Something I have been researching lately has been Square's first games, which were for Japanese PCs. I'll probably put all this up somewhere at some point, but here's a tweet thread for now!

The Death Trap (October 1984) was Square's first game. It had two editions.

The Death Trap is a major historical milestone: It's Square's first game, and it's also Hironobu Sakaguchi's first game.

It's a graphical adventure game that begins with a very movie-like intro sequence, with the backstory playing out as we see the game credits.

This was quickly followed up with Will: The Death Trap II (June 1985). Sakaguchi directed this one, too, but it seems that his college buddy Hiromichi Tanaka, who programmed Death Trap, was not on the staff of this sequel.

Funny stuff in Death Trap II. Examine the water at one point and you find Jaws; type in "break door" at another point and you find Obake No Q-Taro. Used totally without permission, I must imagine.

Square's next two games were actually ports of other companies' games.

They did the Sharp X1 version of Game Arts' Thexder (July 20, 1985) and the PC-98 and MSX versions of Falcom's Dragon Slayer (September 1985).

I've dug into these the least, honestly!

Square's third original game was a big one: Cruise Chaser Blassty (April 26, 1986), a 3D dungeon-crawling RPG with mecha.

Sakaguchi wrote the scenario. Animation studio Nihon Sunrise collaborated on the character designs. And it was the first game music from Nobuo Uematsu.

The packaging for Blassty was pretty amazing — it included an artbook of illustrations from Sunrise, as well as a flexidisc vinyl with the game's music on it, which is the first ever recording of Uematsu's music, since the era of Final Fantasy soundtracks was still a ways away.

Blassty was followed up quickly by Alpha (July 8, 1986), the third game in the trilogy of parser-based graphical adventures.

The credits here, too, are a list of future luminaries: Hiromichi Tanaka (scenario), Nobuo Uematsu, and the first appearance of artist Kazuko Shibuya!

The game's scantily-clad protagonist is prominently featured in most of the illustrations. As was common in Japanese PC games of the time, there's a nude scene.

Alpha also had a flexidisc vinyl with Uematsu music.

Square's next two PC games were versions of its first original Famicom/NES game, King's Knight. It released it on the MSX in November 1986, and as King's Knight Special for the PC-88 and X1 in June 1987.

...you should probably just play the NES version.

Square's final floppy disk computer game has a bit of mystery to it. Genesis: Beyond the Revelation (1987), directed by Hiromichi Tanaka, seems to have been mired in development hell for couple years, or put on ice for some reason.

For a little while, Square was numbering its game boxes. Will was #2, Dragon Slayer was #4, Thexder was #5.

What happened to #3? Well, #3 was "Amtrack," which was going to be a multiplayer train simulator set in America! But it was never released.

Blassty, in 1986, was #7. Where was #6? That was Genesis: Beyond the Revelation, which was supposed to come out in 1985 but didn't ship until 1987. It seems like the boxes were already printed, since they had Square's old office address on them!

Note the copyright dates:

Assuming Genesis hit stores in 1987 ahead of the first Final Fantasy that December, this is actually Square's first traditional-style RPG. Lots of English in the menus, which was common in Japanese PC games because they were basing these on American RPGs.

Square's final game for Japanese PCs, before it switched to Famicom full time after hitting the jackpot with Final Fantasy, was a licensed run-and-gun shooter based on Aliens for the MSX!

This one was another team of future all-stars: Hiromichi Tanaka produced it, Uematsu did the music, and future FFIV story writer Takashi Tokita debuted here doing pixel art.

There was going to be a Famicom Disk System port of this, and it was apparently basically finished, but it was cancelled. The ROM did eventually leak, though!

You can read more about this game on Kotaku: https://kotaku.com/that-time-the-final-fantasy-team-made-an-aliens-game-1823398586

Bonus item: There's actually an MSX floppy-disk version of the original Final Fantasy... but it wasn't made by Square, but licensed out to Microcabin.

And that's it! It was a real process actually collecting and learning about all of these games, made all the more difficult by the fact that there's not much information out there about them. But now you know about Square's pre-Famicom, PC gaming history.

BONUS 1:

Here's a stache-less Hironobu Sakaguchi (L) and Hiromichi Tanaka in 1984.

BONUS 2: It wasn't actually that strange that Square did ports of Falcom and Game Arts games, considering they were all part of an industry collective called SST, or Super Software Team.

Apparently members of this group would visit Silicon Valley game companies on yearly trips! Here's a bunch of them in front of Electronic Arts in 1986, and Sakaguchi and Tanaka at Broderbund in the same year.

(Source: https://www.resetera.com/threads/old-photos-of-pre-1987-square-featuring-young-sakaguchi-w-o-mustache-and-others.121767/)

(And I feel pretty sure that's Bullet-Proof Software's @HenkRogers in the center in the photo at Electronic Arts.)