Final Fantasy VII

Aerith Gainsborough — spelled Aeris Gainsborough in the English releases of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics — is a player... character in Square's role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII. She was designed by Tetsuya Nomura with influence from Yoshinori Kitase, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yoshitaka Amano. In Final Fantasy VII, Aeris is a 22-year-old woman who joins AVALANCHE. As the story progresses, AVALANCHE begin to pursue the antagonist Sephiroth, and the player learns that Aeris is a Cetra, or "Ancient", one of the planet's oldest races. Aerith has also appeared in the later-released Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts series. Her voice actors are Maaya Sakamoto in the Japanese versions of the Kingdom Hearts series and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, singer and actress Mandy Moore in the English version of Kingdom Hearts, actress Mena Suvari in the English versions of Kingdom Hearts II and Advent Children, and Andrea Bowen in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Aerith and the events surrounding her death in Final Fantasy VII have met with an overall positive reception from critics and fans.
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Zack Fair is a fictional character from the Final Fantasy series by Square Enix. He first appeared as a non-player character in the role-playing... video game Final Fantasy VII. In the story, Zack is a late member from the paramilitary organization SOLDIER developed by the megacorporation Shinra Electric Power Company. During the game, he is revealed to have been Aerith Gainsborough's first boyfriend, as well as a friend of Cloud Strife. Zack ultimately died protecting Cloud from Shinra's army after escaping from imprisonment and human experimentation. He is the second owner of the Buster Sword , and wielded it before Cloud. Zack also appears in the titles from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII—which are prequels and sequels from the original game— most notably in the prequel Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, where he acts as the protagonist. Zack originally was not meant to appear in Final Fantasy VII, and was created by scenario writer Kazushige Nojima when he wanted to bring mysteries to the title. He was designed by Tetsuya Nomura and his name derived from "fair weather", to contrast with Cloud Strife's name.
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Sephiroth is a fictional character in the role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII developed by Square. He is introduced there as the main... antagonist. Character designer Tetsuya Nomura wanted his role in the story to be different from the other Final Fantasy villains while his design is intended to contrast directly with that of the main character, Cloud Strife. His Japanese voice actor is Toshiyuki Morikawa; in English, he was first voiced by Lance Bass in Kingdom Hearts and by George Newbern in all his subsequent appearances. In Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth is the result of an experiment by the mega-corporation Shinra, in which they used cells from the extraterrestrial lifeform Jenova. After discovering this, Sephiroth decides to become a god to take control of the planet; Cloud and the game's other protagonists choose to stop him. Sephiroth's role in the story as well as his background are expanded in the titles from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Additionally, he appears as a boss character in the Kingdom Hearts series, and other video games developed by the same company.
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is a playable character in the RPG Final Fantasy VII. He is notable for being a non-humanoid party member: resembling a red lion or dog, possibly... based on a manticore. Born with the name "Nanaki" he believes himself to be the last of a race sworn to protect their home of Cosmo Canyon with their very lives. Despite his appearance and somewhat aloof personality, he is actually an adolescent by his species' standards, possessed as they are of incredible longevity. Nanaki believed that his father, Seto, had been a coward who abandoned Cosmo Canyon during a war with the now-extinct Gi Tribe, leaving the tribes to fight on their own. As such, he was deeply ashamed of being Seto's son. Nanaki's "official" mate is named Dinne. They were mated in a special ceremony seen in "Before Crisis" at Cosmo Canyon. She secluded herself in a spiritual 2-year meditation, which is why she was not seen in FFVII. When the Shinra Company's Turks arrive at Cosmo Canyon, Nanaki is captured and taken to Shinra's headquarters, where Professor Hojo referred to him by the codename "Red XIII" during his experiments. The nickname stuck when he joined Cloud Strife's party in Final Fantasy VII.
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Tetsuya Nomura is a Japanese video game director and character designer working for Square Enix , best known for his work on both the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series. Nomura was born in Kōchi, Japan. When he was a young man, he graduated from vocational school with a degree in Graphic Design. In the early 1990s, Square hired him to work as a debugger for Final Fantasy IV and following it as a monster designer for Final Fantasy V... and then as the graphic director in charge of monster designs for Final Fantasy VI. Nomura's most notable work came in 1995, when Square asked him to be the character designer for Final Fantasy VII to replace Yoshitaka Amano. It was a critical and commercial success. In 1998, he worked on both Parasite Eve & Brave Fencer Musashi. In 1997, Nomura worked on Final Fantasy VIII, a game that achieved commercial success, where he returned as the character designer.
