Back in April 2023, Square Enix released a two-part conversation with Final Fantasy series creators Hironobu Sakaguchi, Kazuko Shibuya, and Yoshinori Kitase. Today, an English language version is available to watch, and we’ve transcribed the interview below.

In this first part, (read/watch the second part here) we get a behind the scenes look at development on the first three Final Fantasy games as well as a peek at the different locations the Square office inhabited in the early days of the series.

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Everything started in 1987, when the first FINAL FANTASY was released. Over 35 years, FINAL FANTASY has grown into a world-renowned RPG series. The Creators talk about the history of FINAL FANTASY from the beginning up to FFVI, the pinnacle of the 2D era.

They are:

A conversation about the road that FINAL FANTASY has taken over the last 35 years starts here…

35 Years of FINAL FANTASY

Matsuzawa:
Today we bring you a special talk show to mark the latest release of the FINAL FANTASY pixel remaster series on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. We have invited some legendary special guests that are bound to thrill all the FINAL FANTASY fans out there. First of all, please let me introduce Mr. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of FINAL FANTASY.

Sakaguchi:
Hi, Sakaguchi here! I was actually told I would just be drinking and chatting with Kitase here, but it seems to have escalated from that, and Ms. Shibuya is here too. And on top of that, we even have the respected FFXIV veteran Chiaki Matsuzawa as the MC, so I kind of feel a bit pressured that I have to talk properly now! But I’m here now, let’s get down to it.

Matsuzawa:
Thank you for coming. Next up we have Square Enix art director Ms. Kazuko Shibuya, who designed and drew the pixel sprites for numerous FINAL FANTASY games.

Shibuya:
Hi, Kazuko Shibuya from Square Enix. Nice to be here today. There are some people I haven’t seen in a long while here today and some who I have, and I would love to have a fun chat with everyone.

Matsuzawa:
Next, we have FINAL FANTASY Brand Manager Yoshinori Kitase from Square Enix.

Kitase:
Hello! Kitase here. I think I’m here to calm everything down if it gets rough, along with Ms. Matsuzawa.

Sakaguchi:
You two have definitely been positioned to jump in! [Editor’s note: positioned as in the seating arrangement]

Matsuzawa:
We’re ready!

Shibuya:
You think I might get a bit rowdy then?!

Kitase:
Maybe!

Matsuzawa:
You are like the healer in the party, I guess! We all have some champagne to drink here, so let’s get straight down to toasting 35 years of FINAL FANTASY! Mr. Sakaguchi?

[The group raises their glasses.]

Sakaguchi:
35 years eh? It feels like it has flown by. But most importantly, it is good that we are all still doing well and can get together to drink and celebrate like this. Cheers!

All:
Cheers!

[The group toasts each other.]

Sakaguchi:
Can I have a re-fill already?

Shibuya:
Already?

Matsuzawa:
Mr. Sakaguchi, you recently held a reunion for the team didn’t you? Where everyone got together again.

Sakaguchi:
Yeah, it was half reunion and half just a real-life get together. As some people know, I am quite into FFXIV recently. And I play together with a group of kids who love FINAL FANTASY. I really feel that love when I talk together with them. So I thought that kind of meet up would be good. And we now meet for drinks regularly. Ms. Shibuya finally joined us recently too.

Shibuya:
Around last week. Those guys just love FF. And they told me how they love the characters I drew.

Sakaguchi:
They are all so lively when you talk to them.

Shibuya:
They told me how they really like FFIII and FFV and so on.

Sakaguchi:
They did blame us for not putting any save points in the last dungeon of FFIII though…

Kitase:
They blamed you that much?

Sakaguchi:
These were people who were in primary school and played it when it came out in real time. They say, “I really couldn’t get through that, why did you make it like that?!” So I say sorry. I’m apologizing for it 30 years later.

Matsuzawa:
In actual fact, Mr. Sakaguchi you just turned 60 didn’t you?

