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Hiromichi Tanaka, Square Enix (Transcript)
Interview by Adam Riley & Lesley Smith :: Thursday, February 8th, 2007

Last week Cubed3 posted up a brief summary of an exclusive interview with Square Enix's Vice President, Hiromichi Tanaka, whilst we waited for the audio version to come in. Now we have received said file and painstakingly transcribed it for you all, here it is word-for-word in all its glory! Want to know more about Final Fantasy III on the DS, Square Enix's thoughts on Nintendo's online system, the Chrono series, how Mana fits into the Final Fantasy world and the company's future plans? Then keep on reading, folks...

Adam Riley, Deputy Editor of Cubed3: Okay, I suppose the first question would be why was the decision made to make Final Fantasy III on the DS in such a fashion?

Hiromichi Tanaka, Vice President of Square Enix: It has been 16 years since the original version was out and between that time and today, we have had several opportunities to remake FFIII but somehow it didn't come to the actual final product. But this time we decided to really go ahead and make it. We had been considering the PS2 platform, but at the same time we got a call from Nintendo saying we're going to make this new DS platform, so would you please make FFIII for this platform? So we thought it was good timing, so we might try a port of FFIII on the DS.

Lesley Smith, Freelance Journalist: Can you tell us a bit more about your role within the game?

HT: On the original game I was working with game design and the game system, the structure of the game, for example the job system, etc, and the game's design. But this time after 16 years we had huge information from the original game, so we gave it to the company and they worked with it, but myself I worked to make sure the balance is in a good way for the new players and the old fans. So we wanted to make sure the old fans are pleased; it hasn't been changed so much because the Japanese like to keep the old taste to it. But for Europe and North America it was the first time it was released, so it is new players that are going to try this game, so we didn't want to have it in an old-fashioned way