Go to: Squaresoft Reference Guide
Hironobu Sakaguchi
Known as the man who pulled Square out of financial ruin and the father of the Final Fantasy series, Hironobu Sakaguchi is considered one of the most influential minds in the console role-playing genre today, not to mention the gaming industry at large. His accomplishments are many, especially considering his pessimistic attitude over how well his "Final Fantasy" would sell. As one of the most influential people in the role-playing genre, Hironobu Sakaguchi is the driving force behind Square and even though he is not directly responsible for all of Square’s game projects since day one, it’s still pretty safe to say that he’s responsible for keeping the company afloat long enough to produce classic bestsellers such as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana and Vagrant Story.

Go to: Misc. Sakaguchi Interviews

Yasumi Matsuno ("Yazz")
Made famous worldwide by the recent PlayStation strategy role-playing title / dungeon crawler "Vagrant Story," Yasumi Matsuno previously worked on Quest’s Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre. He was hired by Square a few years ago to be the writer and director of Final Fantasy Tactics. After directing and producing Vagrant Story though, rumors abounded that he'd been let go after the project was complete, due to poor sales of the title in Japan, and all this despite the fact that the title was given the coveted "perfect score" from the world-renounced Japanese gaming magazine, Weekly Famitsu. These rumors eventually proved to be unsubstantiated.

Go to: Vagrant Story Art Gallery
Nobuo Uematsu
Known by many a Final Fantasy fan as the man behind the music, Nobuo Uematsu has provided many an epic musical score and strikingly memorable composition since day one. Though he did help with Chrono Trigger, as part of the Dream Project team at Square, he took a backseat to newcomer Yasunori Mitsuda, whose fresh, catchy compositions overshadowed some of Uematsu’s best. Although some say that he has lost his musical touch over the PlayStation installments of Final Fantasy, many still think of him as one of the best in the industry. He’s currently working on the score for Final Fantasy X.

Go to: Final Fantasy 9 OST

Yasunori Mitsuda
A relative newcomer to the ranks of Square, Yasunori Mitsuda made a name for himself with his Original Soundtrack for the 1995 Square release, Chrono Trigger. After his work on Chrono Trigger was complete, he worked on the downloadable Satellaview text adventure, Radical Dreamers. His first solo game composition, the Xenogears Original Soundtrack, brought a broader, more ethnic approach to his composition and expanded his musical horizons. His most recent work, the Chrono Cross Original Soundtrack, has earned him even more respect from his colleagues and he promises more revolutionary soundtracks when he begins work on Sony’s PlayStation2, which will allow for Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound encoding and improved sound compression.
Go to: Chrono Trigger Tribute
Yoshitaka Amano
The artist responsible for Sandman: The Dream Catchers, Hero: Legend of the Future, and many other illustrated works and Japanese manga is also the main man behind the character designs for Final Fantasy I-VI, and though he took a backseat to newcomer Tetsuya Nomura for VII and VIII*, he still contributed a few pieces of artwork for the titles and made his long-awaited return in Final Fantasy IX. And while he will be taking a backseat once again for installments X and XI, there’s a very strong possibly of him returning for the production of Final Fantasy XII when it begins in mid-2001.
Tetsuya Nomura
The young artist responsible for the much more modern approach to character design in Final Fantasy VII, VIII and X. His style is markedly different from that of Yoshitaka Amano, the series’ former visionary of characterization. On top of designing every character in Final Fantasy VII, VIII and X, he also designed the characters for Parasite Eve, its sequel Parasite Eve II, Brave Fencer Musashi and Dewprism, known in the U.S. as "Threads of Fate", as well as contributing his character designing talents to the recently released Square / Dream Factory PS2 production, The Bouncer.

Go to: Dewprism OST

Company History
Square Co. Ltd. was a small video game software publishing/developing company that was down on its luck. After the rather lackluster sales of their few Nintendo titles, such as World Runner, King's Knight and two titles in their Rad Racer series, their CEO was about to call it quits and just disband the company altogether. It was Chapter 11 for the would-be software giant, until a man named Hironobu Sakaguchi stepped forward.

Hironobu Sakaguchi had a simple, yet brilliant idea. His plan was to capitalize on the popularity and success of Enix's famous Dragon Quest series (known in America as Dragon Warrior), by making a title much like it, but with a more challenging level of difficulty and a level of playability and customization that was yet unseen in the field of role-playing games (RPGs).

Thinking that he would likely never work in the gaming industry again, Hironobu Sakaguchi chose to call the title "Final Fantasy". Unbeknownst to him, his "last" game would become a flagship series for the company, launching them swiftly back into safe financial territory. The company known as Square was here to stay, all thanks to a simple last ditch effort.