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Yoshinori Kitase is a Japanese game producer and former game director that has been working for Square Enix since April 1, 1990. He is mostly known for his work on the role-playing video game series Final Fantasy. He currently serves as the producer of the Final Fantasy games developed by Square Enix 1st Production Department. Kitase wanted to become a film director after seeing the movie Star Wars at the age of 12, when it was released in... Japan. After earning a degree in cinema from the Nihon University College of Art, he worked for a small animation studio, producing animated cartoons for commercials and television programs. In 1990, after one year of employment, he decided to join the video game company Square, despite having no computer knowledge. Kitase is best known as the director of Final Fantasy VI , Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy VIII. Kitase described his first ten years of work at Square as that of an "event scripter", directing the characters' movements and expressions on the game screen as well as setting the timings and music transitions.
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Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese video game composer, best known for scoring the majority of titles in the Final Fantasy series. He is considered as one of the most famous and respected composers in the video game community. Uematsu, a self-taught musician, began playing the piano at the age of eleven or twelve, with Elton John as his biggest influence. Uematsu joined Square in 1986, where he met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. They have... worked together on many video game titles, most notably the games in the Final Fantasy series. After nearly 20 years in the company, he left Square Enix in 2004 to found his own company called Smile Please, and the music production company Dog Ear Records. He has since composed music as a freelancer for video games primarily developed by Square Enix and Sakaguchi's development studio Mistwalker. Soundtracks and arranged albums of Uematsu's game scores have been released. Pieces from his video game works have been performed in Final Fantasy concerts. He has worked with Grammy Award-winning conductor Arnie Roth on several of these concerts.
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Eidos Interactive Ltd. , better known as Eidos, is a British video game publisher and is a label of Square Enix Europe. As an independent company, Eidos plc was headquartered in the Wimbledon Bridge House in Wimbledon, London Borough of Merton. The company maintains offices all around the world,... including the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Australia and Japan. Its best-known game series include Tomb Raider, Hitman, Commandos, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, Thief, TimeSplitters, and Fear Effect. Eidos officially became part of Square Enix on 22 April 2009. Following a reorganization of the company, Eidos was merged with Square Enix's European operations into Square Enix Europe. The Eidos brand currently lives through the development studio Eidos Montréal, and is also used as a label for games developed by former Eidos-owned developers like Crystal Dynamics and IO Interactive. Eidos plc, later to become the parent company of Eidos Interactive, was founded in 1990 as a company specialising in video compression and non-linear editing systems, particularly for Acorn Archimedes computers, and floated on the London Stock Exchange.
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Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. is a major video game company specializing in a variety of areas in the video game industry, and is a wholly owned subsidiary and part of the Consumer Products & Services Group of Sony. The company was established on November 16, 1993 in Tokyo, Japan, prior to... the launch of the original PlayStation video game system. Sony Computer Entertainment handles the research & development, production, and sales of both hardware and software for the PlayStation line of handheld and home console video game systems. It is also a developer and publisher of video game titles and is composed of several subsidiaries covering the company's biggest markets: North America, Europe and Asia. The North American operations, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, were established in May 1994 as a division of Sony Electronic Publishing. They were located in Foster City and headed by Steve Race. In the months prior to the release of PlayStation in Western markets, the operations were restructured: All videogame marketing from Sony Imagesoft was folded into SCEA in July 1995, with most affected employees transferred from Santa Monica to Foster City.
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Square Co., Ltd. was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix. Squaresoft was also a brand name used by Square to refer to their games, and is often used incorrectly to refer to the company itself.... Square was founded in Yokohama in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto after he graduated from Waseda, one of Japan's top universities. Back then, Square was a computer game software division of Den-Yu-Sha, a power line construction company owned by Miyamoto's father. While at the time game development was usually conducted by only one programmer, Miyamoto believed that it would be more efficient to have graphic designers, programmers and professional story writers working together on common projects. Square's first two titles were The Death Trap and its sequel Will: The Death Trap II, both designed by part-time employee Hironobu Sakaguchi and released on the NEC PC-8801.
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Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. TYO: 9684 is a Japanese video game publisher and distribution company best known for its role-playing video game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series. Its headquarters are located in the... Shinjuku Bunka Quint Building in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo. The original Square Enix was formed as the result of a merger between Square and Enix. The merger occurred on April 1, 2003, with Square stockholders receiving 0.85 shares of stock in the new company compared to Enix stockholders receiving a one-to-one trade. Enix was the surviving company of the merger. At the time, 80% of Square Enix staff were made up of former Square Co. employees. As part of the merger, many of the top officials within Square Co. assumed the leadership roles in the new corporate hierarchy, including president Yoichi Wada, who was appointed president of the corporation. The original founder of Enix, Yasuhiro Fukushima, is currently the honorary chairman and largest shareholder of the corporation.
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