Development
Final Fantasy was developed by a team of seven staff members within Square referred to as the "A-Team". Though often attributed to the company allegedly having been threatened with bankruptcy in 1987, main planner Hironobu Sakaguchi explained that the title of the game stemmed from his personal situation; had the game not sold well, he would have quit the games industry and gone back to university. His concept for Final Fantasy involved a large world map to explore and an engaging story. Sakaguchi took an in-development ROM of the game to Japanese magazine Family Computer, but it would not review it. Video game magazine Famitsu, however, gave the game extensive coverage. Only 200,000 copies were to be shipped, but Sakaguchi pleaded with the company to make 400,000 to help spawn a sequel, and the management agreed.
The game's characters and title logo were designed by Yoshitaka Amano, and the scenario was written by freelance writer Kenji Terada, based on the story by Sakaguchi. Iranian-American freelance programmer Nasir Gebelli, who was living in Japan at the time, worked as the programmer for the game. Among the other developers were designers Hiromichi Tanaka, Akitoshi Kawazu and Koichi Ishii, as well as graphic designer Kazuko Shibuya and programmers Kiyoshi Yoshii and Ken Narita. Following the successful North American localization of Dragon Quest, Nintendo of America translated Final Fantasy into English and published it in North America in 1990. The North American version of Final Fantasy was met with modest success, partly due to Nintendo's then-aggressive marketing tactics. No version of the game was marketed in the PAL region until Final Fantasy Origins in 2003.
The music for Final Fantasy was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, and was his 16th video game music composition. The soundtrack album was released together with the score of Final Fantasy II in 1989. Some of the game's tracks became mainstays to the Final Fantasy series: the "Prelude", the arpeggio played on the title screen; the "Opening Theme", which is played when the party crosses the bridge early in the game and later referred to as the Final Fantasy theme; and the "Victory Fanfare", which is played after every victorious battle. The opening motif of the battle theme has also been reused a number of times in the series.
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—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)