Final Fantasy is the longest swan song of all time. It was never meant to last, but now, more than two decades later, it remains the most recognizable name in role-playing games. More of an idea than a true series, it has evolved into something that a young Hironobu Sakaguchi would never recognize and almost single-handedly turned a small, struggling company into an international powerhouse. In the twenty years since it first arrived on Japanese Famicom systems, it's never once relied on nostalgia or conceded to rest on its laurels. Every new game has continued to press forward, and that's precisely what makes it one of the most interesting stories in game history.