Sakaguchi:
I did. I suppose that calls for another toast. To Hironobu Sakaguchi turning 60!

All:
Cheers! Congratulations!

[The group toasts Sakaguchi’s 60th birthday.]

Pixel art present from Kazuko Shibuya

Matsuzawa:
Ms. Shibuya gave you a wonderful present, didn’t she?

Sakaguchi:
She did. When we met up recently, she handed it to me on an autograph board. I think it is probably being projected around here right now. [Sakaguchi gestures to the negative space in the top half of the shot where the sprite of his likeness is displayed with the pixelated words: “LV60”]

Shibuya:
It is.

Sakaguchi:
So many people have said how amazing Ms. Shibuya is at drawing these and how it looks like me.

Shibuya:
I have been doing them for 35 years!

Matsuzawa:
The costume is great.

Shibuya:
We have this picture from last year…

Sakaguchi:
Those were the clothes I was wearing for my 60th birthday.

Shibuya:
That nice red down jacket.

Sakaguchi:
I didn’t want to wear an old style vest you see.

Shibuya:
It’s a good look.

Sakaguchi:
And you seem to have used at least 3 or 4 different gradations to show my greying hair!

Shibuya:
I did!

Sakaguchi:
Well, I certainly felt the professionalism there, but…

All:
[laughter]

Square’s Ginza office

Matsuzawa:
The game was released on the 18th of December 1987. And Square was still based in Ginza at that time.

Sakaguchi:
Our affluent period!

Sakaguchi:
Our CEO [Masafumi Miyamoto] went a bit mad and declared “We are going to Ginza!” The 3rd district of Ginza, wasn’t it?

Shibuya:
4th I think?

Sakaguchi:
It was 3rd district on the east side of Ginza. Pretty much 4th actually.

Shibuya:
Near the Kabuki theatre.

Sakaguchi:
Amidst all that affluence, in the summer, we were wearing sour smelling t-shirts and shorts from working all night, with rubber sandals…

Shibuya:
I think that was just you Sakaguchi!

Sakaguchi:
So when we went out to the Matsuya department store for lunch, all the prim and proper housewives would go “who are these people?” And we would be like “Sorry, this is the only place near enough for us to each at around here!”.

Shibuya:
Ginza was even more up-market than it is today [as opposed to] back then.

Sakaguchi:
Yeah. We really stood out. Ms. Shibuya here was ok though.

Shibuya:
I was only around 20 or 21 at the time.

Sakaguchi:
Yeah, you would have been. You had just joined the company, right?

Shibuya:
Yes, we moved in the summer of the year I joined.

Matsuzawa:
Incidentally, what were you doing around that time Mr. Kitase?

Kitase:
I was still at university. A friend had a Famicom at his place and I was just noticing Mario around then.

Matsuzawa:
And you liked films, right?

Kitase:
Yes, I played games as a hobby too though, and I think probably played FFI.

Shibuya:
Probably?

Sakaguchi:
Probably? … Oi!

Kitase:
I can’t quite remember if I played it at launch or not. Of course I never though I would be joining the games industry back then.

Sakaguchi:
Yes, he wanted to be a filmmaker. He turned up just as we were looking for someone with an understanding of cinematic presentation for FINAL FANTASY. He had made this weird promotion video with things floating down the screen to the music of Koizumu Kyoko!

The reason for the name ‘FINAL FANTASY’

Matsuzawa:
By the way, could I ask about the origins of the name “FINAL FANTASY”?

Sakaguchi:
It’s not actually all that cool of a story. It was inspired by ‘Fighting Fantasy’. But at the time, DRAGON QUEST had started to establish itself and shortened to “DORAKUE” from around their second game. For our game, we wanted it to be shortened to something using the Roman alphabet. So it came from “FF”.

Matsuzawa:
“FF” came first then?

Sakaguchi:
Yes, “FF” was first and then there was Fighting Fantasy but it was tricky to use that because of the trademarks and the like, so we reluctantly went with FINAL FANTASY as a last resort. We were like, “It’s got ‘FINAL’, yeah that will do!”

