Making History Right From a School’s Whiteboard: Final Fantasy Creator Shares the Tale of Name Coining One of the Most Legendary IPs

Since its inception in 1987, the Final Fantasy series has won the hearts of gaming fans. The series has gone through a variety of changes from being turn-based to including more RPG elements now. And the series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has called the latest entry, Final Fantasy XVI, his ultimate selection for the series.

The fans are, however, curious about how the Square Enix series got its name. The origin behind the series’ title is equally fascinating, as series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi recently revealed.

Final Fantasy creator shares how the series got its name

It has been 35 years since the game series has come out. To commemorate Final Fantasy’s 35th Anniversary, Square Enix brought together the personalities that were present during the early stages of the game.

Square Enix’s series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Pixel artist Kazuko Shibuya, who has been creating pixel art from the very beginning, and Brand Manager Yoshinori Kitase came together to talk about the secret stories behind the creation of Final Fantasy.

During their conversation, the reason for naming the series came forward. Sakaguchi shared, “For our game, we wanted it to be shortened to something using the Roman alphabet. So it came from ‘FF’.” 

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After deciding on the acronym ‘FF’, however, the team was not getting their preferred name ‘Fighting Fantasy’. Reluctantly, the team decided to name the game ‘Final Fantasy’ and the series has ruled the hearts of the fans ever since.

Sakaguchi revisited his childhood memories after the name of the series

He shared, “We reluctantly went with Final Fantasy as a last resort. We were like ‘It’s got Final’, yeah that will do.”

And the inspiration for the name came from Sakaguchi’s school days. “There was once a primary school English teacher who wrote ‘Final Fantasy’ on the whiteboard,” he said. After the series became popular in Japan, Sakaguchi’s childhood friends sent him postcards about the name of the game too.

The name, according to Sakaguchi, means ‘The Last Illusion’ which he felt completely summarises the series. What are your thoughts on the nomenclature of the gaming series? Let us know in the comments section below.

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