic system was similar to Ultima's. Magic spells were learned by visiting the corresponding Black or White Magic spell vendor. Red Mages could learn a diminished amount of both Black and White spells, offering mediocre offensive and defensive spells atop his average attack power. Regardless of caster-type, spells were broken into eight levels, allowing you to only learn three out of the vendor's four available spells. Final Fantasy also threw you the occasional curve ball by introducing vendors who offered additional spells for levels of magic you may have previously filled up.

Instead of Magic Points/MP dictating the number of times you could cast a spell, Final Fantasy relied on charges. Low level spells could be cast up to nine times, and high level spells would only have one or two charges. Casting a spell once would use a charge, and there were no ethers to refill your magic capacity with -- you could only sleep at an inn in order to recharge your magic spells. Also, Final Fantasy had action cancellations after an enemy would die. If all of your characters targeted the same enemy for your round and it died on the first hit, the other actions of the rest of your characters were wasted, including magic spells. This lead to charges being saved for the most difficult of encounters. The randomized battle parameters also meant that you could face anywhere from one to nine enemies whenever you encountered monsters. Having nine enemies did not mean that they were 1/9th as strong as their solo counterparts, it simply meant you have nine equally strong enemies to deal with. This, combined with the charge system, open-ended exploring and lack of hand-holding, meant that Final Fantasy was extremely difficult for those new to the genre.

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The Menu: Blue Da Ba Dee

Final Fantasy's menu screen was the first of many all-blue screens where all of our party-privy information would lie. The status screen introduced us to the numeric concepts of strength, defense, intelligence and the like. These statistics altered your damage output, damage taken, critical hit chances and dodge frequencies. A major focus on this menu screen is the inclusion of the four elemental orbs, which certifies that "orb" was not some type of translation mistake of the word "crystal". Nevertheless, crystals became the franchise standard by the time we would reach the third title.

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Legacy and Sequels: Squaring out Debt

Final Fantasy became immensely popular, selling over 400,000 copies in its original run, which was amazing for an RPG in the 1980s. Its legacy would echo throughout the halls of RPG history to the point that Final Fantasy would become the face of the role-playing genre. It took two years for the original Final Fantasy to hit American shores, and by that time it had helped Square out of financial ruin and cemented its spot in the gaming industry. But with Dragon Quest, Ultima and Phantasy Star all having sequels released by the time Final Fantasy reached American shores, a second NES Final Fantasy would eventually reach the United States, right?

The History of Final Fantasy will continue when we breakdown the two Final Fantasy titles American gamers never saw until nearly 15 years after each of their releases.

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