About [undef-168795]

Seiken Densetsu: The Emergence of Excalibur was planned to be a massive 5 disk, 4 player RPG for Nintendo's Disk System that reached a stage of development that had Square confident enough to accept payments for pre-orders. But it never quite came together before financial troubles threaten to bankrupt Square in 1987. As a last magnus opus, Square published Final Fantasy before closure. Surprise, FF rescued the company from financial demise. Square was reluctant to give up Seiken Densetsu because they had spent resources setting up the intellectual property rights associated with it (and taken pre-orders). The Seiken Densetsu project was reopened, this time as an cartridge based game, due to the waning popularity of the Disk System. But other projects kept occupying their people, such as Final Fantasy II, and Final Fantasy III. At one point, the title was referred to as ファイナルファンタジーIV (Final Fantasy IV) in the press; but internally, the massive project seemed doomed, so much so, that Square slapped the name on a Final Fantasy spin-off for Gameboy, 聖剣伝説 ～ファイナルファンタジー外伝～ (Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden/Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest) that was originally named Gemma Knights. This is where the NES version of the game ends. Then came the announcement of the Super Nintendo CD-ROM add-on. Final Fantasy Gaiden did well enough for a sequel, so Seiken Densetsu: The Emergence of Excalibur was reinvigorated as a CD-ROM project. Some elements of Final Fantasy Gaiden were added to the design. Finally, the project was finished, then Super Nintendo CD-ROM venture collapsed, Seiken Densetsu was over, sort of. The game was speedily chopped down to cartridge size and published as Seiken Densetsu 2/Secret of Mana.

DOG was a cooperative venture between 7 videogame companies that developed games then published them under the Square brand. During the "ファイナルファンタジーIV" stage, all materials used the DOG Square label.