Nintendo Company, Ltd.

Nintendo Co., Ltd. was created in September 23, 1889, as a producer of playing cards. In the 20th century, they became a video game company, and their first big console was the Nintendo Entertainment System. It became a huge success in Japan and the USA, and was later released all over the world.

From their well known games featuring the characters, Link from ', and Samus Aran of ' fame, Nintendo became a household name, and the biggest video game company of its age. Another game that was first released on the NES was the original Final Fantasy game, by a small company known as Squaresoft which became another success.

In the early 1990's, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, was released, and on it, with several new Mario and Legend of Zelda games, were the new installments in the Final Fantasy series; Final Fantasy IV (II in the US), Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI (III in the US), as well as the Squaresoft productions Chrono Trigger and the Nintendo/Square "crossover", Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, which all made Squaresoft one of the biggest names in RPGs at the time. Squaresoft left Nintendo for Sony later, and did not reconcile with Nintendo until the release of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

Today, Squaresoft, now Square Enix works together with Nintendo, and although no new installments in the main series have been released for Nintendo consoles, a lot of re-releases, especially of the Super Nintendo Final Fantasy games, have been released on the Game Boy Advance, as well as the sequels to Crystal Chronicles.

Early Beginnings with Square
During the 1980's boom of Nintendo, Square was notable for having created the racing game Rad Racer, as the library of games did not see many of said genre in its index. The game fared very well and was considered the premier racing game of the console; so much so the game was also featured as one of the three title games of the.

Although Rad Racer held good reviews, Square faced potential bankruptcy. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the designer and supervisor of Rad Racer, would then come to create the then swan song, to surprise smash hit, Final Fantasy. Nintendo played the role of publisher, having helped distribute Final Fantasy to the United States and abroad.

Magazine
Nintendo of America began publishing their own video game magazine, Nintendo Power, in 1988 as a successor to their quarterly Nintendo Fun Club newsletter. Though it began as a bi-monthly publication, it soon switched to a monthly format in May 1990 once a strong reader base had been established. Focusing entirely on games for Nintendo systems, the magazine often covered many of the first Final Fantasy titles for the NES and SNES, which could be considered the most far-reaching advertising for the series at the time. It is notable for coining the name "Peninsula of Power", a landmark from the very first game.

Some Final Fantasy games even made it onto the magazine's cover. Because of Square's new deal with Sony in the mid '90's to create games exclusively for their consoles, there is a sizable gap between cover representations until the contract expired in the early 2000's and company began producing game for Nintendo once more.

Strategy Guides
In addition to magazine coverage, Nintendo Power would sometimes publish their own Strategy Guides (later called Player's Guides) for Final Fantasy titles, usually for games they themselves published in North America, beginning with the series' inaugural game in 1990.

Nintendo published games

 * Final Fantasy - Published by NoA in America. (1990)
 * Final Fantasy Tactics Advance in America and Europe. (2003)
 * Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (2004)
 * All of the Final Fantasy GBA remakes in America and Europe. (2004-2007)