Hironobu Sakaguchi

坂口 博信 Hironobu Sakaguchi
Basic Information
Born	November 25th, 1962
Residence	Japan
Occupation
Company	Square Enix
Position	Director, Producer 1983 - 2003
Work
Video Games	Final Fantasy
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Hironobu Sakaguchi is the creator of the Final Fantasy series, and former president of Squaresoft. He left the company in 2003, prior to the formation of Square Enix. Currently, he is the president of Mistwalker Studios.

Career at Squaresoft

Sakaguchi joined Squaresoft, then Square Co. ltd, in 1983 as a part-time assistant after withdrawing from college. In 1984, he was given his first designer role for the NEC PC game The Death Trap, and would continue to serve the company as a designer for Nintendo Entertainment System titles such as Rad Racer, King's Knight, and 3-D World Runner. Though providing the young man with valuable programming experience, none of these games sold well and Square Co. began to face financial troubles.

Dissatisfied with these results and questioning his current career, Sakaguchi reflected on his options and decided to make a company pitch to develop an RPG of his own to capitalize on the genre fascination started by Dragon Quest. Though the company heads were dubious of the viability of the proposal, the pitch was nevertheless greenlit and a small development team of eight people were assigned to the project. Still feeling unsure of his place in the industry, Sakaguchi gave himself an ultimatum--if the game sold well, he would stay with Square and if it bombed then he would resign and return to college. With this mental state, he dubbed the project Final Fantasy.