Dissidia - Final Fantasy [Model ULJM-05262]

Released on December 18, 2008 in Japan.

Dissidia Final Fantasy was originally envisioned by creative producer Tetsuya Nomura as a Kingdom Hearts spin-off featuring a cast of Disney characters while the Square Enix staff were developing Kingdom Hearts II. Nomura later felt uncomfortable with the Disney characters fighting each other and instead opted to use Final Fantasy characters, although the original idea eventually gave rise to the development of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, with the game's multiplayer mode inspired by Dissidia's gameplay. The game was made in commemoration of the franchise's 20th anniversary and despite being handled by young employees, Nomura noticed there was no pressure, having assisted them in the designing various areas from the gameplay. The game was directed by Takeshi Arakawa whom Nomura noted that his experience in a previous Square Enix game, The World Ends With You, had a good effect in the game. To have their desired way of fighting, the team chose the PlayStation Portable console. There were plans for online play but the console's capacities made them unable to add such a feature. Developing the game took three years due with the battle system requiring two years and the RPG mode one.

Deciding the Final Fantasy heroes was easy for the staff except for Terra Branford. While her game, Final Fantasy VI, features multiple characters that would fit the role of the main character, Terra was chosen in the end so that there would be a female fighter in Cosmos' side. For villains, they decided to include warriors who had a strong rivalry with the heroes rather than automatically choosing the games' final bosses. This resulted in the inclusion of non-final bosses such as Final Fantasy IV's Golbez, IX's Kuja and X's Jecht who were connected with their games' leads, Cecil Harvey, Zidane Tribal and Tidus, respectively. Shantotto from XI was used based on her popularity, while Gabranth was used to represent XII in Balthier's place as the latter had already been featured in Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions and Square wanted his inclusion to surprise gamers. Other characters meant to have been featured were Final Fantasy IV's Kain Highwind and XIII's Lightning.

Nomura was responsible for the character designs, which changed much of the look and style of Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations. Working in the Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy IX designs brought no difficulties since in for the former game, Nomura based his designs on Amano's illustrations while he had already been involved in handling his illustrations in the latter. On the other hand, Nomura had difficulties making Onion Knight as it ended being too cartoony and requested advice from Amano. Nomura's own original illustrations were also redesigned for Dissidia; Nomura commented to the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu that Tidus was designed to look younger than he was in Final Fantasy X to "match the design touch of the rest of the Dissidia" cast.

Dissidia sold well according to Takeshi Arakawa, despite concerns about piracy. As of August 2009, Dissidia Final Fantasy has sold 910,000 copies in Japan, making it the fourth best-selling game for the PSP in Japan. It was the 12th best-selling game in Japan in 2008, selling 660,262 copies.

The Dissidia Final Fantasy Original Soundtrack by Takeharu Ishimoto was released on December 24, 2008, and is available in both regular and special editions, similar to the game itself. Most tracks are often remixes done by Ishimoto of past Final Fantasy music originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu.