User:Scofield/Final Fantasy
| Final Fantasy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Square Enix |
| Release date | 1987-present |
| Genre | Role-playing game |
| Platform(s) | NES, SNES, Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, XBox 360, PC, online |
| Port | PC, though that stopped from Final Fantasy X |
| Rating | E to T. Take your pick |
| Would Johann Sebastian Bach play it? | Duh |
Final Fantasy is the name of one of the biggest scams ever to take place in the video gaming industry. The perpetrators of this scam currently run the corporation known as "Square Enix", and keep receiving massive kickbacks from it to this day. The scam began in 1987, when Square Enix, then known simply as Squaresoft, was approaching bankruptcy. However, a guy named Hironobu Sakaguchi came up with a brilliant idea to save the company. He decided to create a game which would then be marketed as their "final" game, thus playing on the guilt of the gamers who didn't want to see a company die so young. If this ploy worked, they could probably release a few more games using the same marketing trick, and reverse their fortunes. If not, they would still go out with a bang, rather than a whimper.
Bare beginnings[edit | edit source]
Hironobu Sakaguchi joined Squaresoft right after graduating from college, and began to take interest in their video gaming projects. This was during the good-ol' '80s, when badass films and badass shooter and platforming games ruled the roost. With his help, Squaresoft managed to release quite a few decent titles, like 3D World Runner, its sequel JJ, Rad Racer, Rad Racer II and Cruise Chaser Blassty. These games were fun to play, and some even had a 3D feature, but the problem was they weren't really selling. Modest to poor sales of their titles pushed them to the edge of bankruptcy, and Sakaguchi decided that his next game would probably be his last before he dumped the company and looked for a more secure job offering.
That very epiphany quickly turned into an ingenious scheme. What if he didn't intend on making his next game his final game, but only pretended that this was the case? Gamers who hadn't even heard of Squaresoft would find out about a poor company releasing its last game before shutting down. Gaming journals would no doubt pick up on the fact that yet another gaming company was about to bite the dust. The company executives could then rant about how despite releasing cute and fun games, they weren't given their due. And the resulting sympathy wave would save Squaresoft's ass.
Hironobu immediately went about implementing his scheme. He couldn't harp about a "final" game without actually making one. So he plagiarized the concept and gameplay of the more successful Enix's Dragon Warrior, and decided to have his way with whatever else was required, like graphics and music and all that. He inadvertently mutilated the Enix game beyond recognition, as for some reason he'd decided to make his game an even more bloated and tedious mess than Enix's RPG was.
He then decided to give the game a name that would remind us of his con job for years to come- "Final Fantasy". The plan worked brilliantly. Everybody thought that Hironobu had decided to indulge in a bit of gallows humor while naming the game. They were completely oblivious to how badly they had fallen for Hironobu Sakaguchi tricks. And so the game started selling better than hot cakes, as well as all of Square's previous releases put together. By the end of its initial run, more than half a million copies had been sold, well more than enough to save Squaresoft's butt.
Squaresoft decided to cash in on the sympathy wave by naming their next RPG "Final Fantasy II". Ironically, this game had almost nothing in common with its predecessor. For the sake of having a "better story", they decided to completely change the plot and setting of their "sequel". While the first game was about four interchangeable protagonists saving the world, the sequel was about four protagonists who are nearly killed off due to being attacked by an evil empire. While three of them are rescued and try to defeat the evil empire, the fourth one takes the evil emperor's place once he's been defeated. Just as the three protagonists manage to bring about a change of heart in the fourth one, the evil emperor returns from hell and attempts to destroy the world. The four of them must now reunite to save the world, again.
The transition from a one-line story to a one-paragraph story worked wonders for the sequel, and it was a huge success in Japan. However, it didn't quite break the records set-up by its predecessor. In later years, critics would argue that this was due to an even more frustrating leveling-up system than what the first game had. Instead of gaining experience from every battle, players now had to endure a skill-based leveling-up system, wherein you needed to use the sword to gain melee exp, the bow and arrow to gain ranged exp, and get whacked multiple times to gain hit-point exp. Needless to say, players positively hated these new changes, but decided to buy the game anyways, fearing the company may shut down for real if they don't.
Squaresoft decided to fire the idiot