Square was given unprecedented access to the Disney vault and while the company wasn’t given too many restrictions, the developer still tried to ensure that everything in each of the Disney worlds felt like it fit with the already established guidelines for those worlds created by the House of Mouse. Development began in February 2000 with Hashimoto serving as producer and Tetsuya Nomura, the lead character designer from Final Fantasy VII as director. The random meeting gave Hashimoto the opportunity he needed to present Square’s idea directly to Disney. Square and Disney had at one time worked in the same office building in Japan.
One or both of the men remarked that perhaps only Disney had a stable of intellectual property that was as well-known worldwide as Nintendo’s.Īs fate would have it, one day Hashimoto found himself standing in an elevator next to a top executive from Disney. The company decided to get started on its own project but the two lamented the fact that one of the reasons the Mario game had been so successful is that the Italian plumber was already a well-established character. Shinji Hashimoto, a Square game producer, had been discussing the possibility of creating an open world game like Super Mario 64, with Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy. Have you ever heard the old adage about having an “elevator speech” to explain your big book or movie idea? The concept is, if you randomly bumped into a high-ranking executive in an elevator who could turn your dream into a reality, would you be able to effectively communicate your idea in the time it takes to go from the ground floor to the top of the building? Looking back, it appears that at least one Square executive had the concept down pat.
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