Square Enix shares old Final Fantasy trailers
Celebrating Final Fantasy's 25th anniversary.
July 9, 2012 / 08:13 AM EDT / (@salromano)

Square Enix is celebrating the Final Fantasy franchise’s 25th anniversary this year. As part of its year-long ceremony, it’s uploaded fourteen old Final Fantasy trailers to its official YouTube account. Relive the memories below.

Final Fantasy I ・ II (PS)

Final Fantasy I ・ II (GBA)

Final Fantasy III (DS)

Final Fantasy IV Advanced (GBA)

Final Fantasy IV (DS)

Final Fantasy V ・ VI (GBA)

Final Fantasy VI (SFC)

Final Fantasy VII (PS)

Final Fantasy VIII (PS)

Final Fantasy IX (PS)

Final Fantasy X (PS2)

Final Fantasy XII (PS2)

Final Fantasy XII International: Zodiac Job System (PS2)

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  • Anime101210

    Amazing! Simply amazing! Im just hoping this leads to something being announced for a certain “other” XIII game that’s been left out of the limelight for too long (not talking about XIII-3, although I am looking forward to that too). If they really wanna celebrate Final Fantasy I dont think there’s a better way to do that than with the unveiling of the “re-imagining” of the series, either at the anniversary art exhibition, or at TGS later that month.

  • Locksus

    FFVI’s Terra is among the most beautiful songs in the history of gaming. ;_;

  • AuroraXIII

    They uploaded two trailers for FFX. The one embedded in this article is for the FFX International re-release. You forgot the fourteenth trailer for the original FFX:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVlSl6v_7c

  • chinglee

    Hmm, I just noticed that Rinoa’s eyebrows are quite bushy.

    Of course, this lead me to focus on Squall’s eyebrows which seems to look more feminine and ‘clean’ than Rinoa’s :O

    lol anyway, Oh FFIX*swoons* :3

    Edit:god damn, this new commenting system is horriblez :/

    • Malcolm Reynolds

      While it annoys me that I have to log back in every few hours for some reason on my phone even though I never close the page to this site….I think the commenting system is much better than before.

      Just b/c something has changed does not automatically make it worse.

  • zerolegacy0

    That feeling you get when you realize Final Fantasy will never be the same again…

    • rockman29

      Yep. Listen to that music in FF XII even. Makes you sad like heck.

      • Anime101210

        Now THAT is something I definitely can agree with, they do need to find a better composer that Masashi Hamauzu and a better director than Motomu Toriyama. While both did tremendously better on FFXIII-2 (although Hamauzu had help with XIII-2′s OST if I recall correctly), I think both of them need to be replaced with anything concerning the future of the franchise, barring any additional XIII entries since the regular XIII series is their project.

        • whiteferrero

          I’m sorry but “Blinded by Light” was pure win. I completely disagree with your comment on music. Though I agree they do need a better director.

          • Anime101210

            I dont think all of XIII’s music was bad, heck a lot of it sounded pretty good (not great mind you, but still good). The main problem I had with XIII’s OST was that most of the music was just arrangements of Blinded by Light. There wasn’t much variety to XIII’s soundtrack. While XIII-2′s was better, it wasn’t solely composed by Hamauzu.

            I think Square needs to find a composer who has a little more variety to his work, if they dont want to hire Uematsu for non-online entries (he still composed for XIV) in the series, get someone like Yasunori Mitsuda (who was the composer of Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Xenosaga ep1), Shimomura (KH, Mana series, SFII), or Yuki Kaijura (Xenosaga ep3, .Hack//Sign, Madoka).

            • whiteferrero

              meh. you’re expectations are too high. give the guy a break. even nobuo uematsu’s legend wasn’t built in a few games.
              Let’s see FF1 had like 5 memorable tracks at best, and for FF2 I’d say about 3. It wasn’t until 4 that he really really got this “wide variety” of tracks you’re talking about.

              • Anime101210

                Well it is Square’s Final Fantasy series, I think high expectations are warranted, and I think they should bring out the big guns for their top selling franchise.

                Trust me when I say that I’m not the biggest Uematsu fan either, but his music at least had a lot of variation between tracks even in FF1. You also must realize that 5 memorable tracks (although I’d argue there’s far more) in FF1 when it only had 30 or so songs, is still better than the 5-10 songs I remember from XIII and its OST of almost 90 songs.

                And also add to the fact that Uematsu was working with limitations with memory, and having to use the limited sounds that the original NES could make, while Hamauzu has an endless amount of real instruments he could choose from and can use full orchestral music in these games.

