Legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu says that "Square had a kind of recklessness" when it came to spending at the time of Final Fantasy 9's development, meaning that the team could move to Hawaii, despite not having a plan, and purchase cars with personalized license plates while there.
The late '90s represents Square's golden era. Between 1997 and 2000 the company developed and published banger after banger like Final Fantasy 7, Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy 8, Tactics Ogre and Vagrant Story. Riding high on this wave of hits, Uematsu believes the company became reckless with its spending.
In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Uematsu discusses how the team moved to Hawaii to develop Final Fantasy 9 based mostly on vibes. "I wonder why [the team moved to Hawaii]," Uematsu says. "Maybe [Final Fantasy creator Hironobu] Sakaguchi just wanted to live there. Square had a kind of recklessness at that time. We definitely didn't have a solid plan. There was just a 'if we go to Hawaii we can do it' type of vibe."
Square's generous spending didn't end with moving the entire development team to live in Hawaii for a year. Game artist Hideo Minaba previously showed off his Hawaiian personalized license plate, which reads 'FF9378', The '378' can be read as his name Minaba in Japanese.
Uematsu explains that Minaba wasn't the only one to splash cash on a specialized plate. "City buses were very inconvenient [in Hawaii] at the time, so everyone bought a car," Uematsu explains. "I also had the personalized license plate 'FF9.' But after that I saw that one of the American animators had the license plate 'ani-m8r', and I thought 'why did I get a license plate as simplistic as FF9?'"
The American animation staff were newly hired by Square to work on Final Fantasy 9, suggesting that Square was giving even their most recent employees the big bucks. In a time when working in the gaming industry can feel all doom and gloom, it's nice to hear about a more well compensated era.
