Curated playlist
Final Fantasy video games
- Final Fantasy Legend IIFinal Fantasy Legend II shipped in Japan on the 14th of December 1990, carrying a name that was, in its home country, entirely different: SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu. That gap between identities tells you something about the game's unusual…
- Fabula Nova Crystallis Final FantasyFabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy began with a mythology written by scenario writer Kazushige Nojima between 2003 and February 2004. What Nojima produced was not a game but a scripture: a series bible describing the gods who created the…
- Final Fantasy XII: Revenant WingsFinal Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings began its life with no connection to Final Fantasy XII at all. Producer Eisuke Yokoyama and Japanese developer Think & Feel were building a standalone real-time strategy game for the Nintendo DS. Only…
- Final Fantasy XV: Pocket EditionFinal Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition reached three million downloads within its first month on the market. That number turned a stripped-down mobile spinoff into one of Square Enix's quieter success stories of 2018. The game took a full…
- Final Fantasy IV (2007 video game)Final Fantasy IV (2007 video game) arrived on the Nintendo DS on the 20th of December 2007 in Japan, timed precisely to the Final Fantasy series' 20th anniversary. The game being celebrated was not a new entry but a rebuilt one: a full…
- Final Fantasy XIIIFinal Fantasy XIII opens in a place that should not exist: Cocoon, a massive artificial sphere floating above the surface of Gran Pulse, kept aloft by mechanical gods called fal'Cie. Development of the game began in February 2004, and when…
- Final Fantasy IV: The After YearsFinal Fantasy IV: The After Years asks a question most sequels are afraid to pose: what happens seventeen years later, when the heroes have grown old and their children must face a threat their parents barely survived? The second moon has…
- Final Fantasy Mystic QuestFinal Fantasy Mystic Quest arrived in North America in 1992 with a label that few major game publishers would dare to put on a box: it was marketed as a "simplified role-playing game... designed for the entry-level player." Square, the…
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIICrisis Core: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2007 with an unusual burden: explaining one of gaming's most beloved tragedies before it happened. Zack Fair, a young member of the elite military force SOLDIER, would carry the entire weight of…
- Final Fantasy Legend IIIFinal Fantasy Legend III arrived in Japanese stores on the 13th of December, 1991, carrying a secret: in Japan it was called SaGa 3: Jikuu no Hasha, a title in a series its creator had already decided to end. Series creator Akitoshi Kawazu…
- Final Fantasy VFinal Fantasy V launched in Japan in December 1992, and within a single day it sold roughly 900,000 cartridges. That opening figure was about 4.5 times the first-day numbers posted by Final Fantasy IV the year before. Japanese authorities…
- Final Fantasy Crystal ChroniclesFinal Fantasy Crystal Chronicles began with a peculiar act of corporate bridge-building. Square, the company behind Final Fantasy, had split from Nintendo years earlier when it developed Final Fantasy VII for Sony's PlayStation. The…
- Final Fantasy IIIFinal Fantasy III launched on the 27th of April, 1990, and within its first week sold 500,000 copies in Japan. By March 2003, that figure had reached 1.4 million, making it the highest-selling domestic release among the first three games…
- Final Fantasy VIIFinal Fantasy VII arrived in Japan on the 31st of January, 1997, and within three days had sold over two million copies. That pace was not an accident. It was the product of a project that had burned through multiple platforms, consumed…
- Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX arrived on the PlayStation in 2000 carrying a quiet act of rebellion. While its two immediate predecessors had chased a sleeker, more cinematic realism, this ninth entry turned deliberately backward, back to medieval…
- Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake arrived on the 10th of April 2020, nearly a quarter century after the game it set out to reimagine. Square Enix had spent years insisting no remake was in development. The question that hung over the gaming world…
- Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth landed on the PlayStation 5 on the 29th of February 2024 - one of the first major video game releases to arrive on Leap Day. Square Enix chose that date deliberately for a game that had been in active development…
- Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD RemasterFinal Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster arrived in 2013 as something more than a polish job on two beloved games. It raised a question that fans had been quietly asking since the PlayStation 2 era: what happens to a world after it is saved? The…
