Short answers, pulled from the story.
Final Fantasy was released in Japan in 1987 for the Family Computer (Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System). Nintendo of America published an English-language version in North America in 1990, and the PAL region did not receive any version until Final Fantasy Origins in 2003.
Hironobu Sakaguchi created Final Fantasy at Square, with the team later explaining that "final" reflected two pressures: Sakaguchi had decided to quit the game industry if the game failed, and Square itself was at risk of bankruptcy. The original working title was Fighting Fantasy, changed to avoid a trademark conflict with an existing gamebook series.
The original Famicom version shipped 520,000 copies in Japan. Combined with the North American NES release of 700,000 copies, worldwide sales reached 1.3 million by 1994. As of March 2003, counting all versions and remakes, total worldwide shipments reached 1.99 million copies.
Final Fantasy offers six character classes: Fighter, Thief, Black Belt, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Players choose four characters at the start and are locked into that party for the entire game. A class upgrade later in the game matures sprites and expands access to weapons and magic.
Final Fantasy was the first role-playing game to display the player's characters on the right side of the screen with enemies on the left, replacing the first-person perspective used by earlier RPGs. Designer Akitoshi Kawazu introduced elemental weaknesses drawn from Dungeons and Dragons and Wizardry, which had not previously appeared in Japanese RPGs. Programmer Nasir Gebelli also added the first known RPG minigame, a sliding puzzle.
Final Fantasy has been remade and re-released across more than a dozen platforms, including MSX2, WonderSwan Color, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, mobile phones, Wii Virtual Console, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, NES Classic Edition, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U Virtual Console, and as part of the Pixel Remaster series for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox Series X/S. The Pixel Remaster version first launched on iOS, Android, and Windows PC through Steam on the 28th of July 2021.