Matsuzawa:
So it was surprisingly casual how the “Final” came about?

Sakaguchi:
Yeah!

Matsuzawa:
There are all these urban legends that it actually means “the last dream” or “the ultimate illusion” or something like that.

Sakaguchi:
There was once a primary school English teacher who wrote “FINAL FANTASY” on the white board and explained that it means ‘kyukyoku no gensou’ (the ultimate illusion) in Japanese.

Matsuzawa:
Sounds really cool!

Sakaguchi:
So the kids send me a postcard, because that was how long ago it was and it said, “our teacher told us it means this, is that true?” The second it arrived I said, “We’re using this!” So I told everyone present that’s what FINAL FANTASY really means now. It’s “The Last Illusion” from now on, OK!?

Matsuzawa:
So it couldn’t have been done without the fans then?

Sakaguchi:
I really have to thank that one teacher!

Reasons for entering the games industry

Matsuzawa:
I have actually been given a number of questions to ask you, such as “how did you get into the games industry?”

Sakaguchi:
Me?

Matsuzawa:
Yes, please Mr. Sakaguchi.

Sakaguchi:
At the time there was a machine called the Apple II, and it was very powerful. I was actually at university together with Hiromichi Tanaka from the FF team, and he was well into the Apple II, playing games like Ultima and Wizardry. It was a huge culture shock… to think there were games like this in the world. It was surprise after surprise, and I think that was when I fell in love with games and ultimately wound up making them.

Hiromichi Tanaka — one of the founding members of SquareSoft (Currently Square Enix) and a friend of Mr. Sakaguchi since they were at university together. Tanaka worked on FINAL FANTASY during the early days of the series and went on to work on the Mana series and other games, also serving as the producer for FINAL FANTASY from the start of development until 2012.

Matsuzawa:
What about you Ms. Shibuya?

Shibuya:
I wanted to become an animator and went to an animation school but after I studied it for a bit, I realized I wasn’t all that suited for it. So I consulted with one of my teachers about jobs outside of animation and she said how they had received a recruitment ad from a games company. Game companies sent ads out to schools…

Sakaguchi:
Square had not recruited graduates directly before. So she was the first one of the 3 graduate girls that we recruited.

Matsuzawa:
What was the reason you hired her?

Sakaguchi:
I mean… probably because her art was good!

Shibuya:
I went to the interview, and they asked me “Do you know about pixel art?”

Sakaguchi:
Of course, you couldn’t find people with pixel art experience at the time, so there was no way to check if someone could draw it or not.

Kitase:
And did you have the experience?

Shibuya:
No way!

Kitase:
Yeah, of course.

Matsuzawa:
So your pixel art career started from then?

Shibuya:
So when I went for my interview at Square, they talked about the Family Computer [Famicom] and I kind of thought “oh, that must be the thing I have at home”…

Sakaguchi:
So why did you actually choose to work for us then?!

Shibuya:
Well, um…

Sakaguchi:
I mean, you didn’t play games right? And you weren’t sure if you would be able to do your art with pixels?

Shibuya:
I just didn’t think about it. Not at all.

Matsuzawa:
I mean, Mr. Sakaguchi is quite the iconoclast, but it seems you are too?!

Shibuya:
[laughs] I just think that I was not picky. Drawing for games fit in that broad category of jobs, right?

Kitase:
So you wanted to draw for a living?

Shibuya:
Yes, to be a designer.

Matsuzawa:
If you think about it, if Ms. Shibuya had not discovered the job, then we wouldn’t have had all these pixel sprites today, would we? Not just for FINAL FANTASY, but on various other Square games too. As someone who has basked in the expressiveness of Square’s pixel graphics over the years…

Shibuya:
“Basked in the expressiveness”?!

Sakaguchi:
It’s a nice turn of phrase! “Basked in the expressiveness of the pixel graphics”!

Matsuzawa:
Can I ask Mr. Kitase about how he got into the industry too?

