Breath of Fire II - Development

Development

Breath of Fire II was developed by many of the same Capcom employees who worked on the previous game, including producer Tokuro Fujiwara and lead designer Yoshinori Kawano. While the character designs for the original Breath of Fire were conceived by company head of development Keiji Inafune, the cast of Breath of Fire II was created entirely by artist Taksuya Yoshikawa, who had previously only provided promotional art for the game's predecessor. Unlike the original Breath of Fire, which was licensed to Square Soft for its North American release, the English version of Breath of Fire II was localized and published entirely by Capcom USA. The game was released in North America one year after the Japanese version in December 1995, and would later become the first Breath of Fire title to become available in Europe in April 1996.

Three days before the release of the original Breath of Fire on Nintendo's Game Boy Advance in July 2001, Capcom announced that they would similarly port Breath of Fire II to the handheld, with an initial release date some time in 2002. Like the re-release of its predecessor, the handheld version features re-drawn character portraits in menu screens, new still images used in cutscenes throughout the game, and a re-designed battle interface similar to Breath of Fire IV. New features include a dash button that allows players to move through the game faster, as well as an item-sharing system where two players may link together using the Game Boy Advance link cable to exchange items between game cartridges. To celebrate of the game's release in December 2001, Capcom of Japan held an art contest for fan to submit artwork featuring characters from the first two Breath of Fire games, with the winner chosen by the Game Boy Advance versions staff. In January 2002, Capcom USA announced that an English version of Breath of Fire II would be heading to North America the following April. A European version would also be released in July 2002, published by Ubisoft.