On April 27, 2025, FINAL FANTASY III had its 35th anniversary since the initial Japanese release in 1990.
To celebrate this milestone, we interviewed Tomoya Asano, producer of the original 3D remake released August 24, 2006, and Hiromichi Tanaka, who was involved in the development of the 3D and the original NES version. Here’s what they had to say about the 3D remake’s developmental process!
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the release of FFIII. In commemoration, we’ve invited two amazing people involved in the development of the 3D remake to speak about the process. Thank you for agreeing to the interview!
Asano: I believe the idea was first floated by Tanaka.
Tanaka: We had been talking about how we'd like to release a FINAL FANTASY title for the Nintendo DS, and though we did consider a few options, we ultimately decided on FFIII. FFI and FFII already had releases on other consoles at the time, but FFIII didn't.
Asano: When I heard we were doing a remake of FFIII, I was quite invested since that title was my own introduction to gaming. To this day, it remains one of my all-time favorites!
Tanaka: I was in charge of FFXI at the time, so it would've been difficult for me to handle the remake on my own. As such, we arranged to have someone else take the lead for the project while I'd act as back-up.
Asano: Of course, I was very eager to volunteer. There was a lot of excitement among the young producers at the time about who would ultimately take the role. (lol) I was very honored to have been allowed to take the lead in the end.
I see, so that’s how the remake project first came to be. How did you two get the ball rolling with development?
Asano: After finishing development of the Fullmetal Alchemist games, I became the producer for the FFIII 3D remake. The first thing we tackled was picking which studio to work with; eventually, we chose Matrix Software. After, I recall that Tanaka gave me a list of 10 points going over what kind of game he wanted to make. The first point on that list was to give names to the characters.
Tanaka: Oh yes, I did do that. In the original version, the main characters were only known as the Warriors of Light and lacked individual names and personalities. I'd received a variety of feedback about that at the time, and while it wasn't something that bothered me, FFIV and on had a fully named cast of characters with their own individual stories. If we were going to make a remake, I thought it would be good to include that as a core aspect of what makes a FINAL FANTASY title.
The decision to give the main characters distinct names and personalities was one of the biggest changes between the original and the remake. I take this to mean that this was decided at the very beginning, then?
Tanaka: Yes, I would say so. The Nintendo DS was the latest hardware at the time, so we really wanted to create a remake of FFIII that would take full advantage of what it could do, including newly added characterization.
Asano: In the 10 points given to me, there were also a few notes regarding how to modify the game for a 3D environment. Tanaka introduced me to Ryosuke Aiba (art director of FFXI among other titles) who created multiple drafts, laying out backdrops in a way that would show dimensional depth and things like that. It was a little difficult for me to grasp from the drafts alone, but once Matrix Software brought them to life, I finally saw the vision and I was quite amazed. Parts of what we learned from that were used as the foundation for our later HD-2D works, as well.
Tanaka: For art direction, we had Akihiko Yoshida (character designer of works such as FF Tactics and FFXII) taking the lead.
Asano: The design proposals for the in-game characters were made by Aiba. Yoshida joined the team a little while after and was in charge of creating artwork for the characters and general illustrations. We also enlisted Aiba to give us some enlightening lectures on graphic design.
Who came up with the names for Luneth and the rest of the protagonists?
Asano: That would be Tanaka. I recall he wanted to go for something unique, the sort of names that you could search for and maybe get 10 hits, tops, at the time.
Tanaka: Even now, I consider this my own golden rule when naming things for projects I'm in charge of. That being said, I don't think it was all me—I remember proposals for a few other names...
Asano: I don't think those were from me. I received those from you, Tanaka.
Tanaka: Really? I didn't know that I had such a particular naming style. (lol)
The characters being named and having their own stories must've made a difference in the setting and backstories, especially early in development. Who came up with those?
Asano: I worked with the writers to oversee the scenario development. However, I don't think there's actually that much backstory to these characters.
Tanaka: In the NES version, you took control of the four protagonists and dove into the main story as soon as the game booted. However, now that they had names, there was a need to introduce them properly.
Asano: I was putting my all into it then. (lol) Though the remake did give them new characterization, it was just building on top of the original, so it wasn't a massive change in direction. If we tried to make it the central point of the remake, it'd have changed the entire story.
Tanaka: It mostly affected the start and finish. (lol)
Asano: The introduction and the ending, basically. (lol)
Tanaka: An idea we had that we scrapped was changing conversational dialogue depending on the favorability of the protagonists. We ended up scrapping it as a mechanic, though we did feel that dialogue changes quite a bit when you take the player's feelings into account.
What parts about the game's system were you particular about in the remake?
Asano: The job system was a core part of FFIII. In balancing the game for the remake, we focused a lot on trying to finetune the jobs so none had any glaring strengths or weaknesses that would make it so certain jobs go unused. We tried to make it so all of them would be equally viable up until the end. When Tanaka checked it, he responded, "Why not let strong jobs just be strong?"
Tanaka: I was in charge of FFXI at the time which had many discussions regarding job strengths and weaknesses. The balancing is definitely important for an online game, but since this was an offline game, I felt that rebuilding your team entirely via job changes could be its own kind of fun.
With the shift to 3D, did any of your impressions change about the game, or were there any points you kept in mind during development?
Tanaka: With the DS generation, the hardware design was made with 3-dimensional graphics in mind, so it felt right to have our characters come to life in 3D as well. Remaking the game in a pixel art style wasn't even a thought we had.
