Gaming is a competitive space, always has been, always will be. Platform holders compete with rival platforms for market share and bragging rights. Genre staples compete with each other to be the best, with sales the ultimate judge. Rivalries, some eternal, some won and lost over the years, highlight this competition over generations. But sometimes, forces conspire not to push rivals apart, but to unite and combine creative forces for the benefit of fans around the world. For the studios involved, these are often designed with the hope of a financial windfall from sales of these unique collaborations.

For the purposes of this issue, I’d like to examine the history and results of a few notable collaborations Square has undertaken over the years. Some small, some large, and some led to permanent mergers and acquisitions. Here are a few of my favorite ones.

3D fighting games were exploding in the mid-to-late 90s, and Square first sought out its collaborators at DreamFactory for the Tobal titles on the PlayStation. These games saw the amazingly talented Akira Toriyama team up with Square to help realize the roster with his unique designs. Toriyama famously created the Dragon Ball franchise but was also the iconic artist for the rival Dragon Quest series of RPGs (more on this later). While these games were not a significant financial success, the end result was a positive working relationship between the two companies that would continue with a few more titles. The next project being Ehrgeiz, a 3D arena fighter designed for the Namco System 12 arcade hardware. This partnership fused one of the leading 3D fighting game and arcade game developers, Namco, with the creative power of Square and the development talents of DreamFactory.

The director of Ehrgeiz, Seiichi Ishii, had a history with Namco, helping the company create the first two Tekken titles before leaving the company to establish his studio, DreamFactory. The collaboration helped Square enter the arcade space, and Namco financially benefited from licensing its System 12 hardware and from the manufacturing and distribution of their partnership. A silent winner here was Sony, whose PlayStation was kept in mind with the design of the System 12 hardware, making for easy ports and content flow to their home console.

Unfortunately, this would be the only arcade game Square would develop under this partnership. It wouldn’t be the end of their relationship with Namco, though, as the two would work together on the distribution of games in Europe in recent years, and they even had talked about collaborating on an online games partnership in the early 2000s when Square was launching its PlayOnline platform, though this also didn’t see any major releases to note. The willingness to work together has been there between these two for decades.

Square spent years in competition with Enix, with Final Fantasy always trying to steal attention from the genre’s greatest success, Dragon Quest, in the formative years of the 80s and early 90s. While Square found its place with more narrative and character-driven stories in Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI, Dragon Quest continued to excite and draw in massive sales with its gameplay-focused adventures during this time. Even amid the competition, the respect these franchise leaders, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yuji Hori, showed for one another led to open communication and inspired collaboration. The two creators, along with Dragon Quest artist Akira Toriyama, met and began discussing ideas on a potential original game. This group would be called the “Dream Team” and would go on to craft the team responsible for Chrono Trigger. Enix would lend Square Hori’s talents, and the combination of these minds led to one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, RPGs of all time.

This wasn’t a complicated legal arrangement, or a unification of companies, but instead was a special approved use of Hori’s time away from designing and planning games for Enix. He would return and continue to write, direct, and produce every mainline Dragon Quest title, as well as many of its spin-offs, to this day.

The unique collaboration of Dragon Quest's essence with Final Fantasy's DNA was truly unique at the time. The influence of Enix with the power of Square wouldn’t be over after this, either. With the growing and evolving games industry, and Square’s success outside of Japan, along with Enix’s struggles here, the two companies would come together in a complete merger in 2003. Going forward, the RPG powerhouse would be home to both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, sharing both companies’ strengths in design and branding and leveraging their combined resources and talents to reduce their individual opportunities.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, Square ignited a passion for entire continents starved for RPGs. While early releases never quite hit, after Final Fantasy VII's release, gamers across North America and Europe were hungry to find and play more of the genre.  Multiple sequels continued to fly off the shelf, and the franchise of “Final Fantasy” was growing bigger than gaming. There would be an attempt at a major Hollywood production with "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” but it unfortunately was a flop. Regardless, Final Fantasy was becoming a household name, ripe for reinvention and collaboration.

For a period of time, Disney and Square worked in the same building as one another in Japan. In a conversation about the impact and influence of Super Mario 64, Shinji Hashimoto and Hironobu Sakaguchi talked about wanting to create a game with a similar impact. They felt the only way a game could compete with Mario in that space was to feature Disney characters. Obviously, this wasn’t possible, but Tetsuya Nomura overheard and asked the two if he could lead a project to attempt this idea. The stars aligned when Hashimoto met a Disney executive in the elevator of their building and pitched the idea for this potential collaboration. From these meetings, Nomura convinced Disney to let him pursue an idea not based directly on a Disney property, but an original idea of his own.

Over a hundred combined employees from Square and Disney formed the initial development team that would go on to create Kingdom Hearts. The game was a massive hit, injecting Square’s Final Fantasy and Disney’s most popular characters into an original story that gamers fell in love with. The sales success allowed the partnership to continue into multiple sequels and spin-offs, and the franchise would grow in size to compete with major franchises like Star Wars. A chance idea and perfect timing allowed for two giants of different industries to create something no one could have expected to be as big as it was. Kingdom Hearts continues on to this day.

There have been many other opportunities for Square to connect with others to form unique collaborations over the years. These are just a few to highlight, but you can easily flip over a few rocks to find many others over the years. From partnerships as recent as 2025 with Wizards of the Coast for a Final Fantasy x Magic: The Gathering crossover, to licensed characters in major gaming franchises like Super Smash Bros., it is safe to say Square will continue to capitalize on creative partnerships for years to come.