Final Fantasy (universe)

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Final Fantasy (universe)
File:FinalFantasyLogo.png
Developer(s)	Square Enix
Publisher(s)	Square Enix
Designer(s)	Hironobu Sakaguchi
Genre(s)	Role-playing game
Console/platform of origin	Nintendo Entertainment System
First installment	Final Fantasy (1987)
Latest installment	Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015)
Article on Wikipedia	Final Fantasy (universe)

The Final Fantasy universe (ファイナルファンタジー, Final Fantasy) refers to the Super Smash Bros. series' collection of characters, stages, and properties that hail from the world-famous role-playing game (RPG) franchise owned by Square Enix.

Franchise description

Electrical engineering student Hironobu Sakaguchi became a part-time employee at Square shortly after it was founded as a computer game-centric division of a power line construction company named Den-Yu-Sha. He became a full-time employee as the Director of Planning and Development when Square later separated from its parent company, and had intended to create a role-playing video game modeled after the foundations of then-separate company Enix's Dragon Quest. Thematically inspired by role-playing forerunners such as Ultima, Wizardry, and Dungeons & Dragons, the game was later alleged to have received the name "Final Fantasy" because it was anticipated by the company to be its final project under the threat of bankruptcy. The outcome of the release starkly contrasted with expectations, however, as the game's December 1987 release on Nintendo's Famicom sold more than half a million copies. When Dragon Quest later met success with its North American localization as Dragon Warrior, Nintendo of America released a similarly localized version of Final Fantasy in July 1990, to modest success.

Though Dragon Quest was among the first to effect a divergence of styles in the role-playing genre that resulted in the formation of what is commonly known as the Japanese role-playing genre, Final Fantasy played a critical role in granting it its initial surge of popularity. However, the Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) style would remain relatively obscure in the public spotlight throughout many years to come, even as many new JRPG properties were introduced both within Square's efforts and outside it, such as a legendary collaboration between Square, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, and manga artist Akira Toriyama that resulted in Chrono Trigger. Final Fantasy, under producer Sakaguchi's watchful eye, began to release a continuous succession of numbered sequels - which, in stark contrast to most other video game series, were never traditional sequels or continuations and rarely carried over characters. Much like in Fire Emblem, each of the mainstream Final Fantasy games that were developed and released are self-contained works tied tangentially by shared thematic and design similarities, such as Final Fantasy II and III for the Famicom, and for a while, only some of the games received worldwide localization; Final Fantasy IV for the Super Famicom - which introduced the "Active Time Battle" concept to the series - was released worldwide in 1991 as "Final Fantasy II", and after Final Fantasy V remained a Japan-only Super Famicom release, Final Fantasy VI was released worldwide for Super Nintendo in 1994 as "Final Fantasy III".

Though Final Fantasy VI would become critically regarded in its own right as one of the greatest and most landmark JRPGs ever developed, the JRPG genre remained relatively niche in Western markets. As polygon graphics began to take root in the industry's landscape with the release of systems like the Sony PlayStation, Sakaguchi felt that the franchise might be left behind if it did not catch up to the 3D graphics used in other games - but because Nintendo's then-upcoming 3D-based console, the Nintendo 64, was based on cartridges and therefore lacked the memory storage needed for the project's scope, Square ended its relationship with Nintendo and developed Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation. What resulted was the most expensive videogame of its time, with a development budget of around $45 million - equivalent to $67 million in 2015. The game's international release - which was consistently titled Final Fantasy VII despite prior installments not having been released outside Japan at the time - was preceded by a heavy marketing campaign.

Final Fantasy VII received widespread critical acclaim that was nonetheless eclipsed by the videogame's commercial success and impact on the games industry. Famously referred to by one publication as "quite possibly the greatest game ever made", the game - spread out across three PlayStation discs packaged together - was seen for its time as an unprecedented blend of gameplay, interactive movie elements, and character-driven narrative, the last of which included what was argued to be one of the most infamous character deaths in the medium. On the back of character designer Tetsuya Nomura's now-iconic cast, the game is viewed to have single-handedly vastly expanded the conventional global audience for the JRPG genre, and Final Fantasy itself became one of the most popular video game franchises. The extent to which the game had become a killer app for the PlayStation led protagonist Cloud Strife to become an unofficial mascot for both his series and the console as a whole. Every main-numbered Final Fantasy to follow would receive enormous amounts of attention and sales success as a direct outcome of Final Fantasy VII's own.

