Final Fantasy V (Boss Fight Books, #18)

When Final Fantasy V was released for the Japanese Super Famicom in 1992, the game was an instant hit, selling two million copies in the first two months alone. With its groundbreaking job system and seemingly endless character customization, FF5 appeared to be a shoe-in for North American distribution. But the game, unlike Final Fantasy IV and FF6, was dubbed -too hardcore- for a Western audience and was swapped out with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, a simplistic role-playing game tailor-made for Americans. That didn't stop a teenage Chris Kohler from tracking down Final Fantasy V. The young RPG fan got a Japanese copy of the game, used it to teach himself Japanese, and with the help of some internet companions created the first-ever comprehensive English-language FAQ of the game. As the cultural gap between the East and West shrank a little every year, the game was eventually translated into English for the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and iOS, and fans in the West have finally learned what all the fuss was about. Now the acclaimed author of the bestselling Power-Up and a longtime editor for Wired, Kohler is revisiting the game that started his career in games journalism. Based on new, original interviews with FF5's director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, as well as previously untranslated interviews with the rest of the development team, Kohler's book weaves history and criticism to examine one of the FF series's greatest and most overlooked titles.