- Final Fantasy XIII-2Final Fantasy XIII-2 arrived in Japanese stores on the 15th of December 2011, carrying an unusual burden: it was designed from the start as an answer to complaints about its predecessor. Square Enix had sold Final Fantasy XIII to roughly…
- Final Fantasy XVIFinal Fantasy XVI arrived on the 22nd of June 2023, carrying the weight of a franchise that had defined Japanese role-playing games for nearly four decades. The sixteenth mainline entry in one of gaming's most storied series, it made an…
- Final Fantasy III (2006 video game)Final Fantasy III sold 500,000 copies in Japan in its first week on the Nintendo DS, surpassing Square Enix's own prediction of 350,000. That figure is striking on its own. What makes it more remarkable is that the game behind those…
- Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in its first twenty-four hours, a figure Square Enix said allowed the game to break even on development costs immediately. That launch number was remarkable for a franchise that had been…
- Final Fantasy Tactics AdvanceFinal Fantasy Tactics Advance arrived on the Game Boy Advance in 2003, carrying the weight of a beloved predecessor and the ambitions of a team that had spent years waiting to build it. The original Final Fantasy Tactics, released in 1997,…
- Final Fantasy X-2Final Fantasy X-2 arrived in Japan in 2003 as something the series had never attempted: a direct sequel. Every numbered Final Fantasy before it told a self-contained story, with new worlds, new heroes, and no obligation to the game before…
- Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIILightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII opens on a brutal countdown: thirteen days until the world ends, and only one person to save every soul in it. The game, released in Japan in November 2013, is the third and final chapter in the Final…
- Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy II launched on the 17th of December 1988, almost exactly one year after the original game, and Square's small team of around ten people had already decided it would be nothing like its predecessor. The first game had saved…
- Final Fantasy XFinal Fantasy X shipped in Japan in 2001 and sold more than 2.14 million units on its first day alone, including 1.4 to 1.5 million pre-orders. A million copies moved within hours of release. Square had expected modest returns from a…
- Final Fantasy XIIFinal Fantasy XII arrived in March 2006 carrying five years of development behind it, a record that once earned it a Guinness World Record for longest production period in video game history. It sold more than 1,764,000 copies in its first…
- Final Fantasy IVFinal Fantasy IV arrived in Japan in 1991, and with it came Cecil Harvey, a dark knight who steers warships through the sky for the Kingdom of Baron. The game opens not with a hero's triumph but with a crime: the Red Wings, Cecil's own…
- Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI arrived in Japanese homes on the 2nd of April, 1994, carrying a premise that broke from every rule the series had established. Where earlier installments placed players in medieval kingdoms, this game opened with…
- Final Fantasy XIFinal Fantasy XI launched in Japan on the 16th of May 2002, asking players to share a single online world with strangers who spoke different languages and lived on different continents. That was a radical proposition for a console game. At…
- Final Fantasy XIVFinal Fantasy XIV had already failed once. In September 2010, Square Enix released an online game that was so broken, so poorly received, that then-President Yoichi Wada stood up and admitted it had "greatly damaged" the Final Fantasy…
- Final Fantasy XIV (2010 video game)Final Fantasy XIV launched on the 30th of September 2010, and within months Square Enix had suspended subscription fees, postponed its PlayStation 3 version indefinitely, fired its entire development leadership, and issued a public apology…
- Final Fantasy VIIIFinal Fantasy VIII sold 2.21 million copies on its first day of release in Japan, grossing the equivalent of $151 million in a single day. That figure made it the fastest-selling entry in the Final Fantasy series at the time of its launch…
- Final Fantasy TacticsFinal Fantasy Tactics arrived in Japan on the 20th of June 1997, bundled with a demo disc for SaGa Frontier, and it told a story most players had never encountered in a Japanese role-playing game. At its center stood Ramza Beoulve, a…
- The Final Fantasy LegendThe Final Fantasy Legend arrived on Game Boy in December 1989, carrying a name it had not been born with. In Japan it launched as Makai Toushi Sa·Ga, the first title in what would become the SaGa series. Square's president Masafumi…