In an interview looking back on the development of early Final Fantasy and Mana games, Square Enix veterans Hiromichi Tanaka, Kouichi Ishii, and Yoshinori Kitase discussed the development of these franchises and working for Square during its illustrious SNES era, while also sharing the similarities between developing games in that era and doing so in today’s modern, increasingly AI-driven world of game development.

The interview, conducted by Famitsu to mark the 35th anniversary of the Mana series, saw the developers reminisce about their early work. Kitase, notably, directed Chrono Trigger, numerous Final Fantasy games including VII, VIII, and X on PS1 and PS2, and was also one of the producers on the original Kingdom Hearts.

Secret of Mana was originally planned to be a game for Nintendo’s canceled CD add-on for the SNES, with character designs by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, they said, before it was reimagined as a standard SNES game. Toriyama did not end up working on it, but did work on Chrono Trigger, which was spun off after this shift in Secret of Mana‘s development. This turbulence during development, along with Nintendo’s decision to not shift to discs for Nintendo 64, led to the decision to turn Final Fantasy VII into a PlayStation exclusive.

The gang says the fact that back then, games required smaller teams and took less time to be made than they do today gave them the flexibility to make many shifts in the development of a game.

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