Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy, role-playing video game created by Japanese game manufacturer SquareSoft (now Square Enix, Inc.). It was released for Nintendo’s Family Computer (Famicom) on December 18, 1987, and brought to the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in 1990. The game spawned numerous sequels on a variety of platforms, ranging from Nintendo’s consoles to the Sony PlayStation consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox, and Windows OS-based PCs. The first game launched one of the most commercially successful video game franchises, with the main series and its spin-offs together selling more than 200 million copies worldwide as of 2025.

Story

Final Fantasy opens as four travelers, the Warriors of Light, arrive in the kingdom of Cornelia, each bearing one of the world’s four crystal elemental orbs—earth, fire, water, and wind—whose light has gone dark. The darkened orbs signal that the world’s elemental forces have been thrown out of balance, leaving nature in disarray. The first task of the Warriors of Light is almost fairy-tale in tone: A former knight of Cornelia named Garland has abducted the king’s daughter, Princess Sarah, and the heroes rescue her by defeating him at a nearby ruined shrine. From there the scope widens considerably. To restore the orbs, the party must hunt down four monstrous Fiends—Lich, Marilith, Kraken, and Tiamat—each tied to one element and each draining the world of its vitality. The closing act reframes everything that came before. The Fiends transmit their power 2,000 years into the past to transform Garland into the demon Chaos; Chaos, in turn, is responsible for sending the Fiends forward in time, forming a closed loop in which the villain perpetually sustains himself. The Warriors of Light travel into the past, defeat the Fiends a second time, and destroy Chaos at the loop’s origin.

One of the most important elements of Final Fantasy is the narrative. The complex plot that governs the gameplay is representative of the entire franchise: It focuses on good and evil, and the player must surmount a range of obstacles to defeat the primary villain. In subsequent games in the series, the plot and character development became increasingly intricate and central to the gaming experience.

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Gameplay

Play alternates between exploration and combat. Players guide their party across a map dotted with towns, where shops sell weapons, armor, and magic, and across caves and dungeons that mark players’ progress and hide treasure. Movement triggers encounters with enemy characters and creatures, which resolve in a menu-driven, turn-based battle system. Victories yield experience points, which raise character levels, and “gil,” the in-game currency used to buy equipment and spells.

A defining feature is party building. At the outset the player assembles a team of four from six character classes: Fighter, Thief, Black Belt (a bare-handed martial artist), Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage.

Each class carries distinct strengths: Fighters absorb damage and wield the best weapons, White Mages specialize in healing and protective spells, Black Mages in offensive magic, and Red Mages trade ability for flexibility across both Black and White Mages’ abilities. Black Belts grow into powerful unarmed fighters as they gain experience, while Thieves rely on speed and later advance into the more versatile Ninja class.

About halfway through, surviving characters undergo a class change that upgrades their appearance and unlocks more powerful equipment and spells. The result is a system in which a player’s early decisions meaningfully shape the strategy of the whole playthrough.

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Development history and legacy

Final Fantasy was conceived by game designer Sakaguchi Hironobu, who directed the project and shaped its story. Uematsu Nobuo wrote the score, beginning a decades-long association with the franchise, and Amano Yoshitaka contributed the character and creature designs that helped define its visual identity. The title itself has acquired a mythology of its own. For years it was widely reported that Final Fantasy’s title signaled a last gamble—SquareSoft’s final release before insolvency and Sakaguchi’s final project before leaving the industry. In later interviews, however, he characterized the romantic version as overstated, explaining that the team mainly wanted a catchy title abbreviating to “FF” and that the original choice, “Fighting Fantasy,” was already claimed by a tabletop game series.

From its start as a Nintendo game available only in Japan, the series grew into an international phenomenon with a significant fan following and a robust community on the Internet. Final Fantasy’s place in the annals of video game history has been secured by its status as a classic among role-playing game enthusiasts and by the sheer number of its sequels, which run into double digits.