Square went on to publish numerous titles for both the Nintendo and Game Boy, including Final Fantasy II (an NES game which brought about the series' first real congruent, notable storyline and never made it stateside), Final Fantasy III (an NES game which also never made it stateside), Seiken Densetsu (known here as Final Fantasy Adventure), the Game Boy SaGa titles (which we know as Square and Sunsoft's Final Fantasy Legend series).

Square's Marriage to Nintendo
When Nintendo's second home console, the Super Famicom (known as the Super Nintendo in North America) hit, they released what is arguably their grestest lineup for any console ever, including Final Fantasy IV (II here, brought the series into the 16-bit realm), Live-A-Live (a strange title that had you playing a variety of people in different time periods) Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (ack!), Final Fantasy V (SNES game, made its official way stateside in Final Fantasy Anthology), the Romancing SaGa series (none of which ever came stateside), Secret of Mana (or Seiken Densetsu II), Final Fantasy VI (III here, became one of the most popular Final Fantasies stateside), Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu 3 (which didn't make it stateside, despite its excellence), Secret of Evermore (the first American developed Square RPG) and, finally, Super Mario RPG (the first and only role-playing title ever programmed and co-developed by both Shigeru Miyamoto and Square).

Anyway, at this point, Square began designing and planning the game that would be known to the public as Final Fantasy VII. With more than three years between the sixth and seventh installment, the folks at Square had quite a bit riding on the latest in their flagship series.

Square's Alliance with Sony
However, it wasn't until Nintendo announced its intention to go with a high-density cartridge format for their next system, then dubbed the Nintendo Ultra 64, that Square announced its intention to develop for a relatively new contender for console domination, Sony's very own PlayStation.

The decision was met with both anticipation and disapproval from the gaming public at large. Some wondered how Square, a company so used to telling its stories on the cartridge format, would adapt to the fresh new development environment offered by Sony. However, it only took until about 1997 for the reality of the situation to take full effect.

That was the year when Final Fantasy VII was unleashed on the gaming public worldwide. Contained on a massive collection of three compact discs, Final Fantasy VII represented a swift change to the series. Gone was the size restriction and unnecessary expense of the low-density cartridge format. With compact discs, Square could put not only more gameplay, but better looking graphics, more textures, more sprites, and even a few computer-rendered full motion video sequences, which allowed the story and characters to come to life unlike ever before...

Square also went on to publish many titles in genres other than role-playing after the monster success that was Final Fantasy VII, including Tobal No. 1 (a fighter), Bushido Blade and its sequel (sword fighting titles), Final Fantasy Tactics (a strategy title designed by several ex-Quest members, the folks responsible for Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre), SaGa Frontier (ack!), Einhander (a shooter), Parasite Eve (a modern "cinematic RPG"), Xenogears (a supposedly "controversial" role-playing title) and Brave Fencer Musashi.

Square is Here to Stay!

However, after finishing Final Fantasy VII, the development teams sought to improve the current formula of the series by adding better graphics, more textures, crisper environments and a vastly altered form of the typical Final Fantasy battle engine. Final Fantasy VIII, which was a major departure from the series' fantasy roots, was released in September of 1999 and marked the first title in the series to have smaller menus, life-size characters and a more modern storyline.

After the eighth installment in their flagship series, Square released several smaller, low-key titles, such as the Chocobo games, which were geared more towards little kids. It wasn't until the year 2000 that things really started to pick up. Square promised to deliver seven titles within the year, and deliver they did. SaGa Frontier 2, Front Mission 3, Vagrant Story, Legend of Mana, Threads of Fate, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve II and Final Fantasy IX all made it stateside within the year and, for the first time, role-playing and adventure fans were actually overloaded with titles to play...

By the end of January 2001, Square released Driving Emotion Type-S, their first racing title for the PlayStation 2. And by the end of March, we saw the domestic release of the cinematic action-packed PS2 brawler, The Bouncer.

Go to: Nintendo Power FF2 Issue

A Bright Future Awaits...
And in just a few months, we should be seeing not only the import (July), but also the domestic release (November) of the long-awaited Final Fantasy X, which is set to innovate the series yet again, much in the way that Final Fantasy VII did in 1997, with quite a few firsts for the series, including real-time facial expressions, motion captured movements, and even voice acting.

Beyond that, we'll see the release of Final Fantasy XI, the first completely online title in the series, and shortly after that, Final Fantasy XII, which will once again return the series to its offline roots. Square also has nine more titles in development for various systems as we speak. It looks like Square and role-playing fans alike can rest assured, as this is only the beginning...

Squaresoft Developer Profile and History: May 16, 2001. (Go to: TOP)