Kitase:
I joined way after these two did. In terms of the FF series, it was just before FFIII came out. No. Just after I think… It was a similar story to Ms. Shibuya. After I left school I worked for a year as an animator and animation planner. I wanted to change jobs and I played games as a hobby. I can’t remember what game it was I was playing, but I got stuck. And in those days, you had to go to a magazine to find the solution. So I stood in a bookshop reading games magazines and saw the Square recruitment ad in Famimaga.

Sakaguchi:
Our ad in Famimaga!?

Matsuzawa:
Advertising positions is important, eh?

Sakaguchi:
Sure is!

Kitase:
I saw it and I wanted to do that job. I thought I would get to play games all day!

Matsuzawa:
Is that what you were like Mr. Kitase?!

Sakaguchi:
Yeah, that basically sums him up.

Kitase:
Of course I had played DRAGON QUEST and other roleplaying games and I thought FINAL FANTASY looked interesting for how it was using storytelling and drama in an adult way.

Development on FINAL FANTASY I

Matsuzawa:
So how did the development of FINAL FANTASY I actually begin? Writing the plot, etc.?

Sakaguchi:
We started by planning out the setting on a whiteboard. Yes, we had a board. And someone wrote “Fire, Earth, Water, Wind” on it. I asked, “What’s that supposed to be then?” And they said, “It’s the 4 elements”. I said, “Do we really need that?” and they were like “Come on, let us do elements.” So I said “OK, then, fair enough. I guess we can keep the 4 elements.”

Now Nasir Gebelli knew nothing at all about RPGs, he was a 3D action game specialist and wondered what RPGs were. So I had to start by explaining “OK, so we have these things called ‘fields’, and then we have towns…” he said “tsk, why do we need towns?” and I was like “Look, we’re making them…”

Nasir Gebelli — A super skilled programmer from Iran who worked for SquareSoft on games such as Highway Star, Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, and Secret of Mana. He managed to create the super high speed scrolling technique used in the FINAL FANTASY airship scene that was thought to be technically impossible on the Family Computer.

Matsuzawa:
He came from a completely different culture and environment, didn’t he?

Sakaguchi:
He did. And when it came to switching to battle scenes he said “I don’t get it. Why can’t they just fight here?”. And he could only speak English. He kept coming up with ideas, even though he knew nothing of RPGs.

Matsuzawa:
About the airships, right?

Sakaguchi:
He just went ahead and made them faster without permission!

Matsuzawa:
I would like to ask about that a bit later. Yeah it was just so fast! Incidentally, were there any other games that you paid attention to when developing FFI? Anything where you thought “I would like to make this”?

Sakaguchi:
As you would expect, DRAGON QUEST was a big one. We had already been making RPGs on PC, so we very much wanted to make one on console. But we thought that the capacity of the Famicom ROM would make it impossible. We felt that RPGs were games you played for over 10 hours slowly building up your characters over a long time, but the DQ team were great at that. They cut down what they could and brought out the flavor world through Mr. Horii‘s [Yuji Horii] text. That was how they created DQI, and it was like getting punched in the head and we got hung up about why we weren’t able to do that too. So we started out by having to overturn our preconceptions that the Famicom was for action games, and that it was not possible to create an RPG for it. So in that sense the existence of DRAGON QUEST was huge for us.

Matsuzawa:
Thank you so much. Shall we move on then? We are still only on FFI after all!

Sakaguchi:
Right. We only have been talking about FFI so far! I think we went into quite some depth!

Development on FINAL FANTASY II

Matsuzawa:
Next up, FINAL FANTASY II. So, it came out on the 17th of December, 1988, and Square had moved to Okachimachi. FFII had changed quite significantly from FFI hadn’t it?

Sakaguchi:
Yeah, Okachimachi.

Matsuzawa:
Did Okachimachi have a big influence on the game?

Sakaguchi:
The rent in Ginza was really high you see.

Matsuzawa:
I would imagine so!

