Popverse's top stories of the day

• Matthew Lillard embraces fans & his fellow Scream villain Skeet Ulrich as he talks for the first time about his return for Scream 7
• WATCH: NBC's Hannibal stars Mads Mikkelsen & Hugh Dancy reunite for Seattle's ECCC 2025
• MEMBERS ONLY: Popverse Jump: The case for giving the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle movies a worldwide release date - and why it could be bigger in America than Japan

If you asked the average gamer to name a JRPG, the first five answers would probably be from the Final Fantasy series. It is easily one of the most successful and influential game franchises in history, but it almost never came to be. Hironbu Sakaguchi, the man credited with creating the Final Fantasy series since he worked as a director on the first several games, has admitted that he didn’t think a long JRPG like it was possible – until he played Dragon Quest.

During a chat with Anime News Network, Sakaguchi explained that he originally thought RPGs would be confined to the PC due to the technical limitations of the original Famicom console (called the NES in the West).

“Before diving into RPGs, I spent the early stages of my career developing adventure games for PC,” he said. “After a few years, when Famicom became the target platform, I had to abandon developing RPGs due to the limited storage capacity of the ROM cartridge and the lack of a save data function in the initial Famicom model.”

Of course, we know that the first Final Fantasy game became a big hit on the NES/Famicom console, so what changed? Well, Enix came out with Dragon Quest, which changed what Sakaguchi thought was possible on early consoles.

“Dragon Quest overcame these barriers with creative ideas, including a feature that allowed players to save using text data. I scolded myself for thinking that creating an RPG was not possible on Famicom and went on to develop the first Final Fantasy.”

After borrowing some creative ways to overcome the technical limitations of the NES, Sakaguchi and Square would create Final Fantasy, a JRPG series that has arguably surpassed Dragon Quest in influence in the decades since. 

You don't need to beat the game to prepare for the next one—here are all the major new and upcoming games coming our way.