# Hironobu Sakaguchi - Maker: Game designer - Date: b. 1962 - Houses: Square / Square Enix - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/hironobu-sakaguchi/ > The would-be rock musician who skipped classes to play Wizardry, bet his career on an RPG he called Final Fantasy, and led Square's series from 1987 to the heights of Final Fantasy VII before founding Mistwalker. **Why it matters:** Sakaguchi created Final Fantasy, the series that, with Dragon Quest, defined the Japanese RPG and carried it worldwide, and he pushed games toward cinematic storytelling about loss, death and memory. ## Quick answers **Who is Hironobu Sakaguchi?** The would-be rock musician who skipped classes to play Wizardry, bet his career on an RPG he called Final Fantasy, and led Square's series from 1987 to the heights of Final Fantasy VII before founding Mistwalker. **When was Hironobu Sakaguchi born?** Hironobu Sakaguchi was born in 1962 in Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan. **What is Hironobu Sakaguchi known for?** Hironobu Sakaguchi is best known for Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger. **Why does Hironobu Sakaguchi matter to fantasy and games?** Sakaguchi created Final Fantasy, the series that, with Dragon Quest, defined the Japanese RPG and carried it worldwide, and he pushed games toward cinematic storytelling about loss, death and memory. ## Life Hironobu Sakaguchi was born on November 25, 1962, in Hitachi, in Ibaraki Prefecture; his parents came from Kyushu. As a boy he collected polished stones, read through his mother's large library and played the piano, and in high school he played folk guitar in an amateur band and nearly got himself expelled for selling homemade concert tickets. He meant to be a musician. At Yokohama National University, where he studied computer science, his friend Hiromichi Tanaka gave him access to an Apple II, and Sakaguchi fell for [Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/wizardry/), skipping classes to play it. Unable to afford an Apple, he bought a cheaper knockoff in Akihabara, and to pay for software he went looking for part-time work. ## Work In 1983 Sakaguchi and Tanaka found jobs at [Square](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/square/), a new games subsidiary, founded by Masafumi Miyamoto, of Den-Yu-Sha, a company in the electric power industry. Sakaguchi worked on early computer titles such as *The Death Trap* (1984) and on Famicom games including *King's Knight* (1986), mostly action games he disliked, and earned a reputation as a demanding boss. When Square became an independent company in 1986, he was made a full-time director of planning and development. That year Enix's [Dragon Quest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dragon-quest/) proved that a role-playing game could be a Famicom hit, and Sakaguchi finally persuaded Square to let him make one. He admired *Dragon Quest* for delivering a long adventure with saved progress on a home console, and he drew on [Ultima](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ultima-i/) and [Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/wizardry/) as well as [The Legend of Zelda](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-legend-of-zelda/). Few colleagues believed in the project, and at first only three volunteered to join him, but the work gathered momentum. The working title *Fighting Fantasy* collided with the [Fighting Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/fighting-fantasy/) gamebooks, so it became *Final Fantasy*; Sakaguchi and his colleagues have given several reasons for the word "final," including the team's wish for a title abbreviated "FF" and the widely told story that he expected it to be his last game if it failed. Released on December 18, 1987, with character art by [Yoshitaka Amano](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/yoshitaka-amano/), music by [Nobuo Uematsu](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/nobuo-uematsu/), a scenario by Kenji Terada from Sakaguchi's story and programming by Nasir Gebelli, [Final Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/final-fantasy/) followed four Warriors of Light across a world of elemental crystals and fiends such as the [Lich](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/lich/) and the [Kraken](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/kraken/). Square had planned 200,000 copies; Sakaguchi argued for 400,000, and the game shipped 520,000 in Japan. He directed the next four entries, through *Final Fantasy V* (1992), and the series became Square's flagship. Promoted to executive vice president in 1991, he stepped back from directing but remained its guiding force: he produced [Final Fantasy VI](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/final-fantasy-vi/) (1994), joined [Yuji Horii](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/yuji-horii/) and [Akira Toriyama](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/akira-toriyama/) as the "Dream Team" behind [Chrono Trigger](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/chrono-trigger/) (1995), and produced [Final Fantasy VII](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/final-fantasy-vii/) (1997), Square's PlayStation debut and a worldwide phenomenon, handing day-to-day creative control to Yoshinori Kitase. He also produced *Final Fantasy Tactics* and *Parasite Eve*, proposed the online game that became [Final Fantasy XI](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/final-fantasy-xi/), and returned to hands-on writing as producer of the nostalgic *Final Fantasy IX* (2000), developed largely in Honolulu. His grandest bet was cinema. He founded Square Pictures in 1997 and directed *Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within* (2001), a fully computer-animated film. It cost Square and Columbia Pictures $137 million and grossed just over $85 million, damaging Square's finances and delaying its merger with [Enix](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/enix/). Sakaguchi resigned his executive post in 2001 and left Square in 2003. After three demoralized years in Hawaii, conversations with Toriyama and artist Takehiko Inoue drew him back, and in 2004 he founded Mistwalker, with backing from Microsoft. Its games include *Blue Dragon* (2006, with Toriyama), *Lost Odyssey* (2007), *The Last Story* (2011), the mobile hit *Terra Battle* (2014), and *Fantasian* (2021), a two-part RPG modeled on *Final Fantasy VI*. ## Legacy With Horii's *Dragon Quest*, Sakaguchi's *Final Fantasy* defined the [Japanese RPGs (JRPG)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/japanese-rpg/), and it did more than any other series to carry the genre beyond Japan. Its side-view battles and later [Active Time Battle](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/active-time-battle/) system, its recurring [chocobos](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/chocobo/) and airships, and its willingness to make players grieve became genre conventions. Sakaguchi also nurtured talents including Tetsuya Nomura and the creators of *SaGa*, *Xenogears* and *Final Fantasy Tactics*. Much of his work turns on death and what follows it. The loss of his mother in a house fire during *Final Fantasy III* led him, by his account, to focus on narrative, feeding directly into *Final Fantasy VII* and *The Spirits Within*. He received the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame Award in 2000 and the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. ## Facts - Born November 25, 1962, in Hitachi, Ibaraki, he wanted to be a musician and had little interest in games until a university friend gave him access to an Apple II and *Wizardry*. - He joined Square as a part-time employee in 1983, while still a student at Yokohama National University. - *Final Fantasy*'s working title was *Fighting Fantasy*, changed partly to avoid confusion with the gamebook series of that name. - Square planned to ship 200,000 copies of *Final Fantasy*; Sakaguchi persuaded it to make 400,000, and the Famicom original shipped 520,000 in Japan. - His mother died in a house fire during the making of *Final Fantasy III*, turning him toward stories about life and death; *The Spirits Within*'s heroine Aki Ross is named for her. - *Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within* (2001), his film debut, cost Square and Columbia Pictures $137 million and grossed just over $85 million. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hironobu_Sakaguchi) - [Wikipedia: Final Fantasy (video game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_(video_game)) - [Wikipedia: Mistwalker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistwalker) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.