As interesting as it is, thats actually a common misconception. It wasn’t due to facing bankruptcy and years later Sakaguchi gave a different account from his supposed last effort at making a game.
This Famitsu article details it as such because they hoped it would be abbreviated as FF because it sounded good in Japanese. Their initial name was Fighting Fantasy but that had potential trademark issues, so they settled on Final Fantasy. Apparently they also didn’t care so much about what it was and any words that abbreviated to FF would work.
I like the more recent story as it gives some certainty to the series from the beginning, but I suspect it was a mixture of both Sakaguchis possible last hurrah and wanting a “cool” name.
As interesting as it is, thats actually a common misconception. It wasn’t due to facing bankruptcy and years later Sakaguchi gave a different account from his supposed last effort at making a game.
This Famitsu article details it as such because they hoped it would be abbreviated as FF because it sounded good in Japanese. Their initial name was Fighting Fantasy but that had potential trademark issues, so they settled on Final Fantasy. Apparently they also didn’t care so much about what it was and any words that abbreviated to FF would work.
I like the more recent story as it gives some certainty to the series from the beginning, but I suspect it was a mixture of both Sakaguchis possible last hurrah and wanting a “cool” name.