Final Fantasy was created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and is developed and owned by Square-Enix (used to be
named Squaresoft, until the merger of Squaresoft and Enix in 2003).The Final
Fantasy series was started in 1987, as a last ditch effort to save the
company from bankruptcy. The game was a huge hit, and from there spawned
numerous sequels (a total of 28 games so far and it does not seem to be
slowing down at any point in time)
Three installments of the Final Fantasy series were released on the NES,
Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, and Final Fantasy III. Squaresoft and
Ninetendo had their disagreements. Squaresoft wanted to do games on discs,
while Nintendo still wanted to use cartridges, so Squaresoft packed up, and
joined up with Sony. In 1997, Squaresoft released Final Fantasy VII, which
marked the turning point in the series. The biggest upgrade was the
transition from 2-D graphics to 3-D graphics.
In 1999, The
eighth installment was released, and was the first to consistently use
realistically proportioned characters and feature a vocal piece as its theme
music In 2000, Final Fantasy IX was released.
This game was met with a lot of flack, people thought Square was losing
their touch, and most people just thought this was a major step back in the
series. What people failed to realize was that since this was going to the
last game on the current system (playstation), Square made this game like a
tribute, by taking certain aspects from all the previous games, and rolled
it up into one game.
Three more installments, including one online game, were released on the
Playstation 2. In 2001,Final Fantasy X was released and the world was introduced to full 3-D areas and voice
acting for the series. It was also the first game to spawn a direct sequel a
Final Fantasy game (Final Fantasy X-2). Final Fantasy XI was released on the
PC and PS2 in 2002, and later on the XBOX 360. The first
massive multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) in the series,
Final Fantasy XI also introduced real-time battles instead of random
encounters. Final Fantasy XII, released in 2006, also had real-time battles
in large interconnected-playfields, and featured height and distance as a
means of determining what and where your character can attack.
Final Fantasy XIII was released in December 2009 in Japan. It is being released
stateside in a little over a week. It will be the flagship installment of the
Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy XIII compilation. Also in development is
Final Fantasy XIV, an MMORPG due for release in 2010 for the PlayStation 3
and PC.
