The very first Squaresoft games

[KoShiatar]

Can anyone tell what Squaresoft did before Final Fantasy? What kind of games were them and for which platform/computer? Why did not they have success? Thank you.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Thexder [12/19/85]
King's Knight [9/18/86]
Deep Dungeon [12/19/86]
Dragon Crystal [12/15/86]
Tobidase Daisakusen [3/12/87]
Apple Town Story: Little Computer People [4/3/87]
Hao-kun's Mysterious Journey [5/1/87]
Deep Dungeon II: Hero's Crest [5/30/87]
Jikai Boys Met & Mag [7/3/87]
Magic of Cleopatra [7/24/87]
Highway Star [8/7/87]
Sword of Karin [10/2/87]
JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part II [12/7/87]
Final Fantasy [12/18/87]
All of them were for the Famicom or the Famicom Disk System, and they were mostly very creative games that unfortunately just weren't very fun. Thexder was an action game with a hero that could spontaneously transform into a spaceship, which is a great concept, but the controls were extremely erratic. King's Knight was a vertically-scrolling shooting game, but instead of a spaceship, you had a knight, a wizard, a monster, and a boy thief automatically roving along Medieval landscapes with destructible environments; again, the concept is good, but the characters just weren't agile enough, making the game needlessly difficult.

The Deep Dungeon games were first-person pseudo-3D dungeon-crawler RPGs comparable to ShadowGate or the original Phantasy Star. The Tobidase Daisakusen games were like SEGA's Space Harrier in their wide open, automatically-scrolling, pseudo-3D playing fields, but instead of flying around and shooting enemies like in Space Harrier, the object was simply to avoid the obstacles in your path, deliberately run into item-yielding columns, and jump over the occassional black void; the only shooting to speak of came during the boss battles and with the acquisition of a power-up. The Highway Star games were rather bare-bones racing titles similar to Pole Position, whose main draw were their--yes, again--pseudo-3D graphics; plenty of people seem to like them, though, so maybe it's just that I don't like racing games.

Those are the only ones with which I've personally spent any time, though. I seem to recall Apple Town Story being some kind of simulation game, and I believe the rest are action games or RPGs.

[theundeadhero]

What about Rad Racer and 3D World Runner?

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

The 3-D Battles of World Runner is Tobidase Daisakusen. Rad Racer is Highway Star.

[SomethingBig]

Woah, I had no idea Rad Racer was from Square. Rad Racer's my all time favorite racing game.

Yep, Square was going down the drain, pretty much. Final Fantasy was their last game and hope, hence the name. I wonder if they failed?

[BG-57]

If they failed, they sure took the scenic route.

[My name is...something..?]

This freaking company has had so many ups and downs in its lifetime that it deserves it's own movie.
You know like the Ray Charles movie. ;) ;)

[KoShiatar]

Thank you Kishi. This will be useful. I wonder, how did you become the god of Final Fantasy/Squaresoft/anyotherrelatedthing information you are? If I had looked for this on the Internet a million years, I wouldn't have found it.

[Vyk]

What about that Tom Soyer game? Or was it Huck Finn...? Or maybe that picture of it is just a hoax..

[TheAbominatrix]

No, there was a Tom Sawyer game. It came after all those, I believe.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Square's Tom Sawyer [11/30/89]

[Captain Maxx Power]

This freaking company has had so many ups and downs in its lifetime that it deserves it's own movie.
You know like the Ray Charles movie. ;) ;)

http://photos.yafro.com/pics3/i/20050606/04/9/7/9/9795d3ce8e35a7b7fd953bf9d423275b0_full.jpg

[Loony BoB]

Nice credits, Maxx. :D

[KoShiatar]

I compared Kishi information with Square Enix official site information and there are some differences, so I have to ask another bunch of questions.

-Thexder appears to have been released in december 1985, but the date given for Square Co., Ltd is September 1986. Why?

-Final Fantasy is dated December 1987, but the official site says January. What’s the right date?

-I read somewhere (http://ecomm.mercanti.it/games/ns.asp?wci=wnsb , for those who can understand Italian) about a PC game called “Death trap” that was prior to contract with Nintendo. Can you tell me anything about it?

-What’s the Famicon Disk System? Is it any different from NES/Famicon? Was it ever sold outside Japan?


I’m sorry for being picky, but I need precise information, as well as a source to quote in the credits. (It’s for my thesis, I wanted to add an extremely brief history of Squaresoft in the Final Fantasy part). Thank you for your patience.

[DJZen]

-What’s the Famicon Disk System? Is it any different from NES/Famicon? Was it ever sold outside Japan?

http://www.retrogames.co.uk/stock/assets/images/Mach_-_Famicom_Disk_System.jpg

http://www.silicium.org/images/catalog/consoles/nintendo/nes/fds.jpg

I give you... The FDS. The FDS was a disk drive that attached itself to the Famicom in a rather voltronesque fashion. It was never released outside of Japan. In addition to the fact that it was very easy to pirate games (it was proprietary format, but it was hardly read only), Nintendo did not feel that Americans wanted to pay more money for a strap-on to their existing consoles. The disks also had a low capacity. MANY games that are now classics were first released in Japan on this format, including The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and many others I can't be bothered to remember right now. Nintendo discontinued support of the FDS fairly quickly, but the disk writing machines remained in stores well into the 90s. However, Sharp released a version of the Famicom called (if I recall correctly) the Twin Famicom, which included the Disk System built in:

http://www.retrones.com/Como%20era%20la%20NES/Historia%20de%20la%20NES/Fotos/Famicom%20Disk%20System%20Combo.JPG

A total of 180 games were released for the FDS, and apparently the Twin Famicom can still be imported...

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

-Thexder appears to have been released in december 1985, but the date given for Square Co., Ltd is September 1986. Why?I have no idea why it says that. The copyright date on the title screen says 1985, so I would question the authenticity of that timeline.
-Final Fantasy is dated December 1987, but the official site says January. What’s the right date?Again, numerous sources have it that the game was released on December 18, 1987. The square-enix.com timeline is the only place I've ever seen it cited as having been released in January.
-I read somewhere (http://ecomm.mercanti.it/games/ns.asp?wci=wnsb , for those who can understand Italian) about a PC game called “Death trap” that was prior to contract with Nintendo. Can you tell me anything about it?As far as I know, the only game called Death Trap was released in 1983 for the Atari 2600 by a company called Avalon Hill. Nothing to do with Square.

[KoShiatar]

Thank you for everything.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Ok, Kishi, then what's your source? I know it's not wikipedia, b/c they don't have all those games.

I've played on a FDS before!

This seems like the best source I can find, unless you downloaded every NES game off of theoldcomputer.com and finding every one that said Square.

http://www.square-enix.com/jp/game/year/90-85/

[krissy]

If they failed, they sure took the scenic route.


lol
great quote
using it a lot now

[Necronopticous]

King's Knight was a vertically-scrolling shooting game, but instead of a spaceship, you had a knight, a wizard, a monster, and a boy thief automatically roving along Medieval landscapes with destructible environments; again, the concept is good, but the characters just weren't agile enough, making the game needlessly difficult.You just didn't get enough boots, Rayjack was damn agile. I'm not going to argue the difficulty come level 5, however.

[-N-]

Ok, Kishi, then what's your source? I know it's not wikipedia, b/c they don't have all those games.He's a CIA robot, duh.

And now he has control of EoFF as an Admin! We're all BEING SPIED ON!