Sakaguchi:
Back then it was about twenty million yen per month and Okachimachi was only around two million. A tenth as much.

Matsuzawa:
That much less?!

Shibuya:
It was such a bog-standard office building…

Sakaguchi:
It was pretty drafty too…

Matsuzawa:
That really makes me think of the sad music in FFII!

Sakaguchi:
Sounds about right!

Matsuzawa:
It’s the melancholy feel of the opening sections!

Sakaguchi:
Yeah, like you have been exiled to the middle of nowhere!

Matsuzawa:
It felt romantic to me, but perhaps it was meant to be more sorrowful?

Sakaguchi:
The intent of the creators was different.

Matsuzawa:
What were you doing at that time then Mr. Kitase?

Kitase:
Around FFII?

Sakaguchi:
Ah right, we get to hear about Kitase’s past! What he was doing around FFI, II, and III!

Kitase: It is basically a continuation of what I was doing around I. When I was looking at the recruitment ad, I had played FFI before then, but when I knew I was going to be interviewed for Square, I rushed to play FFII as well.

Sakaguchi:
There it is! First time I ever heard that! At the interview he definitely said, “Oh yeah, I have played them all”.

Matsuzawa:
The gameplay systems of FFII were quite special weren’t they?

Sakaguchi:
You can very much say it was Mr. Kawazu‘s work. We had finished FFI and were considering that the story [of FFII] could be a sequel to it.

Akitoshi Kawazu — Worked on the early FINAL FANTASY games and came up with the idea for the unique levelling system in FFII that does not use EXP and would later be carried over to the SaGa series. Today, he is well-known as the “father of the SaGa series.”

Matsuzawa:
That was considered too?

Sakaguchi:
Yes—with the same protagonist. In hindsight that was probably the biggest decision we ever made—to completely change the story and even the game’s system. Myself and Hiromichi Tanaka were quite exhausted after making FFI, so we said “Oi, Kawazu, you think of something”!

Matsuzawa:
So you left a lot of it to him?

Sakaguchi:
At the start, yes. But he had things he wanted to do. Ideas for storytelling and the growth system. I think he had those ideas in his head already. So he piped up when we asked if anyone had anything they particularly wanted to try, and we agreed to the direction. So, the game was quite strongly colored by Kawazu.

Matsuzawa:
The story was also very dramatic and kind of romantic.

Sakaguchi:
It was.

Shibuya:
It starts with the party being chased and then they are suddenly caught and defeated.

Sakaguchi:
Right.

Shibuya:
It was pretty surprising at the time.

Sakaguchi:
We put great value on that initial hook. The Hollywood movies of the day all had those memorable hooks to draw people in. Looking back, the way it was done was obviously of its time, jumping straight into a battle scene and starting with a “bang” like Indiana Jones! We paid close attention to that.

Matsuzawa:
The character’s name is Frioniel (Firion), which is quite distinctive.

Sakaguchi:
That was Kawazu’s decision. I would have never called him that.

Matsuzawa:
It was really distinctive!

Sakaguchi:
Yeah, I think that was Kawazu.

Matsuzawa:
One scene that I really noticed when playing FFII was the one where the Lamia Queen is disguised as Princess Hilda and she tries to seduce Firion and Swan Lake starts playing. Who was it that came up with the idea for that strange and slightly erotic scene?

Sakaguchi:
Not sure who did that one, but incidentally Kawazu couldn’t have made it…

Matsuzawa:
Clearly not him!

Sakaguchi:
Woah you said that pretty straight!

Matsuzawa:
I mean, it probably wasn’t Mr. Kawazu, was it?!

Sakaguchi:
No it wasn’t. I think it might have been me that did that one. You probably picked up on that? We were all quite young back then… Ah, Nasir liked that kind of thing, didn’t he? You know with pink and all that? Did he make it?

Matsuzawa:
That scene felt so different to the rest the moment she enters the room. Relating to that, there are multiple sub-character deaths in FFII. From then on there was a perception that the odd numbered games focused on the game systems while the even numbered ones focused on the story.