Final Fantasy VII's setting introduced a post-industrial science-fiction element to the formerly medieval fantasy-grounded intellectual property, and the involvement of science fiction in a Final Fantasy mythos was expanded with 1999's Final Fantasy VIII. After 2000's Final Fantasy IX deliberately returned to the more traditional fantasy trappings employed in the oldest games, the series' first main-numbered appearance on the PlayStation 2 as Final Fantasy X aesthetically entrenched the series in a distinctive blend of fantasy and technology. The series had also begun to deviate from its turn-based and Active Time Battle-based roots and gradually adapt action-RPG elements in games such as 2006's Final Fantasy XII, 2010's Final Fantasy XIII, and 2016's Final Fantasy XV, as well as release two of its main-numbered games - 2002's Final Fantasy XI and another title released in 2010, Final Fantasy XIV - as MMORPGs. But while every numbered game remains a separate story and setting from the rest, several of them receive their own sequels, spin-offs, and sub-series that utilize their respective settings and casts, namely XIII, XII, X, IV, and most prominently VII.

None of this is to mention a veritable deluge of remakes, reissues, offshoots, spiritually-related works, and involvement in crossovers that began after the turn of the millennium, as if spurred in response to the 2003 merger of Square and Enix into a single entity named Square Enix (which Sakaguchi had resigned from shortly prior). Several games appeared as third-party works on Nintendo hardware as a result of renewed relations between the two publishers, such as the Bravely Default series for the Nintendo 3DS - which constitute a modernized presentation of the original turn-based battle system of the earliest Final Fantasy titles. Meanwhile, each of the formerly-Japan-exclusive main-numbered titles have been released to the rest of the world in some enhanced form or another. Among the more noteworthy Final Fantasy derivatives:

• Final Fantasy Tactics, released in 1998 for the PlayStation, was Square's first foray into the strategy RPG genre and is regarded as a cult classic; it saw an enhanced re-release for the PlayStation Portable with the subtitle The War of the Lions. Separately, a duo of more colorful, unconnected titles - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift - were released for the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS.

• Final Fantasy Type-0 is an action-RPG that was released only in Japan for the PlayStation Portable in 2011, with an high-definition (HD) remaster later released worldwide early 2015 for both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is an action-RPG that was released exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube, and has since spawned its own metaseries with the Crystal Chronicles name, all of which have been exclusive to Nintendo hardware.

• Dissidia Final Fantasy and its sequels, Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy and an arcade game with the same name. The first two are PlayStation Portable titles designed around a combat system resembling a hybridized blend of the three-dimensional fighting and action-RPG genres, while the third game is oriented more to the fighting aspects rather than the RPG aspects. These games are crossovers of the various disparate continuities of the franchise, and make at least one hero and one villain from each of the main-numbered Final Fantasy continuities playable characters.

• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and its update, Curtain Call, are Nintendo 3DS rhythm titles that similarly cross over the many universes of Final Fantasy, compiling music - both faithfully preserved and remixed - from almost every Final Fantasy title and spin-off.

• Among the many recurrent monster designs trademarked to the series is the Chocobo, a large, ratite-like bird that is often used as a mount in various Final Fantasy continuities. Square Enix uses it as a mascot for Final Fantasy as a whole, and has released a variety of more child-oriented Chocobo media based on it. There have been Chocobo-themed entries of Chunsoft's Mystery Dungeon series of rogue-like games, and similar games were later made for Pokémon.

• Kingdom Hearts is an action-RPG series that was conceived as an unorthodox crossover between the general aesthetic of Final Fantasy and the many universes of Disney animated films, with several Final Fantasy characters - such as Cloud Strife - appearing as guests and cameos. Under the direction of Tetsuya Nomura, the on-going series has become one of the most storied video game intellectual properties in its own right.

Despite the many turns that the Final Fantasy franchise has taken, Final Fantasy VII remains as the franchise's most well-known and popular extension. Years after its introduction, it became the subject of a metaseries of prequels, non-traditional sequels, and other various media collectively titled the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, including a computer-graphic (CG) film titled Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. While there has yet to be a proper playable sequel for this particular continuity, a modernized, high-definition remake was announced at E3 2015 to be in development for the PlayStation 4 as a timed exclusive. It was later revealed in December at the PlayStation Experience 2015 to possess a real-time formula as opposed to the turned based formula of the original game. This remake has been one of the most heavily requested for over the course of a decade-and-a-half and Kitase claims that the remake will retain the same level of strategy elements as the original game.

