Final Fantasy 9 event designer and Chrono Trigger producer Kazuhiko Aoki claims that it was difficult for him to get his hands on equipment to test the 2000 Final Fantasy game on PS2. He says that the then-unreleased console's CPU was considered so powerful that it may have been diverted for military use.
When I first saw Tekken Tag Tournament running on PS2 I believed that humanity had reached the peak of graphical realism. I was wrong about the graphical fidelity of Jin Kazuma's face, but I wasn't the only one to have their mind blown by the power of Sony's second generation of gaming hardware.
In an interview with Famitsu that has been translated by GamesRadar+, Aoki discusses how shipment of PS2 testing equipment was delayed as potential military uses for the CPU were considered.
Final Fantasy 9 was developed by a core team in Hawaii and information was often shared with Square's main office in Japan. Because this was the late '90s this meant that there was a lot of post between the two.
"Towards the end of my time in Hawaii, there was talk of sending me some sort of PS2 testing equipment so that I could check if FF9 would run on the PS2," Aoki recalls. "But at that time, the PS2's CPU was so overpowered there was the possibility that it would be used for military purposes, so exports were restricted."
While Aoki doesn't expand on if the military made a decision on the extreme power of the PS2, it appears that he was able to import one to the US just in time. "It took quite some time to reach us," he says. "It was a very difficult situation."
"Square had a kind of recklessness at that time": During Final Fantasy 9's development, the team moved to Hawaii without "a solid plan," and some even splashed out on themed license plates.