Sakaguchi:
That idea has emerged, yes.

Matsuzawa:
What happened with that? Was it deliberate?

Sakaguchi:
We did realize that we could focus on the story with FFII, and you mentioned how a lot of characters died. But, because the characters and the world were shown with pixel sprites, it didn’t hit the player too hard. So I think it was common for us to handle emotional themes like death a lot in the pixel era. In terms of the split after FFII, with story focused and system focused games, I think people saw it as system focused in the games were we introduced job changes and saw it as story focused when we did not. For us, they were all story focused, but I think the way people perceived the games changed quite a lot depending on if we included something like job changes to make it easier for players to delve deeper into the gameplay.

Matsuzawa:
FFII, IV, and VI were seen as especially dramatic.

Sakaguchi:
Yes. For II that was thanks to Kawazu. With IV we had moved to the Super Famicom, so we wanted to prioritze the visuals, and VI was the last entry on the Super Famicom, so we put everything we had into it—and we wanted to make the story really impactful too.

Matsuzawa:
Mr. Kitase, what do you think about the even vs. odd numbers discussion?

Kitase:
I was closer to the player side on many of them, but FFV that I worked on was definitely an odd number, with the addition of the job and ability systems. It was great fun to work on it as a developer.

Matsuzawa:
It was really fun! I can see that.

Kitase:
I felt that the system we had made was just amazing, even while working on it, so I think the players felt it too.

Sakaguchi:
Right, it hits you when you start playing with these systems…

Development on FINAL FANTASY III

Matsuzawa:
FINAL FANTASY III. The game was released on the 27th of April 1990 and you had somehow moved from Okachimachi to Akasaka.

Sakaguchi:
We had just about managed to get a normal office to work in! However, the view from the development room window was people’s graves!

Matsuzawa:
Really? A graveyard?

Sakaguchi:
Yes, a graveyard! I had to look out over gravestones all day while working from my booth.

Shibuya:
There were graves behind us too!

Matsuzawa:
They probably had all kind of ghostly burdens.

Sakaguchi:
And next door was a high-class restaurant. You don’t see it much now, but back then politicians were always rowdy at those kinds of places. So, I would be working through the night and next door you could hear the politicians raucously drinking and laughing with geisha. [Sakaguchi imitates a geisha.] “Oh, ha ha, you’re so funny!” And we were there developing games…

Matsuzawa:
You were listening in?!

Sakaguchi:
We were there having to listen to it, getting annoyed in the small hours!

Matsuzawa:
Ms. Shibuya, is that how you remember it?

Shibuya:
I don’t think I really heard it.

Sakaguchi:
We all noticed it though.

Matsuzawa:
Looking back at that time FFIII was made, we talked about Nasir a bit just now.

Sakaguchi:
Yes.

Matsuzawa:
We actually have a fan question about the airships.

Sakaguchi:
Ah yes, that I didn’t ask for it!

Matsuzawa:
They used high speed scrolling that was almost unthinkable at the time.

Sakaguchi:
Right. There were actually even faster versions that were not used, weren’t there?

Shibuya:
Right.

Sakaguchi:
They ran at 8 times or 16 times the speed.

Matsuzawa:
Even faster than the one we played? [Referring to the airship Nautilus in FFIII]

Sakaguchi:
Oh yes.

Matsuzawa:
Could you even see it? Why did Nasir made the ships so fast?

Sakaguchi:
He would always throw in something he was proud of, such as sneaking in a puzzle game. [Editor’s note: referring to the secret slide block puzzle in FFI]

Matsuzawa:
In the game?

Sakaguchi:
Yes, he added it in.

Shibuya:
In the opening.

Sakaguchi:
He would always work something like that into the program. It was the best bit of the day for him when he could reveal it, always grinning away. He would bring us something once every three days or so.

Shibuya:
Right.

