Development
Square trademarked Seiken Densetsu in 1989, intending to use it for a game project subtitled The Emergence of Excalibur, and led by Kazuhiko Aoki for the Famicom Disk System. According to early advertisements, the game would consist of an unprecedented five floppy disks, making it one of the largest titles developed for the Famicom up until that point. Although Square solicited pre-orders for the game, Kaoru Moriyama, a former Square employee, affirms that management canceled the ambitious project before it advanced beyond the early planning stages. In October 1987, customers who had placed orders were sent a letter informing them of the cancellation and had their purchases refunded. The letter also suggested to consider placing an order on another upcoming Square role-playing game in a similar vein: Final Fantasy.
Four years later, Square developed the Game Boy game under the working title Gemma Knights, and then revived the trademarked name and released the game as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden. It was later released in Europe as Mystic Quest. The game's scenario was written by Yoshinori Kitase, based on a story idea by Koichi Ishii. Ishii designed all of the characters himself, while Kitase and Goro Ohashi were responsible for the development of the game system.
The Mana series, of which Final Fantasy Adventure was the first game of, was the result of Koichi Ishii's desire to create a fictional world. In Ishii's opinion, Mana is not a series of video games, but rather a world which is illustrated by and can be explored through video games. When working on the series, Koichi Ishii drew inspiration from abstract images from his memories of childhood, as well as movies and fantasy books that captivated him as a child. Ishii took care to avoid set conventions, and his influences are correspondingly very wide and non-specific. Nonetheless, among his literary influences, he acknowledges Tove Jansson's Moomin, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
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