Chocobo

The Chocobo is a fictional creature from the Final Fantasy video game series made by Square and Square Enix (since 2003). The creature is a flightless bird, with a resemblance to galliformes and ratites, capable of being ridden and otherwise used by player characters during gameplay. Chocobos first appeared in Final Fantasy II and have been featured in almost all subsequent Final Fantasy games, as well as making cameo appearances in numerous other games. A spin-off Chocobo series featuring chocobos has also been created.

Character design

The chocobo was created designed by Koichi Ishii, a video game director who worked on various Final Fantasy titles. The chocobo appears remarkably similar to and was likely inspired by the prehistoric bird Gastornis. Hiromichi Tanaka has speculated that the chocobo concept may have come from Kyorochan, a character in television advertisements for Morinaga & Company's chocolate candy, which is also a bird with the call of "kweh". Morinaga has also released a tie-in product, Chocobo no Chocoball (チョコボのチョコボール, lit. "Chocobo's Chocoball"). Another likely inspiration was Hayao Miyazaki's Horseclaws, which appear in the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and the anime film of the same name, which Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi once cited as an influence on his series. In turn, Miyazaki's Horseclaws were inspired by the extinct Gastornis species.

List of Chocobo media

The Chocobo series is a collection of video games published by Square, and later by Square Enix, featuring a recurring creature from the Final Fantasy series, the Chocobo, as the protagonist. The creature is a large and normally flightless bird which first appeared in Final Fantasy II and has been featured in almost all subsequent Final Fantasy games, as well as making cameo appearances in numerous other games. The Chocobo series of video games contains over 20 titles for video game consoles, mobile phones, and online platforms. These games include installments of the Mystery Dungeon series of roguelike video games, racing games, adventure games, and minigame collections. Although the various games of the series have different game styles and are generally unrelated except by their inclusion of a Chocobo as the main character, Square Enix considers them to be a distinct series.

The first game in the series, Chocobo no Fushigina Dungeon, is a Mystery Dungeon game released in 1997, while the latest is Chocobo no Chocotto Nouen, a 2012 farming game for the GREE mobile platform. A new game in the series, Chocobo Racing 3D, was cancelled in 2013. In addition to Square and Square Enix, the games have been developed by several other companies, including h.a.n.d., Bottle Cube, and Smile-Lab. Eight albums of music from Chocobo games have been produced and published by Square Enix, DigiCube, and Toshiba EMI, and an additional album of Chocobo-related music from both the Chocobo and Final Fantasy series, Compi de Chocobo, was released in 2013.