Masashi Hamauzu is a Japanese composer, pianist, and lyricist. Hamauzu, who was employed at Square Enix from 1996 to 2010, was best known during that time for his work on the Final Fantasy and SaGa video game series. Born into a musical family in Germany, Hamauzu was raised in Japan. He became interested in music while in kindergarten, and took piano lessons from his parents.

Final Fantasy is a fantasy anthology media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi which is owned, developed, and published by Square Enix. The franchise centers on a series of fantasy role-playing video games. The first game in the series was released in 1987, with 16 numbered main entries having been released to date.