Yasumi Matsuno

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Yasumi Matsuno (松野泰己, Matsuno Yasumi^?) is a former director at Square Enix (previously called Squaresoft). He was born in 1965 and began his career at the developer Quest, where he created the Ogre Battle series of tactical roleplaying games. After leaving Quest he joined Square in 1995. His colleagues at Square Enix usually call him by his nickname "YAZZ". According to the e-mail responses from SquareEnix Information Center, Matsuno has left SquareEnix on August 31 2005, following his stepping down from directing Final Fantasy XII.

At Square, Matsuno oversaw the development of Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation. Similar in design and gameplay to Tactics Ogre, it was lauded for its highly intricate and convoluted story, in which a young and naive nobleman becomes embroiled in a civil war over the throne to the kingdom of Ivalice. The nobleman, Ramza Beoulve, must come to term with his own beliefs amidst a number of conspiracies, involving the church, Ramza's brother's, and his childhood friend Delita, and fight for what is right.

After the release of Final Fantasy Tactics Matsuno and his team began development on Vagrant Story. Smaller in scope than FFT, in Vagrant Story players took control of one Ashley Riot, a Riskbreaker of the Valendia Knights of the Peace. Here the focus is more on the protagonist's personal life and past than a world consuming conflict. Like in Final Fantasy Tactics, though, the plot has considerable depth and features a number of forces conspiring to unleash an ancient power. Vagrant Story was highly regarded by critics and has gained somewhat of a cult following since its release.

Final Fantasy XII was written and directed by Matsuno, though his official credits are listed as "Story and Concept". Although he had to bow out of XII's staff, ostensibly due to health issues, but in the opinion of many because Square Enix took him off the project and asked him to resign, he is still credited for much of the work. As a tribute to his legacy, the development team of XII included an optional boss in the game called Yazmat (a play on his aforementioned nickname, Yazumi Matsuno). In-game information about Yazmat (localized as Yiazmat in the North American version) is accompanied by a subtitle which reads, "Farewell to a Legend." Further lending credibility to the rumors surrounding Matsuno's departure from Square Enix, the moogle assigning the player the task of slaying Yazmat tells a story of how he and his moogle friends once worked with a wise leader and mentor with whom they did many wonderful things. The moogle explains that Yazmat came along and killed that master, causing them all to break up. The story can be taken as a silent protest by the developers against Square Enix's decision to terminate Matsuno and break up that Product Development Division.

Matsuno also supervised Square's PlayOnline project prior to its first beta release. He has the honor of being the director of not one, but two games to get a perfect score by Famitsu magazine, which has to date only given perfect scores to six games in its twenty-year history. Matsuno's Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII were critically acclaimed by the magazine with a 40/40 score.

One of Matsuno's trademarks is to pay homage to the rock band Queen in his works. His first game was titled Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. Both Ogre Battle and March of the Black Queen are song titles from the album Queen II. His next game was Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, Let Us Cling Together being a song from the album A Day at the Races. His game Final Fantasy Tactics had a chapter called Somebody to Love, also a song title from A Day At the Races. In the game Vagrant Story, the lead character begins the game with a sword called Fandango, which is a reference to a lyric in the song Bohemian Rhapsody, from A Night At The Opera. In Final Fantasy XII, the earth elemental summon uses an attack called "Rock You", a nod to the song We Will Rock You from the album News of the World. Rock You has been changed to "Roxxor" in the localized English game, a likely play on Internet slang.