is a 1990 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Family Computer. The third installment in the Final Fantasy series, it follows four orphans from the village of Ur who are chosen by the world's crystals to defeat a great evil and return balance to the world. The gameplay returns to the traditional combat system of the original game, and adds a job system allowing players to switch between character classes with unique abilities.

Development of Final Fantasy III was handled by multiple series veterans including director Hironobu Sakaguchi, designers Hiromichi Tanaka and Kazuhiko Aoki, writer Kenji Terada, composer Nobuo Uematsu, and programmer Nasir Gebelli in his final contribution to the series. Production was a struggle due to data management, and new elements were added to encourage player experimentation. The artwork was a collaborative effort between Koichi Ishii as character and job designer, Yoshitaka Amano as monster designer, and Kazuko Shibuya as main sprite artist. When it completed development, it was described as one of the largest games on the system.

Upon its release in Japan, the game sold 1.4 million copies, and saw generally positive reviews, with most of the praise going to its job system. While ported to multiple platforms in later years, the original was not released outside Japan until 2021. A remake for the WonderSwan Color was planned but ultimately cancelled, while a 3D remake for the Nintendo DS was released internationally in 2006. The game saw the introduction of several recurring elements including a job system, summoned monsters and the Moogle. Terada also adapted it into a manga, and its characters and settings made appearances in later Final Fantasy titles.

Gameplay

left|thumb|alt=display showing monster and character sprites on top of screen, text boxes on bottom|A battle encounter in Final Fantasy III; the four playable characters can equip character class-based jobs to access different abilities.

Final Fantasy III is a role-playing video game in which the player takes on the role of four unnamed warriors embarking on a mission to save their world from darkness. A vocal arrangement album entitled Final Fantasy III Yūkyū no Kaze Densetsu, or literally Final Fantasy III Legend of the Eternal Wind, contains a selection of musical tracks from the game, performed by Nobuo Uematsu and Dido, a duo composed of Michiaki Kato and Sizzle Ohtaka. The album was released by Data M in 1990 and by Polystar in 1994.

Selected tracks the game were featured in various Final Fantasy arranged music compilation albums, including Final Fantasy: Pray and Final Fantasy: Love Will Grow (with lyrical renditions performed by singer Risa Ohki), and the second and third albums from Uematsu's progressive metal group, The Black Mages. Several tracks from the game were subsequently remixed and featured in later Square or Square Enix titles, including Chocobo Racing and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon. Several pieces from the soundtrack remain popular today, and have been performed numerous times in Final Fantasy orchestral concert series such as the Tour de Japon: Music from Final Fantasy concert series and the Distant Worlds - Music from Final Fantasy series.

Release

Final Fantasy III was published by Square for the Famicom on April 27, 1990. Although Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II were both released within a year of the announcement, Final Fantasy III was ultimately delayed from its late 2001 release date, even after Bandai picked up the game's publishing rights. While a port of Final Fantasy IV was eventually released for the WonderSwan Color, Square remained silent regarding Final Fantasy III. Although the game was never formally cancelled, the official website was taken offline once production of the WonderSwan Color consoles ceased in 2002. In 2007, Hiromichi Tanaka explained in an interview that the WonderSwan Color remake had been abandoned because the size and structure of the coding of the original Famicom game was too difficult to recreate on the WonderSwan Color.

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Further reading

  • Official North American website
  • Official Japanese website