46 Facts About Hironobu Sakaguchi

Hironobu Sakaguchi is a Japanese game designer, director, producer, and writer.

Hironobu Sakaguchi is known as the creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, in addition to other titles during his time at Square.

Hironobu Sakaguchi led the development of several titles before helping to create the original Final Fantasy, which proved highly successful and cemented his status within the company.

Hironobu Sakaguchi continued his game career through Mistwalker, first co-developing projects through external partners and then smaller in-studio mobile projects.

Hironobu Sakaguchi has influenced the creation of several other Square Enix projects, such as Kingdom Hearts.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was born on November 25,1962, in Hitachi, a city in Ibaraki Prefecture.

Hironobu Sakaguchi's parents were from Kyushu, and he would visit there frequently with his family in his childhood.

Hironobu Sakaguchi enjoyed playing piano in elementary school, and during high school played the folk guitar and formed an amateur band with some friends and classmates, almost getting himself expelled by selling homemade concert tickets.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was a computer science major at Yokohama National University, becoming friends with fellow student Hiromichi Tanaka.

Hironobu Sakaguchi applied as Square was a new company and not as exacting as other larger companies such as Namco and Konami.

At this point, Hironobu Sakaguchi still dreamed of becoming a professional musician but felt that working for a company like Square would provide him with needed programming experience in the meantime.

Hironobu Sakaguchi earned the reputation of being a hard person to work under.

When Square became an independent company in 1986, Hironobu Sakaguchi was appointed as a full-time employee as Director of Planning and Development.

Hironobu Sakaguchi described the production as happening in "fits and starts" with a small staff as most of the company did not believe in his project.

Hironobu Sakaguchi acted as director for the four subsequent entries between 1988 and 1992.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was promoted in 1991 to the position of Executive Vice President, which eventually lessened his creative role in titles, with Final Fantasy V being his final directorial role with the Final Fantasy series.

Hironobu Sakaguchi notably spearheaded the creation of Chrono Trigger, forming one third of the core "Dream Team" staff alongside Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, and Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest artist Akira Toriyama.

Hironobu Sakaguchi acted as the producer for the company's PlayStation debut Final Fantasy VII, which proved to be a massive financial and critical success.

The greater production requirements of the PlayStation meant Sakaguchi became less involved in the creative process, giving greater creative control to Yoshinori Kitase, who had worked with Sakaguchi beginning with Final Fantasy V For Final Fantasy VIII, he took on the role of executive producer.

Hironobu Sakaguchi acted as producer for some projects including Final Fantasy Tactics and Parasite Eve.

Hironobu Sakaguchi attempted to outsource development of a Tactics sequel, but the project was cancelled.

For Final Fantasy IX, a nostalgic entry which was mainly produced by a team in Honolulu, Hawaii where Hironobu Sakaguchi was based at the time, he took a greater creative role including producing the title and writing the scenario.

Hironobu Sakaguchi intended The Spirits Within, his debut as a film director, to be the first of multiple film projects, with lead Aki Ross becoming a virtual actress whose model would be reused in other CGI movies.

Hironobu Sakaguchi planned to create an interactive movie, further bridging the gap between films and video games.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was growing tired of his administrative role within Square.

In 2001, Hironobu Sakaguchi resigned from his position at Square along with two other senior executives, signing an agreement to be credited as executive producer on future Final Fantasy projects.

Hironobu Sakaguchi eventually found the motivation to make a return to game production after talking with Toriyama and fellow artist Takehiko Inoue.

Hironobu Sakaguchi officially left Square in 2003, with his last major credited role being on Final Fantasy X-2.

Hironobu Sakaguchi became reinvested in making games again after his talks with Toriyama and Inoue, deciding to create his own studio.

Hironobu Sakaguchi did not choose the PlayStation 3 due to its difficult production architecture and earlier disagreements with Sony president Ken Kutaragi.

Hironobu Sakaguchi returned to a directorial role for The Last Story, which he took as an opportunity to adjust his gameplay approach based on feedback from his earlier titles and to keep up with gaming trends of the time.

Terra Battle was a commercial success for the company, prompting Hironobu Sakaguchi to make plans to release eight games over six years, leading up to his possible retirement age.

Hironobu Sakaguchi created a sequel and spin-off for Terra Battle, and had been planning a third entry and a console version.

Hironobu Sakaguchi created Fantasian on the principle that it might be his last major game project due to his advancing age.

Hironobu Sakaguchi liked the design of the original Dragon Quest, attributing his admiration to its scale and ability to create a long adventure with progress saving on hardware other than PCs.

Hironobu Sakaguchi stated a wish to have games surpass the visual and narrative impact of films, citing their interactive elements as an advantage.

Hironobu Sakaguchi has mixed opinions on remakes, seeing the positive aspect of giving new players access to older titles, but preferring that developers focus on new projects.

Hironobu Sakaguchi compared creating a new game with watching the birth of a child.

Hironobu Sakaguchi's perspective changed during production of Final Fantasy III.

Hironobu Sakaguchi named the film's lead Aki Ross after his mother.

Hironobu Sakaguchi proposed the concept for what would become Final Fantasy XI, which was led by Mana creator Koichi Ishii.

Hironobu Sakaguchi disliked the creative direction Final Fantasy took under its new management, particularly citing Final Fantasy XIII as indicative of this change.

In later years, the position softened on both sides, though Hironobu Sakaguchi did not describe it as a true reconciliation.

Kitase and Nomura described the aftermath, saying that Hironobu Sakaguchi provided a singular creative voice for the company which was never reclaimed after he left.

At the 2015 Game Developers Choice Awards, Hironobu Sakaguchi was given the Lifetime Achievement award.

At the 2017 CEDEC Awards, Hironobu Sakaguchi was given the Special Award, with his extensive contributions to the gaming industry and strong following in Japan and overseas being cited as reasons.