Bahamut Lagoon

• Title — Bahamut Lagoon • Developer — Square • Publisher — Square • Director — Kazushige Nojima • Producer — Tadashi Nomura • Designer — Hitoshi Sasaki • Artist — Hitoshi Sasaki • Programmer — Hiroshi Ono • Writer — Motomu Toriyama • Composer — Noriko Matsueda • Release — February 9, 1996 • Genre — Tactical role-playing • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Super Famicom

Bahamut Lagoon is a tactical role-playing game in which players take on the role of Byuu, a soldier of the kingdom of Kahna who leads a campaign against Granbelos Empire across the floating lands of Orelus. The gameplay blends 2D RPG grid-based combat with turn-based combat. Players have the ability to raise and battle dragons to fight alongside a player's other characters. A player has a squadron of four characters in combat, and players have six different squadron leaders they can choose from. Each squad leader has a dragon which can be evolved into different types by feeding it weapons, armor, accessories, and items. Feeding dragons foods they like will increase their loyalty, and food they don't like will decrease loyalty, but players can still use foods dragons do not like to make a dragon more powerful. Dragons are not controlled by the player, but are given general guidelines such as "Go!" or "Wait!".

In the world of Orelus, continents called "lagoons" float in the sky, and war is threatened when the kingdom of Kahna is invaded by the Granbelos Empire. This leads Captain Byuu of the Dragon Squad to fight to repel this invasion, but after the initial victory, Kahna is overrun, and Byuu, the game's silent protagonist, leads a continued campaign against the Granbelos Empire.

The concept for Bahamut Lagoon was created by Hitoshi Sasaki, known for his graphic design work on Final Fantasy VI, with him describing it as a game he had wanted to make for a long time. Programmer Hiroshi Ono approached Hironobu Sakaguchi with the proposal of a team of new Square developers creating their own project. Beginning development around the concept of a traditional RPG with random encounters, it shifted to its current tactical design. Sakaguchi, who was a fan of the tactical RPG genre, approved the project; it was originally titled "Final Fantasy Tactics". Production began in 1994 at Square's Development Department 6 and lasted for two years. Sasaki acted as lead designer and lead artist. The game was directed by Kazushige Nojima, who joined the company in 1994 from Data East after working as writer for the Glory of Heracles series. The producer was Tadashi Nomura. The scenario was written by Motomu Toriyama, who also joined in 1994 and took up the role as no-one had. The game's setting was inspired by Sasaki's memory of flying over the Izu Peninsula, wanting to evoke a similar feeling of a "floating lagoon". The scenario, which featured complex relationships and betrayals, was directly influenced by events in Toriyama's life. Toriyama attributed his leading role in the scenario to the team's nature as a group of newcomers. The battle system was designed by Takatsuga Nakazawa, who wanted to make the game challenging yet balanced for players, with Sasaki calling Nakazawa "brutal" with some of his trap placements. Dragon breeding was implemented during the later half of development, which influenced its design transition into a tactical RPG. Ono wanted the dragons to exist as their own creatures outside player control, hence being driven by the game's AI. An abandoned idea was dragons fighting and eating each other during battles. Sasaki also wanted the dragons not to act like party members, comparing them to pets that acted on their own. Space limitations forced a reduction in the planned character behaviour pattern.

The music was composed and arranged by Noriko Matsueda. Teruaki Sugawara acted as sound engineer, and the sound programmer was Hidenori Suzuki. Bahamut Lagoon was Matsueda's second major video game, having first co-composed the score of Front Mission with Yoko Shimomura. Matsueda wanted to create a score close to orchestral music, working within the platform's limited sound environment to create that impression through "reverb, spatiality, and balance". She also wanted music that would get players emotionally invested in the narrative, thinking of that before matching songs to in-game areas. An official soundtrack album was published by NTT Publishing on February 25, 1996.

Bahamut Lagoon was released for the Super Famicom on February 9, 1996. It was one of Square's last Super Famicom releases before they broke with Nintendo to develop for Sony's PlayStation. As with other of Square's Super Famicom titles of the time, copies were priced high due to the growing expense of cartridge production. It was re-released in the Japanese Virtual Console for Wii on September 29, 2009, and for Wii U on February 5, 2014. The Wii version was taken down with the console's Virtual Console store in 2019. The game has never been officially released outside Japan. A fan translation patch was created by a three-person team including Clyde Mandelin and released in 2002, noted as sharing many issues of translations of that era. A second notably-polished fan translation was created by Near, known for their work on Super Famicom emulators who had been working on and off on the project for over twenty years. The translation was released in 2021. The updated Bahamut Lagoon translation was the last project completed by Near before their suicide in June of that year following an online harassment campaign.