Disclaimer: This was from another board, not my own making, but it’s a humorous take on the story of Squaresoft’s founding written by a friend of a friend of mine who sent me the link.
For many years, Squaresoft (now SquareEnix) has led the way when it comes to Roleplaying Games (Or RPG’s for short), creating highly sucessful and well-known franchises like the Final Fantasy series. However, things weren’t always so bright and sunny for Squaresoft. Join me, Excel, as I take a look back at the long and exciting career of the company known only as Squaresoft. Or SquareEnix. Take your pick.
It was the Summer of 1985, and the video game craze was in full-swing - Especially in Japan. Everywhere you went, there was atleast something vaguely related to Pac-Man. Toys, cartoon shows, stuffed figurines, toilets, and even condoms - Nothing was safe from the effects of the Pac-Man craze. It was this summer that Masashi Miyamoto played his first game of Pac-Man, as a new law had just been passed in Japan stating that the act of not playing Pac-Man was an offense, punishable by a swift and unrelenting death. Miyamoto fell in love with the game, and soon it became his obsession, shunning both friends and family alike.
Soon, however, tragedy struck - The Pac-Man machine was replaced by Dragon’s Lair. Miyamoto was crushed - Not only was his new obsession suddenly torn away from him, but no matter how hard he tried, he could never get past that damn Lizard King sequence. Angry and alone, Miyamoto became a raging alchoholic, ranting to anyone who was willing to listen about small animals only he could see, he would often tear each other apart in bloody fights to the death while Miyamoto watched. Soon he sobered up, however, and set out to accomplish his life-long goal - To start a video game company. This honestly wasn’t his goal, but the folks at the Mental Institution wouldn’t let him go until he claimed to have a goal. Miyamoto began saving up the spare-change that he found in the pockets of his clothes, and the pockets of any other pants he found that were carelessly left unattended. By Winter he had enough to start the company, which he named Squaresoft.
Squaresoft started out small, as most new companies do. The staff mostly consisted of Masashi Miyamoto himself, a blow-up doll that he had found in his father’s closet last year, and his dog, Moogle. For years they struggled in vain to develop a ground-breaking title, to no avail. However, eventually their struggles paid off when they teamed up with Nintendo to release one of their most beloved and well-known game - Rad Racer. Suddenly, Squaresoft was elevated to Superstardom, and Miyamoto began sweeping changes. The company was moved out of his parent’s garage and into a condemed office building next door. The blow-up doll, which had popped a year earlier, was promoted to Vice President, while Moogle was in charge of marketing. Miyamoto also was able to hire a small team of new employees, most of whom were just drinking buddies that he used to know who only used company funds to buy drugs and cheap hookers. One of the employees was famous for telling long winded stories while taking acid - Unfortunately, one day, he overdosed in mid-story and fell over dead. While looking over his corpse, Miyamoto slowly shook his head and told the other members of Squaresoft, “That truely was his final fantasy.” After the funeral, Miyamoto vowed to concentrate on making a game based on the employee’s stories to honor him, and after only 3 months, Final Fantasy was created.
Unfortunately, Nintendo was vehemently opposed to the release of the game, and demanded that Square went back and retooled the game for the NES audience. The original Final Fantasy, an engaging and heartwarming story about a trio of hookers who would travel about the world in their flying Whoreship, was deemed far too racy for Nintendo’s standards, who had a strict one-hooker limit for their games. Much later in it’s career, Squaresoft would finally release Final Fantasy with it’s original storyline in tact along with improved graphics under the new title, Final Fantasy X-2. After making the game more ‘Kid-Friendly’ (which also involved changing the bloody creatures Miyamoto often saw in his drunken hallucinations to cute little creatures he named after his dog), Miyamoto released the new Final Fantasy, and Squaresoft’s popularity grew even larger.
For many years, Squaresoft continued to follow it’s sucessful routine of game making, and became the juggernaut of game developing that it is today. However, in the late 90’s Square saw it’s popularity begin to wane once more. The response to Final Fantasy VIII wasn’t as positive as they had liked, nowhere near the mind-boggling sales of FFVII. Desperate, a now older and wiser Miyamoto turned to the easiest way of communicating with the series’ fans - The internet. After spending countless exhausting hours looking over ever Message Board, Newsgroup and Fansite he could, Miyamoto came across a startling discovery - Over 95 Percent of the hard-core Final Fantasy fans were furries. Miyamoto began to investigate ‘furries’ further, and after only two minutes Miyamoto found his first Final Fantasy Furry Slash site. Legends say that his following scream can still be heard to this day. Immediantly afterwards he went into a deep depression, locking the door to his room and refusing to let anyone else inside. A week later he finally emerged fully nude, his eyes wide and blood-shot, and announced he had the game to save Square and appeal to the fans. This game was Final Fantasy IX, and went on to become one of the most best-selling videogames of all time. Ever since then, the Unholy pact between Squaresoft and Furries has been set in stone.
Infact, over the recent years, this bond has become even closer - Squaresoft acknowledges the fact that Furries never leave their rooms except to participate in Conventions, and are constantly online, so they released the MMO Final Fantasy XI. Furries love to masturbate to Disney icons, so Square released Kingdom Hearts.Whenever the small amount of fans who don’t consider themselves ‘Furry’ complain too much, Square will release a game like Xenosaga, where they would replace the over-abundance of furry animals with symbolry (Which is made obvious by the fact that throughout the entire game there is always atleast one broken Cross or burning Bible, and also the way that every enemy in the game is named Jesus). Some hypothesis that Square has really stopped caring about the fans, an argument brought up since the instruction manual for Front Mission 4 is simply ‘Fuck You, Gamers’ written over and over again, and signed by Miyamoto himself on the final page. Despite this, people continue to buy Square’s games like rabid cracks addicts desperate for a hit, ensuring Square’s place in the gaming community won’t be dispruted any time soon.
You know, you’d think as a furry, I’d feel some sort of outrage or crap. But then i think, “what the hell… he’s right, anyway.” So good story.