                Your comment about earlier Final Fantasies music would hold much more weight had these been Hamauzu’s first couple games he’s composed for. But he’s been in the business a LONG time and composed for many games, none of which have had memorable OST’s (besides FFX but again, he was not alone in composing that either).

                You said Uematsu didnt start releasing a variety of tracks until FFIV, well that released 9 years after the start of his composing career. Wanna know how long Hamauzu has been composing by the release of XIII? Exactly thirteen years, and by the time of XIII-2, fifteen years, and yet he still hasn’t even released anything with as much range as FFIV had (XIII-2 had a lot of repetition going on too, I just liked its soundtrack a lot more).

                I will say that XIII and XIII-2 are the mans best work so far, but thats not really saying much when he never had that great a portfolio to begin with. I just think that there’s so many others who would be better suited to composing for the FF franchise, especially since Square doesn’t even have musicians on staff anymore and hire freelance composers for all of their projects. That means they dont have to be tied down to any one composer for the remainder of the series.

                Its the main problem I have with Tales music, they keep rehiring Sakuraba to compose for Tales and his music is EXTREMELY samey (although hes FAR worse than Hamauzu is). But thats another story altogether.

                Edit: Wow, thats a lotta typin:P

                • whiteferrero

                  Well. that is a lotta typin :) but very informative. I always thought this was Hamauzu’s first few years. Well he may be starting to just get “it”. The songs that he did get right, and very beautiful and I listen to them almost everyday. So that’s why I still think he should have more chances.

    • Anime101210

      And yet it cant ever be the same again, unless there is a MAJOR hit to the graphics, and sadly, like it or not, graphics are the reason the series is as successful as it is to begin with.

      There are SO many better JRPG series/games out there better than Final Fantasy was or ever will be (not ragging on FF, because they are good games), but you wanna know why they aren’t anywhere near as successful? Because they dont look pretty, or they look to “anime” which somehow since the turn of the millennium has become a bad thing.

      Square cannot backpedal and have their next game look worse than FFXIII, because then you’d here people complaining about the game before it even comes out because it looks like crap (even if it doesnt). Sadly with the level of graphics/polish FFXIII had, Its nigh impossible to create full worlds like the psOne games had while still not having bugs and glitches all over the place.

      And really even if they made a game like they did in the psOne days, it would be wragged on because the locations aren’t “open world”, if you remember, the only thing that was open in the PsOne games were the world maps (which didnt have great graphics), the rest of the areas were small areas with prerendered backgrounds (which people have argued with me today saying are not “appropriate” for todays consoles).

      • rockman29

        I “kind of” agree with you, but I don’t think it’s right to blame the Western appetite for anime styled games, or the absence of it. When games are drawn like that and they use expressions that Western cultures are guaranteed to not understand, they are clearly targeting a certain set of consumers. It isn’t Western culture’s fault on this account.

        And definitely a bit of an exaggeration with the many RPGs better than Final Fantasy ever was. It definitely wasn’t only the graphics.

        And no, I don’t think anyone but WRPGs fans would complain about the lack of openness in a JRPG. If you were there in 1997 when FF VII came out, the same complaints were there by the vocal WRPG crowd (which now has to play non-RPGs like ME3), but the game was successful on it’s own merit.

        You’re throwing all these things against PS1 JRPGs like prerendered backgrounds and the ugly world map and only linear areas besides the world map… Dude, ALL of the PS1 JRPGs were like that basically with few exceptions like Vagrant Story or Xenogears, and almost all of them were awesome. Chrono Cross had a prerendered background for a world map and it was the most beautiful shiz ever. JRPGs were praised for that detail, which was impossible on the N64 because of the small cartridge size. Prerendered backgrounds were awesome back in 1997 if you were there to remember it. Again, the only idiots crying for open world JRPGs were the ones not even playing them.

        And polish doesn’t make perfect. I have serious disputes as to whether FF XIII is “polished” or not. Very vague term indeed. Polish doesn’t really exude it’s brilliance unless there’s the content behind it to back it up.

        • Anime101210

          Oh, trust me Im not against PS1 JRPG designs like prerendered backgrounds and ugly world maps, I actually wish they would go back to those methods. I only said that in todays world, people would rag on those design choices, reviewers and gamers alike, for not being “open” and world maps not being as graphically appealing as the rest of the game. God I miss the beauty of Prerendered backgrounds, especially vs. the fully rotatable paths we have today, that let you view a gorgeous world, and never explore it (FFXIII).

          Sadly its not JUST the idiots that never played them complaining about open worlds in JRPGs. Many of my friends and many commenters/reviewers on sites (not to say they are indicative of the major audience) who enjoyed JRPG’s when they were younger, now rag on them for not being “open” like Fallout, Skyrim, and Grand Theft Auto (yes people compare FF to GTA, idiots mind you but idiots are still consumers).

