Square began as a computer game division of Den-Yu-Sha, a powerline construction company, in 1983. The founder, Masashi Miyamoto, believed that – despite how other companies relied on single programmers to get a game finished – a team of people would be more efficient. The first two titles released by the company were The Death Trap in 1984, and the sequel Will: The Death Trap II in 1985, both developed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. As text-adventure titles went, they weren’t particularly popular, though they proved to be successful enough for Square as a company to continue to develop games.

By 1986, Square was an independent company, and Sakaguchi was named the Director of Planning and Development. However, around this time, Square was releasing a number of unsuccessful video games. Sakaguchi was inspired by Enix’s Dragon Quest as well as other titles such as Ultima and Wizardry and sought to make a similar RPG title. The original title of the game he went to work on was Fighting Fantasy, but mid-development, it was changed to Final Fantasy. It’s been said that the game was retitled as such because Square itself was dealing with the threat of bankruptcy if it wasn’t successful; Sakaguchi has also said himself that if the game failed, he’d quit the industry and go back to school.

Fortunately for all involved, Final Fantasy was a big hit when it arrived at the tail end of 1987. The original release moved 400,000 copies in Japan – and many more hundreds of thousands when an English version released in America – and along with the critically positive reviews, gave Square renewed life.

For the full version of this article, be sure to pick up The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Video Games, out later this year.