Final Fantasy

Sakaguchi has named Ultima and Wizardry as the games Final Fantasy was built from, and the split is usually described the same way: Wizardry supplied the first-person party combat, Ultima supplied the overworld. Concretely that means a top-down map walked between towns and dungeons, shops and inns, a party of classes chosen at the start, and a story told by talking to townspeople. The Japanese console RPG is these two American computer games rebuilt for a controller and a cartridge. Dragon Quest sits in the middle of this line and is not yet on the map, which a moderator may want to note.

Hironobu Sakaguchi has named Dungeons & Dragons, along with Wizardry and Ultima, as what he was working from, and the first game reads as a translation of a tabletop party into a console. Four characters with chosen classes, hit points, a spell list bought in advance and spent per level, and a random-encounter overworld that is a dungeon master rolling. Black Mage and White Mage are the cleric-and-magic-user pair with the serial numbers filed off.

The series' recurring pair Biggs and Wedge are named after Luke's fellow X-wing pilots, and have appeared under those names since Final Fantasy VI. Final Fantasy II, the second game, built its plot on a rebel alliance fighting an empire. Filed LOW: homage and a borrowed frame rather than a model for the series.