Hironobu Sakaguchi

Creator of Final Fantasy, affectionately known as "the Gooch."

Early Life

Hironobu Sakaguchi was born on November 25, 1962 in the Japanese city of Hitachi. Sakaguchi joined Square in 1983 after dropping out of an electrical engineering course.

During the late 1980s, Square slowly spiraled into bankruptcy. Given these unfortunate circumstances, the company was left with just enough money to make one final game in hopes to steer clear of the storm ahead. And so, they went to Sakaguchi whose humble, yet modest reply of "I don't think I have what it takes to make an action game. I think I'm better at telling a story" soon birthed the popular Final Fantasy series we know today. Sakaguchi gave the game the name 'Final' (quite the contrary) because he thought that it would be the last game he would ever make.

SquareSoft

During his time at Square, Sakaguchi worked on over fifteen games as either director or producer and contributed to the development of more than ten other games. Sakaguchi became the President of Square in 1995.

Directorial debut

Sakaguchi directed his first and most likely last film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, released in 2001. The film received mixed reviews from critics and never made a profit in cinemas losing over 120 million dollars. After failure of the film, Square's film division was closed down and the only other film created under Square's supervision was Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in 2005.

Mistwalker

Sakaguchi left Square in 2002 due to reasons that even today are still unclear. Some believe he was forced out of the company by the board of directors after losing Square over 100 millions dollars with the box officer failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Sometime between 2002-2004 Sakaguchi formed Mistwalker where he stated working on Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon. Blue Dragon was released in 2006 and Lost Odyssey was released in late 2007.

Surfin'

As of late 2009 / early 2010 he expressed interest in handheld developement for platforms such as the Apple iPhone.

In early 2010, Nintendo announced a new Mistwalker RPG titled The Last Story. Sakaguchi has been talking about this project on Mistwalker's webstie for quite some time and says production is near the final phase.

Trivia

His personal blog over at his company site, Mistwalker, reveals that he has a fondness for photography, legos and even surfing.

blog	Lost Odyssey: Discovering Gaming Greatness	dankempster
blog	What games broke your Spirit because of a Hardware Failure?	TGB
news	Where Your Curly Mustache At?	Brad

Name	Platforms	Developer
Cry On	X360	Mistwalker Corporation, cavia inc.
The Last Story	WII	Mistwalker Corporation
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow	DS	tri-Crescendo Inc., Mistwalker Corporation
Blue Dragon Plus released on Feb. 24, 2009	DS	Mistwalker Corporation, Feel Plus, Brownie Brown Co. Ltd.
Away: Shuffle Dungeon released on Oct. 29, 2008	DS	Artoon Co., Ltd., Mistwalker Corporation
Lost Odyssey released on Feb. 12, 2008	X360	Mistwalker Corporation, Feel Plus
ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat released on Oct. 4, 2007	DS	Basiscape, Mistwalker Corporation, Racjin Co., Ltd.
Blue Dragon released on Aug. 28, 2007	X360	Artoon Co., Ltd., Mistwalker Corporation
Final Fantasy XI Online: Treasures of Aht Urhgan released on April 18, 2006	PC, PS2	Square Enix
Final Fantasy XI Online: Chains of Promathia released on Sept. 20, 2004	PS2, PC	Square Enix

Full Name:	Hironobu Sakaguchi
Gender:	Male
Birthday:	Nov. 25, 1962
Death:	n/a
Credited In:	47 games
1st Game Credit:	Rad Racer
Currently Working For:	Mistwalker Corporation
Hometown:	Hitachi, Ibaraki
Country:	Japan
Website:	http://www.mistwalkercorp.com/en/index.html
Email Address:
Aliases: