Final Fantasy VIII is the eighth installment in the Final Fantasy series. It was directed by Yoshinori Kitase, written by Kitase and Kazushige Nojima, and produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Shinji Hashimoto. The game is the second Final Fantasy that was developed for both PlayStation and PC. It was made available as a PSone Classic over the Japanese PlayStation Network on September 24, 2009, the North American PlayStation Network on December 18, 2009 and the European PlayStation Network on February 4, 2010.
Thirteen weeks after its release, Final Fantasy VIII had earned more than $50 million from sales in the United States, making it the fastest selling Final Fantasy title. Additionally, Final Fantasy VIII was voted the 22nd-best game of all time by readers of the Japanese magazine Famitsu. Final Fantasy VIII went on to become one of the best-selling games in the Final Fantasy series with worldwide sales of over 8.15 million by March 31st, 2003.
Final Fantasy VIII is a departure from many traditional standards of the Final Fantasy series. It is the first game in the series to consistently use realistically proportioned characters, the first to feature a vocal piece as its theme music, and one of the only titles to deviate from the series' traditional means of increasing a character's power via leveling (although levels are not completely abandoned as they were in Final Fantasy II). In addition, it does not have a Magic Point-based system for spell-casting. Instead, magic is collected, drawn, and created from monsters and objects encountered throughout the game, and is used to power up the characters via the Junction System.
- http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VIII
Fri Jun 18, 2010 12:38 am