E3 is best remembered for its glitzy press conferences, where big publishers put their best feet forward as they showcase their games to massive audiences online. But it wasn't always that way. Just look at when Square turned the much-anticipated US reveal of Final Fantasy 8 into a desperately awkward stalling match.
In 1998, Square was riding high on the success of Final Fantasy 7, a game which had proven a hit even in North America, where JRPGs had historically been a niche genre. At the time, Square had mostly partnered with Sony to publish its PlayStation titles, but that was about to change with the formation of Square Electronic Arts.
As the name suggests, this would be a joint venture between Square and EA to help bring the Japanese company's games to market in North America. (Another company, Electronic Arts Square, would do the same for EA's games in Japan.) At E3 1998, they detailed this partnership in front of journalists, highlighting titles like Parasite Eve, Xenogears, and yes, Final Fantasy 8 as among the first to be published by Square Electronic Arts.
That press conference was not meant to be seen by the public, but an attendee by the name of Anthony Parisi happened to be there, filming with a camcorder. Parisi's tape – alongside an absolute treasure trove of other materials related to E3 – was recently published as part of the Video Game History Foundation's digital archive, giving us what the group calls "possibly the only surviving video of the US debut of Final Fantasy VIII."
It sounds momentous, but if you follow the link above, scroll to the 57:19 mark in the video, and watch the whole 35-minute press conference for yourself, you'll find that it feels like anything but a big deal.
A handful of EA and Square reps sit down behind an innocuous table and simply tell members of the media about what they plan to do. It is a press conference in the most traditional sense, and the exact kind of thing E3 was for before the livestreaming era.
Eventually, the execs run down the games they're showing at E3 and, alongside the hands-on demos, promise "a preview of Final Fantasy 8." In the video, we hear someone near the camera quietly whisper, "Nice."
A Square rep politely asks attendees to refrain from filming this preview, but thankfully, this camera operator chooses to outright ignore that request, pointing the camera directly at the projector screen.
Yes! Anthony Parisi's tape from E3 1998 has possibly the only surviving video of the US debut of Final Fantasy VIII, including six full minutes of the Squaresoft staff fumbling with the projector trying to get the trailer to play archive.gamehistory.org/item/3996212...
— @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social (@gamehistoryorg.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-24T20:17:54.786Z
Except the screen remains blank. Audio from this mystery trailer begins to play several times, but video never accompanies it. Minutes pass. It's unclear exactly how many minutes pass, because there's a cut in the middle of the footage. When we come back, Square and EA are setting up to take questions from the audience in a seemingly impromptu Q&A session as others continue to try getting the projector running. At one point, the microphones cut out too.
This keeps happening for at least seven minutes in front of a crowd increasingly restless to see Final Fantasy 8 – it's probably even longer, given the jump in the footage. At long last, the lights dim, and the video begins to play… completely without audio. The crowd gets one last laugh in before they finally get to see the trailer, complete with soundtrack, debuting about a minute of impressive CG footage featuring the soon-to-be beloved protagonist, Squall.
It's all a fun reminder of what the old E3 was: an event for publishers to show their upcoming products to retail buyers and members of the media. E3's more public face, where these "press conferences" turned into high-production events broadcast for gamers around the world, wouldn't really get underway until the mid-'00s.
There's one more detail from this press conference I want to highlight – one that I found pretty notable given the constant mass layoffs happening around the game industry, many of which are directly tied to major publishers overspending on mergers and acquisitions with other studios. The partnership between EA and Square, it seems, was intended to be very different.
"As opposed to many joint ventures, this one will actually create jobs, as opposed to reduce jobs in the industry," then EA president John Riccitiello argued, which is a downright stunning thing to hear a video game executive say now, nearly three decades later. "This is not an efficiency proposition, this is an effectiveness proposition. This is going to build this industry, and build the businesses of Square and EA."
Of course, Riccitiello was leading EA when it would shut down multiple studios and lay off thousands of employees through the late '00s, so I guess not all joint ventures are created equal. Square Electronic Arts would disappear after the Square Enix merger, but not before bringing us North American players some of the best JRPGs of all time.
This is our ranking of the best Final Fantasy games of all time.