Sakaguchi:
And the airship was one of those. “You asked for it to scroll, so here it is” he said. “Go on, push the B button” he said. So we did, and everyone was like “Wow, that’s fast!”. So everyone gathers around and is saying “Ooh, Nasir, you are a genius!”. He says, “I actually made an even faster one.” So we push again, and it zooms past. And I turn around and say “Nope, too fast now. We can’t use that!”.

Matsuzawa:
One other thing with FFIII was the first appearance of the series iconic summons. So how did those come about?

Sakaguchi:
Can’t remember who it was, but somebody said they wanted to do them, I think.

Matsuzawa:
But the summons are a really important element! Is “Somebody felt like doing them” enough?

Sakaguchi:
The actual reason is down to the cartridge memory we had. It doubled from FFI to FFII to FFIII… and for FFIII we actually had some spare memory.

Matsuzawa:
Eh? So the summons were space fillers?!

Sakaguchi:
Yeah, we were like, “someone could draw a big old monster? Maybe it could be an ally?!”

Matsuzawa:
They are friendly entities after all!

Sakaguchi:
I think that was where it was started.

Shibuya:
It is satisfying drawing them, because they are so big. Bahamut and the others. And it involved recreating Mr. Amano‘s art.

Yoshitaka Amano — Artist, illustrator, character designer, and bookbinder. He designed characters and monsters across the FINAL FANTASY series and is still involved in every title.

Sakaguchi:
Yes. We spent so much effort on reproducing them that we wanted the maximum size.

Shibuya:
I drew the monsters for FFIII and really had a lot of fun doing it. I really liked Garuda and the others.

Matsuzawa/Sakaguchi:
It shows!

Matsuzawa:
We actually have a question from a fan about the Crystal Tower. What was the main reason for making the Crystal Tower so long?

Sakaguchi:
Do they mean the sprite? Why was it so tall?

Matsuzawa:
Not so much the appearance but why the dungeon inside it was so long?

Sakaguchi:
Ah right. It is the last dungeon in the game, and there was actually a mid-save point during development. The guy responsible, Mr. Suzuki [Hisashi Suzuki] is actually still at Square Enix. At the time he was working for us part time, monitoring the game content. He played through FFIII and did debugging and balancing work, but he got too used to the game. So, in the end he came to me and said: “It is too easy. I’m not feeling motivated”. “It’s a walk in the park” he said, so I went, “Screw that” and took out the save point. So it was all Suzuki’s fault.

Matsuzawa:
If that didn’t happen then it would have been easier to play?

Sakaguchi:
Yes, you could have recovered halfway through. So it was all Suzuki. He still works at Square Enix, so everyone can contact him there! These guys can pass it on too! [Sakaguchi gestures to Shibuya and Kitase]

Shibuya:
In think that the request for the visuals was for a “tower of crystal”.

Sakaguchi:
For FFXIV players, the Crystal Tower is incredibly symbolic in that world.

Matsuzawa:
It’s like visiting holy ground for them.

Sakaguchi:
And I’m feeling the same right now! So if you if you asked me about the length of the dungeon, and I immediately jumped to “Why does it look like that?!”. In FFXIV, our guys have arranged all the furniture in their housing to create a reproduction of the famous pixel sprite you see.

Shibuya:
Well done.

Sakaguchi:
It really is a pilgrimage! We get pilgrims coming almost every day!

Shibuya:
They come every day?

Sakaguchi:
Yes, they do! That’s how it works!

Shibuya:
Excellent. I’m flattered by the praise. My first praise in 30 years!

Matsuzawa:
Next up is FINAL FANTASY IV…

To be continued… Next Time

[Excerpts from part 2 of the broadcast]

Sakaguchi:
Cagnazzo? Is it some kind of tortoise?

Kitase:
The scene at Darill’s grave for example, was one of my scenes that I particularly liked.

Shibuya:
One pixel was a matter of life or death, so there was no leeway for borders or anything!

Sakaguchi:
Somebody put in a shining object. We called them “miracles”…