User:Tristam/sandbox
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[edit] History
[edit] 1983–1985: The founding of Square
In September 1983, the Denyuusha Electric Construction Company, inspired by Nintendo's recent foray into the video game market and recognizing the popularity of computer and video games, set up a branch for software development named Square. The name was bestowed as a tribute to the company's birthplace of Shikoku,[1] an island with a rectangular shape. Square was founded by Masafumi Miyamoto, who was given ¥100,000,000 (US$400,000[2]) by his father to invest in the company.
Square's development team came from an unlikely source in the form of two dropout students. At the time, Hironobu Sakaguchi was studying to become a computer technician at Yokohama National University, but was introduced to Wizardry and other western RPGs by Hiromichi Tanaka.[3] The pair loved adventure and role-playing games, particularly Ultima II.[4] Sakaguchi would stay the night at Tanaka's apartment playing the game, eager to continue it in the morning.[4] The two then turned to making their own game, and dropped out of the university to get jobs at Denyuusha,[3] where the pair was put in charge of Square's planning and development.
Square was formed at a time when the contemporary global market for video game consoles had not yet evolved; thus, their first games were designed for Japanese personal computers, such as the NEC PC-8801 and Sharp X1. Their first game, The Death Trap, is an interactive fiction game – a popular genre in Japan in the early 80s – where the computer player enters Y/N keys into command lines to advance (the computer game equivalent of Choose Your Own Adventure books). Sakaguchi noted that "while its value as a piece of work was high, it was part of a shifting market. The fad changed from adventure games to RPGs, and so [The] Death Trap didn't sell very well..."[4]
After their rather weak start in the computer market, Square looked to gain a foothold in the budding console market. And so it was that in June 1985, Nintendo granted Square license for the production of Famicom games. For their first release, however, Square only acted as publisher, and ported the popular Game Arts shooter Thexder to the Famicom. Square was again met with failure, however. Thexder’s intuitive "lock-on system" was well-liked, but wasn’t included with Square’s Famicom port, much to the annoyance of Japanese fans of the original.[5]
The next game that Square developed was Will, a sequel to The Death Trap. Sakaguchi was placed in charge of its planning, while Tanaka was busy working on Genesis. To compromise for the adventure genre's waning popularity, Sakaguchi added an anime style to the game. "With Will," he explained, "we had already decided to go with a more popular style from the beginning. So we added bishojo and mecha. In our first game, when people looked at the beach screen, they said things like, 'I wish the waves would move,' but we felt like, 'Not just that! We want to do more!' and so we started thinking about anime style. It was a hit."[4] The bishojo and mecha elements would later appear in Alpha and Cruise Chaser Blassty, respectively.
After Will's release, Tanaka's RPG Genesis made its debut. Although he enjoyed such games as Ultima and Wizardry, Tanaka felt like something was missing from those games, and so he stressed the story element of Genesis. Square would go on to develop three more games at Denyuusha (Dragon Slayer, Cruise Chaser Blassty, and Alpha) before achieving independence.
