Final Fantasy [Model SQF-FF]

Final Fantasy was released in December 18, 1987 in Japan.

Final Fantasy was originally conceived under the working title Fighting Fantasy, but trademark issues and dire circumstances surrounding Square as well as Sakaguchi himself prompted the name to be changed.

Hironobu Sakaguchi had intended to make a role-playing game (RPG) for a long time, but his employer Square refused to give him permission as it expected low sales of such a product. However, when the RPG Dragon Quest was released and proved to be a hit in Japan, the company reconsidered its stance on the genre and approved Sakaguchi's vision of an RPG inspired by Ultima and Wizardry. Only three of his colleagues volunteered to join this project headed by him because he was thought of as a rough boss in spite of his unsuccessful creations.

Sakaguchi convinced fellow game designers Koichi Ishii and Akitoshi Kawazu to join the project. Kawazu was mainly responsible for the battle system and sequences, which he based heavily on the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons and the RPG Wizardry. For example, enemies' weaknesses to elements such as fire and ice had not been included in Japanese RPGs up until that point. Kawazu had grown fond of such aspects of Western RPGs and decided to incorporate them into Final Fantasy. He also advocated the player's option to freely choose their own party member classes at the beginning of the game as he feels "the fun in an RPG begins when you create a character".

The scenario was written by freelance writer Kenji Terada, based on a story by Sakaguchi. Ishii heavily influenced the game's setting with his idea of the crystals. He also suggested illustrator Yoshitaka Amano as character designer, but Sakaguchi declined at first as he had never heard the artist's name before. When Sakaguchi showed Ishii some drawings on magazine clippings and told him that this was the art style he was looking for, Ishii revealed to him that these were actually created by Amano, hence leading to his involvement in the game.

Sakaguchi took an in-development ROM of the game to Japanese magazine Famicom Tsushin, but it would not review it. However, Famitsu gave the game extensive coverage. Initially, only 200,000 copies were to be shipped, but Sakaguchi pleaded with the company to make 400,000 to help spawn a sequel, and the management agreed, then the original Famicom version successfully shipped 520,000 copies in Japan.

Known export releases:
"Final Fantasy [Model NES-FF-USA]"
"Final Fantasy [Model NES-FF-CAN]"