What were the biggest challenges of bringing Final Fantasy III to DS?

Tanaka: The biggest challenge for us were the graphics because 15 years ago when we released the original version we were limited by the colours we could use. Nowadays it’s so different, which is why we thought we should make new graphics for the game.

The graphics are fantastic. How did you manage to squeeze so much out of the DS hardware?

Tanaka: If you try to use both screens it will take 50 percent of the machine’s power for each screen so we decided to concentrate on one screen for some parts of the game. For example battle scenes and the dungeons only use one screen so we can use 100 percent of the machine’s power on one screen. That’s how we’ve managed to make the game look so good on the DS.

Were you pleased with the game’s reception in Japan and America and how well do you think it will be received in Europe?

Tanaka: At first we thought it would sell about 300,000 copies in Japan but we sold millions and in America it sold half a million, so that was very surprising. It is a completely new game for Europeans (Final Fantasy III was never released over here) so we’re very happy to have this opportunity to release it and we hope you enjoy it.

We want to keep Final Fantasy III very traditional but at the same time making new fans happy. The old fans want to stick to their old version and don’t want it to be changed too much but we didn’t want it to be old fashioned. So with this new hardware we tried to keep a taste of the old version but present it in a new way.

Read more of the interview at the source. There is also a little VC talk at the end of the interview.

Source: CVG