Square Co., Ltd. was a Japanese video game development studio and publisher. It was founded in 1986 by Masafumi Miyamoto, who spun off part of his father's electronics company Den-Yu-Sha. Among its early employees were designers Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hiromichi Tanaka, Akitoshi Kawazu and Koichi Ishii, artist Kazuko Shibuya, programmer Nasir Gebelli, and composer Nobuo Uematsu. Initially focusing on action games, the team saw popular success with Final Fantasy in 1987. A role-playing video game, it became the first in a franchise of the same name. Later notable staff included directors Yoshinori Kitase and Takashi Tokita, designer and writer Yasumi Matsuno, artists Tetsuya Nomura and Yusuke Naora, and composers Yoko Shimomura and Masashi Hamauzu.