Final Fantasy NES

Final Fantasy is Square’s 1987 role-playing game, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi and reportedly named in reference to the studio’s precarious financial situation at the time — a game the company needed to succeed. Four Light Warriors, customized from a set of character classes at the start, set out across a fantasy world to restore power to four elemental crystals.

Its class-and-party customization system, turn-based combat, and elemental-crystal structure became a template not just for its own long-running sequel series but for the console RPG genre broadly as it developed through the late 1980s and 1990s. Despite the doom-laden naming story, it sold well enough to launch what became one of the industry’s longest-running franchises.