Final Fantasy 4 Nearly Skipped to 5 Just to Beat Dragon

"The CEO at the time stated that we would skip 4 and go straight to 5 to beat Dragon Quest."

That's Final Fantasy 4 lead designer Takashi Tokita, casually revealing in an interview on Final Fantasy's official website that one of the most beloved JRPGs ever made nearly didn't exist under its own name. Not because of creative differences, budget problems, or development hell. Because someone in a boardroom thought numbering was a competitive sport.

The context is almost too petty to believe. Dragon Quest launched a full year before the original Final Fantasy in Japan, and through the NES era, Square was perpetually one step behind its rival franchise in the numbering race. Both series had released three entries on the NES. When the Super Famicom arrived, Final Fantasy beat Dragon Quest to the new hardware, and suddenly the two franchises were tied at four titles each. Square's leadership saw an opening.

Numbering as Warfare

Tokita, who had worked on Final Fantasy 3 before stepping up to lead the fourth entry, described the generational leap as a chance to pull ahead. "It felt like we were constantly trying to catch up," he explained. "But FF was released for the SNES first, and while that came with its own pressures, it was also a chance to pull ahead since both series were tied with four titles each."

That's when the conversation apparently turned absurd. Fellow series lead Yoshinori Kitase brought up the memory during the same interview: "Wasn't there talk of skipping 4 and making 5 instead?" Tokita confirmed it. The plan, floated by Square's CEO, was to simply skip the number 4 and release what we know as Final Fantasy 4 under the title Final Fantasy 5. The game itself wouldn't change. Just the number on the box. The goal was purely to claim a higher entry count than Dragon Quest before Dragon Quest 5 could launch.

Kitase's reaction? He called it "kind of a brilliant idea."

I love that two of the most respected names in JRPG history are sitting in an interview in 2026, looking back at this scheme with genuine admiration rather than embarrassment. The rivalry between Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest inside Square (and later Square Enix, after the merger with Enix, Dragon Quest's publisher) is well-documented, but this is a level of pettiness I didn't know existed. We're not talking about rushing a game to market or poaching talent. We're talking about literally lying about how high you can count.

The irony is that Square actually did play fast and loose with Final Fantasy numbering, just not in the way the CEO proposed. When Final Fantasy 4 launched in North America, it was rebranded as Final Fantasy 2, because the actual second and third entries had never been localised. Final Fantasy 6 became Final Fantasy 3 in the West. The series' numbering didn't sync up globally until Final Fantasy 7 in 1997. So the company clearly had no problem confusing players with creative arithmetic when it suited them.

Tokita framed the whole episode as part of a broader shift in how games were marketed during the early '90s. "Game development was certainly changing," he said. "But the way games were being promoted was changing as well." Promotional stunts, brand positioning, console war posturing: all of it was accelerating as the industry moved from 8-bit to 16-bit. Skipping a number to flex on your rival franchise would have fit right in with the era's anything-goes marketing culture.

What makes this story stick with me is how close it came to actually happening. This wasn't a joke tossed out in a hallway. The CEO endorsed it. If Square had followed through, the entire Final Fantasy numbering would have shifted by one from that point forward. Final Fantasy 6, the game many fans consider the series' peak on SNES, would have been Final Fantasy 7. The actual Final Fantasy 7, the game that redefined the entire genre, would have been Final Fantasy 8. Every conversation about the franchise's history would sound slightly wrong.

All because someone wanted to have a bigger number than Dragon Quest on a store shelf in 1991.

The interview comes during a busy stretch for Square Enix's flagship franchise. Final Fantasy X just hit its 25th anniversary, with Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster arriving on Switch 2 on July 23 at £44.99. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 14 Mobile is shutting down in China on September 30, with its planned global launch cancelled entirely. Square Enix has plenty to celebrate and plenty to answer for right now, but at least it can say it made the right call keeping the number 4.