Akitoshi Kawazu
Akitoshi Kawazu (河津 秋敏, Kawazu Akitoshi, born November 5, 1962) is a Japanese game producer and game designer. He is best known for his work on Final Fantasy and SaGa franchise of role-playing video games.
Biography
Joining Square
Kawazu studied ceramics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Kawazu was invited by a friend to work at the gaming magazine published by Softbank called "Beep". He stated that he had always been interested in board games, and after a time joined Square Co. in 1985.
Early years
His first game at Square Co. was Rad Racer, creating the ending sequence showing a player's accomplishments.
Final Fantasy
He and Hironobu Sakaguchi had wanted to make a role playing game for a long time, and were fans of Wizardry and Ultima, but were concerned it would not sell. After the success in Japan of Dragon Quest, and the popular desire for an RPG proven, development began. Kawazu took over the development of the battle sequence and system, and tried to model it as much after Dungeons and Dragons as he could. Part of the development was to add western fantasy gaming rules, such as a fire monster being vulnerable to ice, which at the time were not features of Japanese gaming.
