Hello everyone, my name is Kazuhiko Aoki, and I was the event designer for Final Fantasy IX. I was responsible for bringing the characters of the game to life, as well as the different scenarios players would experience.
In honour of Final Fantasy IX’s release on PlayStation Now, I thought I’d share some of my personal memories of the game’s development.
Starting out
I was assigned to the Final Fantasy IX team from the very beginning. I’d previously worked on Final Fantasy III, IV and VII, so I was no stranger to working on the series, but one thing in particular was going to be different this time: the game was going to be made in Hawaii.
That was a big move for me – I wondered what the development environment would be like over there, for example.
However, I didn’t start working on Final Fantasy IX right away. Right before development was due to begin, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the director of the game (and original creator of the Final Fantasy series!), asked me: “How about you make Chocobo’s Dungeon 2?”
As a result, I ended up taking the development staff for that game to Hawaii with me and we made Chocobo’s Dungeon 2 there as well. Maybe some of you played it on the original PlayStation!
Once that game was complete, I joined the Final Fantasy IX team and we started working on the game together.
Looking back while moving forwards
From the very beginning, Mr. Sakaguchi said that he wanted Final Fantasy IX to be a return to our roots. Final Fantasy VII and VIII had been set in science-fiction-inspired worlds, and we wanted to go back to the fantasy style established in the earlier Final Fantasy games.



This did cause us a few issues, however. For example, we’d built up a lot of experience depicting taller characters with the two previous games, but in order to best support the fantasy atmosphere of Final Fantasy IX, we needed more stylised designs.
That meant we couldn’t rely on the techniques we’d learned – we had to essential