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Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is decluttering his files, and has recently unearthed the original 1984 pitch for his first game, drawn on graph paper with very detailed instructions on what the game entails, and cute drawings to go alongside it.
Sakaguchi shares on Twitter several images from his original pitch, all of which are hand-written on graph paper. As translated by GamesRadar+, the tweet reads, "As part of my decluttering series. 1984. The first game proposal I wrote."
As spotted by the geniuses at Automaton, the game in the plans appears to be The Death Trap, which is not only Sakaguchi's first game, but the first game released by Square. Sakaguchi worked with Square for two decades starting in 1983, with his most famous game of course being the original Final Fantasy, which launched in 1987.
断捨離こんなのでてきたシリーズ１９８４年はじめて書いたゲーム企画書#スクウェア開発室 #sakaGUCCI pic.twitter.com/FDnkrRBu3dDecember 1, 2025
The Death Trap was only released in Japan, for the popular regional PC platforms like the PC-98. Like most of the games from this era, it's an adventure game, in particular this one is text based, with input from the player like "give apple" to get a "kiss," and "kill lion with revolver." Alongside the story, there are very detailed images and maps, which were fairly innovative for the time.
It was popular enough to receive a sequel, and proved to be the first in a long line of successes for both Square and Sakaguchi. Whether you can read Japanese or not, the plans are interesting to look at, with detailed maps, drawings, and flow charts of how the game works. There are also some text input descriptions written in English to enjoy.
Sakaguchi has been sharing a lot of his plans on Twitter during the great declutter, so follow him to see more sneak peaks of video game history.
