Hironobu Sakaguchi in a E3 Interview
Hironobu Sakaguchi (born November 25, 1962) is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. He is best known for his work on the Final Fantasy series.
Early Years and Career[]
Sakaguchi was born in Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan. He studied electric engineering at Yokohama National University, but dropped out in mid-1983. He soon found work at Square, and became the "Director of Planning and Development" in 1986. For the next couple of years, he worked on several games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, or Famicom as it was known as in Japan.
In late 1987, Sakaguchi and a team of six others at Square finished an RPG named Final Fantasy, so named because Sakaguchi considered it to possibly be the last game of Square. However, the game went on the become a major hit, marking the birth of one of video gaming's largest RPG franchises. Sakaguchi thus stayed at Square, acting as director for four sequels.
After Ohga Shrugs[]
By the release of Final Fantasy 4, Sakaguchi was made Executive Vice President at Square. From this point on, he played a role as a Supervisor in many projects as opposed to being a director. However, he continued to be the producer of the Final Fantasy series up through the ninth entry, made for the Nintendo 64.
While Square was developing the technology that would be used to create Final Fantasy X, the company considered making a computer animated film based on the franchise. However, due to the limitations of the Nintendo 64's cartridges, the company had little experience making cinematic scenes. Sakaguchi in particular felt that Square would have to finish Final Fantasy X before attempting such a project.
Since Final Fantasy X, Sakaguchi has continued to work at Square as an Executive Producer for most of the major Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts-related projects. His most recent major work was on Kingdom Hearts 3D for the Game Boy 3DS.
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