“The best RPG series in the world! No, The best Video Game series in the world!!”

Final Fantasy is a media franchise owned by Square Enix that includes video games, motion pictures and other merchandise. It began in 1987 as an eponymous console role-playing game developed by Square, spawning a video game series that became the franchise's central focus. The video game franchise of Final Fantasy is the fourth-best selling as of March 2007, having sold over 75 million units worldwide. The franchise later branched out into other genres and platforms, such as tactical RPGs, portable games, MMORPGs and games for mobile phones. The series also spurred the release of three animated productions and two full length CGI films. The first installment of the series premiered in Japan on December 18, 1987, and Final Fantasy games have later been localized for markets in North America, Europe and Australia on numerous video game consoles, IBM PC compatible computers, and several different models of mobile phones. Future installments have been announced to appear on seventh generation video game consoles. Two upcoming titles for the PS3 include Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII. As of March 2007, there are about 28 games in the franchise. This number includes installments from Final Fantasy to Final Fantasy XII, along with a few direct sequels (Final Fantasy X-2 and Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII) and numerous spin-offs. Square first entered the Japanese video game industry in the mid 1980s, developing a variety of simple RPGs, racing games, and platformers for Nintendo's Famicom Disk System (FDS), a disk-based peripheral for the Family Computer. By 1987, declining interest in the FDS had placed Square on the verge of bankruptcy. At approximately the same time, Square designer Hironobu Sakaguchi began work on an ambitious new fantasy role playing game for the cartridge-based Famicom, inspired in part by Enix's popular Dragon Quest (known as Dragon Warrior in the United States until 2005). According to unconfirmed sources, Sakaguchi had plans to retire after the completion of the project, so it was named Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy reversed Square's lagging fortunes, and became their flagship franchise. Following the success of the first game, Square quickly began work on a second installment. Unlike a typical sequel, Final Fantasy II featured entirely different characters, with a setting and story bearing only some thematic similarities to its predecessor. Some of the gameplay elements, such as the character advancement system, were also completely changed. This approach to future installments has continued throughout the series, with each major Final Fantasy game introducing a new world, a new cast of characters, and a new system of gameplay. Due to the (as of 2007) 20 year time span of the game series, the games, especially older versions, are often sold at great value and maintaining a full working collection of the titles is often difficult given the wide breadth of systems. The Nintendo DS provides the means with Game Boy Advance backwards compatibility to play all six of the original 2D games (Dawn of Souls, the remakes of IV, V and VI and the DS 3D remake of III, not including spin-offs), and the PlayStation 3 offers the opportunity to play the PSone remakes of Origins (I and II), Chronicles (IV and Chrono Trigger), Anthology (V and VI), the original PSone titles (VII, VIII and IX), the PlayStation 2 titles (X, X-2, XI, XII) and the PlayStation 3 version of Final Fantasy XIII, which is currently in development. Final Fantasy III is as yet unavailable for the PlayStation series of consoles.

Membership: Open
Access: Public
Group Owner: SharinganGod
Category: Games
Date Formed: 2007-09-11 17:54:26
Members: 317

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