I completed my first ever Final Fantasy game last month (Final Fantasy I) and while I was getting into it, I wondered what the game’s inspirations were. Games like Ultima, Wizardry, D&D, and Dragon Quest came up, of course, but then I was reminded of the name and how it was allegedly based on Square’s nearing bankruptcy—the game was effectively its Final Fantasy. But those rumours were false, according to franchise creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi:
According to Sakaguchi, the name “Final Fantasy” was actually inspired by two different sources: Dragon Quest and the Fighting Fantasy line of novels. As he recalls, the Dragon Quest series was starting to establish itself when the game’s publishers, Enix, supposedly discussed shortening the series’ name to “Drakue.” Sakaguchi’s team was inspired by that decision and wanted to give their own game a name that could be easily shortened using the Roman alphabet.
This decision resulted in Square coming up with the abbreviation “FF,” but they didn’t actually know what those letters would stand for. The company went through several ideas, one of which was apparently Fighting Fantasy. However, because of conflicting trademarks, they ultimately decided to settle on the name Final Fantasy as a “last resort.”
via Den of Geek
Not as poetic, given the franchise’s subsequent success, but who cares? It’s still an awesome name and FF is a great abbreviation (I also like the unintentional connotations with hexadecimal code in games: FF stands for 255 which is often used in cheat codes to get the maximum value of a given item).