          What I’m referring to as polish, is a game without bugs, constant screen tearing, and frame rate drops. FFXIII (at least the PS3 version) had none of that, so regardless of how good/bad people think the game came out, it was still a polished game that didnt need to be patched months/years down the road to fix glaring issues.

      • zerolegacy0

        I don’t think you have any idea what I meant by my comment.

        • Anime101210

          Explain what exactly you meant so I can have a better understanding of it.

  • rockman29

    *Downloads all of them

    • Anime101210

      Did that b4 I even posted:P

  • Malcolm Reynolds

    Sheds a tear for the Squaresoft of old.

    • Locksus

      Aye I agree with you there, man :/ while FFXIII wasn’t a bad game by any means, it failed to remind me of the good old FF’s that I played when I was a kid =D If my memory server I think I played FFIX when I was about 5-6 years old (Oh, the golden memories ;_;).

      To me, Lost Odyssey felt more like Final Fantasy than FFXIII itself due to the reason that Sakaguchi and Uematsu were involved. The game is truly something.

      Too bad I don’t own a Wii so I cannot see for myself if Last Story is as awesome as LO is.

      Mistwalker should develop a game for the PS3 also :p

      • Zuhri69

        Everytime I saw MIstwalker announcing something I always wished that he was announcing something for the PS3.

    • Luccie85

      Watching those clips that bring tear to my eyes. I miss these old days with Squaresoft with all the best games that i ever played.

  • PrinceHeir

    amazing!!!!!

    too bad they left the spin offs despite some of them being hated.

    the fact that square acknowledges the international versions of FFX and FFXII just makes me excited that the HD Versions will use those versions and maybe dual audio as well!!!!!

    oh and please can we get the extra side story FFX Eternal Calm?? it showed Yuna the after events of FFX and before she wore her gunner dress??

  • whiteferrero

    ahh FF. thanks for the memz.

  • LordKaiser

    FF HD collection. make it happen!

  • http://gematsu.com/ Zero

    I wouldn’t go as far as saying Final Fantasy will never be the same again. Or that, Final Fantasy will never be anything like the above games ever again.

    They have made some pretty damn good JRPGs on the portables this generation. Not just Square-Enix, but a large group of JP developers have made fantastic games for the portables.

    Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate well to the west. Most of the core gaming over here is on consoles. How many FF games were on the PS1? On the PS2? On the PS3? Get the idea? The amount has decreased over the years.

    To explain this better, forget about FF for a moment and just think about JRPGs period. How many of them have been on the PS3 or 360? Far less than what the PS2 had, and much much less than PS1.

    The PSP? It has a crap ton of them, and the DS is no slouch in that category either.

    I think that fact alone has a big effect on what western gamers think about JRPGs today.

    Even some of the long time fans say stuff like, JRPGS are dead! They need serious help. (Which is really silly.)

    I think if we just give them a bit more time, we will start to see a return to form of sorts. So long as they embrace the hardware of choice in the west.

    That kinda depends on what the JP consumer does as well. They never really embraced the current consoles, not like the west did. With that said, it seems like many JP developers are ready to make the transition to focusing on console games again.

    I think Square-Enix got caught in the middle of this. Then they made some awful business choices, and XIV bombed big time, crystal tools proved to be lacking, and Versus has had problem after problem. This has not been a great few years for JP branch of Square-Enix.

    I think they have showed signs of getting things back on track lately. I still believe they can create games like the ones we remember so fondly in the trailers above.

    And for the record, I’ve said this before. FF 13 is radically different than any other FF before it, but I like both games. Not everyone does, and I understand that completely. Both games are far from perfect, and are missing much of the familiarity fans have come to expect.

    Which is why I’ve said time and time again, I hope FF 15 is more like FF9 was. (With Hiroyuki Ito at the helm.) A testament to the older Final Fantasies. I really think fans want a FF game like that right now. Almost as much as fans want Versus.

  • Zuhri69

    I don’t know why but when I saw the trailer for FF IX, I just. Oh god, I can’t take it. That will always be one of the best final fantasy for me ever.

  • Miranda Lawson

    Wheres FF XIII? Thats wierd, I thought for sure that it would be up there to celebrate FF’s 25th anniversary.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mateus-Prado-Sousa/100000343727632 Mateus Prado Sousa

    To nostalgic “fans” haters: accept the current Final Fantasy or leave

    • xMCXx

      No, we will not accept it.
      Final Fantasy was a great name. Nowadays it’s the butt of every joke.

  • zakou

    FFX the memories ~