It seems unfathomable that we came so close to never having Final Fantasy as the iconic franchise it has become. Talking to Famitsu back in 2007, Sakaguchi said “The name ‘Final Fantasy’ was a display of my feeling that if this didn’t sell, I was going to quit the games industry and go back to really was a ‘final’ situation.” Another explanation for the “final” name choice was concerning Square’s precarious financial situation at the time -confirmed by series music composer, Nobuo Uematsu, in an interview with Wired back in 2009.
When Hironobu Sakaguchi began working on the first Final Fantasy in the mid-1980s, he had a team of seven people, an uncertain product, and the belief that if this game didn’t make it, he was bowing out.
