From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
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Final Fantasy VIII (ファイナルファンタジーVIII, Fainaru Fantajī Eito?) is a role-playing video game released for the PlayStation in 1999 and Windows-based personal computers in 2000. It became available on PlayStation Network as a PSone Classics title in 2009. It was developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) as the Final Fantasy series' eighth title. The game follows the story of a group of mercenaries, who are part of an organization named "SeeD". Their main goal in the game is to stop a sorceress from the future (named Ultimecia) from compressing time.
The gameplay diverges from previous Final Fantasy games by removing magic point-based spell-casting, by being the first title to consistently use realistically proportioned characters, and by attempting to invert the atmosphere of previous games in the series, which had feelings of "light emerging from darkness". Players can assign ("junction") monsters called Guardian Forces to different characters to provide different abilities, and can junction specific magic spells, which have to be collected in-game, to characters' statistics to modify them.
The development of Final Fantasy VIII began in 1997, during the English localization process of Final Fantasy VII. The game was produced by Shinji Hashimoto and directed by Yoshinori Kitase. The music was scored by Nobuo Uematsu, series regular, and in a series first, the theme music is a vocal piece, "Eyes on Me", performed by Faye Wong. The game was positively received by critics and was a commercial success. It was voted the 22nd-best game of all time by readers of the Japanese magazine Famitsu. 13 weeks after its release, Final Fantasy VIII had earned more than US$50 million in sales, making it the fastest-selling Final Fantasy title of all time until Final Fantasy XIII, a multi-platform release. The game shipped 8.15 million copies worldwide by March 31, 2003.
Square was a Japanese video game development and publishing company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It began as a computer game software division of Den-Yu-Sha, a power line construction company owned by Miyamoto's father. Square's first titles were The Death Trap and its sequel Will: The Death Trap II; they sold over 100,000 copies, a major success for the time. In September 1986, Square spun off from Den-Yu-Sha and became an independent company officially named Square Co., Ltd. While its next few games sold poorly, 1987's Final Fantasy sold over 500,000 copies, sparking the company's flagship series and the best selling component of Square's catalog of video games.
Square was best known for its role-playing video game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series. Of its properties, this franchise is the best-selling, with total worldwide sales of over 100 million units. During its existence, the company developed or published dozens of titles in various video game franchises on numerous gaming systems. On April 1, 2003, Square merged with video game publisher Enix to form Square Enix. The final game that Square released was Final Fantasy X-2, and Final Fantasy games, re-releases, and spin-offs made up 45 of the 145 game releases that Square developed or published. This list includes retail games developed or published by Square during its existence.
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