Fantasian was supposed to end Hironobu Sakaguchi’s career. It revitalized it instead

The term “living legend” gets thrown around loosely in the art world, but Hironobu Sakaguchi has earned that distinction. The 61-year-old game designer is the father of Final Fantasy, one of the most important franchises in gaming next to Mario. While Sakaguchi didn’t invent the RPG genre, he turned it into a foundation that developers still build on decades later. Rather than taking that legendary success and calling it a day, Sakaguchi isn’t done innovating.

In 2021, Sakaguchi led development on Fantasian, an Apple Arcade exclusive RPG created by his studio, Mistwalker. It was initially heralded as his swan song ahead of retirement. Three years later, he’s still hard at work. Sakaguchi is currently finishing up a console and PC port of Fantasian dubbed Neo Dimension. The new version brings the cult hit to a wider audience along with some difficulty adjustments, voice acting, and 4K visuals that show off its unique diorama art style. Considering how beloved Fantasian is with its limited Apple fanbase, the entire world is about to realize that Sakaguchi is still innovating the RPG genre just as much today as he was in the 1980s

Ahead of its release, I sat down with Hironobu Sakaguchi to discuss the origins of Fantasian and the changes coming to Neo Dimension. It’s easy to understand why Sakaguchi saw it as his send-off; everything from its Apple exclusivity to its connection to Final Fantasy 6 led to the perfect full-circle moment for a legend on the brink of retirement. He just didn’t expect such a clean goodbye to reignite his love of games in the process.

A link to the past

Despite being best known for Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi’s career goes much deeper than that. He had his hand in a number of projects over his journey, fromSuper Mario RPG to Parasite Eve. Following a split from Square Enix in 2003 after the disastrous release of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, he would go on to chart his own course with Mistwalker, a studio that he founded in 2004. For a