A Director and Battle System Designer for Square and Square Enix
Hiroyuki Itou began his career with Square debugging and creating sound effects for the first installments of the Final Fantasy series. He was assigned the role of Battle Designer for Final Fantasy IV, and implemented the Active Time Battle (ATB) system.
He has been responsible for many gameplay devices in the series, including the Job System in Final Fantasy V, the Junction System in Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy XII's Active Dimension Battle system. He served as co-director of Final Fantasy VI along with Yoshinori Kitase, and took on the solo role of Director for Final Fantasy IX.
Outside of Square, he has contributing to the production of Grandia II and the lesser-known Disney's Party. Along with Hiroshi Minagawa, Itou assumed the direction of Final Fantasy XII after Yasumi Matsuno left the project.
Although Yasumi Matsuno, revered visionary responsible for such exceptional works of art as Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story, remains listed as the man credited for "original concept/scenario/supervision" on Final Fantasy XII, he has apparently been very ill for a long time, which would explain 1up's earlier comments about him not being at work for a month. Read on
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