Asano: Reflecting on the process, we put quite a lot of thought into developing that remake. The UI was constructed very precisely to convey a lot of information.
Tanaka: It's very indicative of Aiba's style.
Asano: We had a few problems along the way too, of course. In the original version, enemy mobs could appear in groups of six or even up to eight. With the remake though, I remember we couldn’t even fit six and panicked a little bit over that. (lol)
How did you resolve that, ultimately?
Asano: Smaller enemies could appear in groups of up to six as intended, but you can’t just make something fit if it doesn’t. This goes back a little bit to the balancing talk from earlier, but we made a work-around by adjusting the strength of some of the enemies. We had some extra assistance from Kazuhiko Aoki (in charge of creating data parameters and naming monsters in the original FFIII) here. He looked over the numbers very meticulously, suggesting that we raise a monster's stats by just one more point, things like that. I learned that can really make a big difference. There was also the issue with hit counts.
Tanaka: This was a persistent issue since FFI of the NES era, but if something hits with an attack more than once in battle, the damage dealt would go up exponentially. In hindsight, we should've put more thought into the formula. (lol)
Asano: It seems pretty obvious that if something hits twice, the damage dealt is double; if something hits three times, then it should be 1.5x, but in the early stages, it resulted in a pretty wide discrepancy in damage. (lol)
Tanaka: Akitoshi Kawazu, who was a new employee at the time, had been a member of a board game club during university. The basic design of battles was based on some ideas we gleaned off him regarding how dice are used in board games.
Asano: Of course, we adjusted this with the remake under Aoki's supervision as well. (lol)
Tanaka: When Aoki was making the data parameters for enemies in the original FFIII, the idea was that as enemies got stronger, their HP and defense would both increase, which ended up making them too tank-y. We had it changed so that defense would remain the same and only HP would go up. We hoped this change would ease the difficulty for players and make these encounters feel more satisfying to overcome.
Asano: Aoki helped us adjust the numbers very precisely for the remake as well. He has our gratitude.
Asano, how did you find working alongside these different developers, like Tanaka and the rest?
Asano: Naturally I had connections from working with external development studios, but that was actually my first time working with developers within our company. I learned a lot from the experience. I was impressed by Aiba's drafts and Yoshida's designs, and Aoki's talent with numbers. Of course, I looked over them myself and gave my opinions when certain parameters seemed too strong or could be stronger, but working closely with him really opened my eyes to the detailed process that makes it all work.
Were there any incidents that left a lasting impression on you during the development process?
Asano: Tanaka, what do you think? I imagine I came off as a strange young man who came out of nowhere to corner you with questions. (lol)
Tanaka: I knew I wouldn't be able to do it all on my own, so I made that list of 10 points and handed them over with some other resources. I passed on all my thoughts at the time, so I was ready to leave the rest to you.
Asano: We had a long discussion at the beginning of development, where we went over stuff like "this is how we want to do that," or "this has to be in this way," etc.
Tanaka: We discussed character names and things like the Crystal Tower save point, yes. Any bits I wasn't sure on, I checked with him.
Asano: We really went back and forth on that save point up until the end...only to do away with it altogether. (lol)
We've brought up a few of your memories so far, but what are some things that you still carry with you to this day after working on the FFIII remake?
Tanaka: I still talk to Asano, especially for events like these, and still work alongside many people who were involved with the remake. It really brought me together with some wonderful people.
Asano: In getting to work on my beloved FFIII, I learned a lot about what goes into creating games. I consider the FFIII remake a core part of my resume. After, I went on to be involved in more FF titles using the DS hardware, such as FFIV's 3D remake and FINAL FANTASY: The 4 Heroes of Light. All that experience culminated in the creation of Bravely Default, which I consider the pinnacle of DS gaming. I'm realizing now that I always make games with abilities and switching jobs. (lol)
Tanaka: I had wanted to include a job system back in the days of the original FFIII. However, FFXI got a support job system around that time, which taught me that balancing between the different jobs is actually very difficult.
Asano: As a child, I loved the job system in FFIII.
Tanaka: Many "job" style systems at the time were quite difficult to play, since your experience up to that point gets reset and you'd have to do it all over again from level 1. I wanted those levels to carry over, and therefore be easier on the user.
Asano: My formative experience with games was one with the job system. I think that still affects how I create games even to this day.
And with that, would you mind giving the readers an idea of what you have going on and a final parting message?
Tanaka: Just like when I was working on FFIII remake, I'm still working with young creators to create games. I'll keep working hard to deliver something to our fans again soon!
Asano: BRAVELY DEFAULT FLYING FAIRY HD Remaster, the culmination of all my lessons learned through FFIII (3D Remake), is now available for the Switch 2. Please think fondly of FFIII as you play it! It has a job system too!
Thank you both so much for your time!
BRAVELY DEFAULT FLYING FAIRY HD Remaster is now available to rave reviews!
Official site: https://www.square-enix-games.com/games/bravely-default-flying-fairy-hd-remaster
FINAL FANTASY III (3D REMAKE) is on 50% off sale until 8/16!
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/final-fantasy-iii-3d-remake/id424591347
App Store (iPad): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/final-fantasy-iii-for-ipad-3d/id430823968
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.square_enix.android_googleplay.FFIII_GP
Now's your chance to play the famed third installment in the series: FINAL FANTASY III!