In addition to his recurrent appearances in all of these works, Cloud Strife has made guest appearances in titles outside of Final Fantasy, including a PlayStation fighter titled Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring and a small subseries of digital board games titled Itadaki Street. To the surprise of many, Cloud was announced as a post-launch downloadable content fighter for the Nintendo crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. 4, despite minimal presence of his own on Nintendo hardware up until that point.

In terms of the scenario of the game itself, Final Fantasy VII initially focuses on the efforts of an eco-terrorist group named AVALANCHE - among whom Cloud is a member - as they struggle to destroy power plants operated by an electric-power mega-corporation that has become much of the planet's de facto government, Shinra, headquartered at the industrialized metropolis of Midgar. With the company having since shifted its focus to a spiritual substance called Mako so as to harvest said substance as modern society's primary source of power and fuel, Cloud and his allies operate under the belief that Shinra is siphoning the life force of the planet itself. But between his encounters with the mysterious flower girl Aerith Gainsborough and the re-emergence of an incredibly dangerous and disturbed figure from Cloud's past - the former elite soldier Sephiroth - Cloud and his allies gradually find themselves taking on a more direct and urgent role as protectors of the planet than they could have anticipated... though he must also surmount formidable psychological obstacles ingrained within his own memories.

In Super Smash Bros. 4

Characters

• 
  Cloud: The main protagonist of Final Fantasy VII will make his debut in the Super Smash Bros. series as a downloadable character in Super Smash Bros. 4. His default design is inspired by the realistic proportions he had in the Dissidia fighting series. His attacks primarily revolve around his iconic Buster Sword and references to all of his Limit Breaks.

Stages

• Midgar: The bustling, megacity in the world of Gaia, of which is depicted in Super Smash Bros. at the beginning of Final Fantasy VII. The layout of this stage is identical to those of Battlefield and Dream Land 64. However, there are the omnipresent summons from the Final Fantasy series that appear as stage hazards, each with their own abilities.

Music

• Let the Battles Begin!
• Fight On!

Other

• Chocobo appear as DLC Mii Fighter hats.

Media with elements from or in the Super Smash Bros. series

Final Fantasy II

Chocobos appears as an upcoming downloadable content headgear. The Leviathan appears on the Midgar stage.

Final Fantasy III

Odin, Ramuh, and Ifrit appear on the Midgar stage.

Final Fantasy VII

Cloud Strife appears as a playable downloadable content character in Super Smash Bros. 4 alongside Midgar, an area from Final Fantasy VII. Bahamut Zero, which appears on the aformentioned stage, along with the designs used for Leviathan, Ramuh, and Odin, also originate from this game. Additionally, the songs Let the Battles Begin!, Fight On!, Opening - Bombing Mission and the game's version of the series' victory theme are used in Cloud's reveal trailer.

Final Fantasy VIII

Ifrit's design used in Super Smash Bros. 4 comes from its appearance here.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

Cloud's outfit and sword from the CGI movie appear as an alternative costume.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Cloud's default Smash costume takes cues from the design used for his default costume from this game, including the more realistic proportions and loosely fastened boots.

Trivia

• Final Fantasy and EarthBound are the only universes with playable characters that do not have a character from their original installment playable in Super Smash Bros.
• Several Final Fantasy characters representing generic classes and creatures had previously crossed over with the Mario universe in Mario Hoops 3-on-3 and Mario Sports Mix, both of which were developed by Square Enix. However, Cloud does not appear in either of them and is in fact the first named Final Fantasy character to appear in a Nintendo crossover.
  • Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was also developed by Square Enix and includes references to the Final Fantasy series including an optional boss who was designed as an allusion to the Final Fantasy series.
• Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi directed The Last Story, whose main characters Zael and Calista appear as trophies in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.
• Final Fantasy and Mega Man are the only third-party universes to have debuted on a Nintendo system. In fact, both universes debuted on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
• Xenogears from the Xeno series started out as an early concept for Square's Final Fantasy VII. The company deemed it to be "too dark and complicated for a fantasy", but Takahashi was allowed to develop it as a separate project.
• Final Fantasy is the first universe to introduce a new company after the initial release of Super Smash Bros. 4.