Born on 25 November 1962 in Hitachi, Japan, Hironobu Sakaguchi studied electro-technology at Yokohama National University, but he and Hiromichi Tanaka dropped out midway through the year in 1983 to join Square.
In this subsidiary of Denyūsha Electric CompanyThey work part-time on developing the company's first games, The Death Trap and its sequel on the NEC PC-8801. In September 1986, Square became an independent company dedicated to games, particularly for the Famicom from 1987. Sakaguchi was promoted to director of planning and development and now works full time, designing and producing 3-D WorldRunner and Rad Racer. But they weren't a huge success and the game designer set about creating an RPG, encouraged by the phenomenon of the Dragon Quest.
The project did not meet with unanimous approval within the company, and it was christened Final Fantasy which was to be his last game before returning to his studies. But the game sold 400,000 copies and gave birth to the world's most popular RPG series, still going strong today. Hironobu Sakaguchi directed or supervised each episode until the eleventh, but he also designed titles such as Chrono Trigger and supervised numerous Square series such as Front Mission, Romancing SaGa, Tobal, Parasite Eve or even Kingdom Hearts.
In 1995, he became President of Square's American branch, and then opened a computer graphics studio which contributed to the success of Final Fantasy VIIwhich sold 9.8 million units and was PlayStation's second biggest hit. He continued to supervise subsequent episodes, producing in particular Final Fantasy IX while developing the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in 2001. Highly ambitious, the project proved too costly and the commercial failure left Square in serious difficulty.
Sakaguchi left his position in 2002 but continued to supervise some of his former employer's projects on a freelance basis, such as Final Fantasy X. At the end of 2004, he decided to set up his own studio, Mistwalker. He first worked in collaboration with Microsoft, and in particular created Blue Dragonwhich brings together the talents of mangaka Akira Toriyama and the composer Nobuo Uematsuand gave birth to a franchise that flourished especially on the DS. It was for Nintendo that he directed The Last Story in 2011, the title of which is a nod to the work that made him famous. And with Party Wave In 2012, it radically changed both genre and medium, with this surfing game running on iOS.
