Final Fantasy Week: Final Fantasy VI (INTRO/BACKGROUND HISTORY)
2Final Fantasy VI received critical acclaim and was commercially successful in Japan upon release—it is now considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time, and on many major gaming sites such as IGN, the best in the Final Fantasy series. In mid-1994 Square's publicity department reported that the game had sold 2.55 million copies in Japan. In the United States, where it went on sale in the last quarter of 1994, it became the year's eighth best-selling SNES cartridge; despite this, it was not a commercial success in that region, according to Sakaguchi. As of March 31, 2003, the game had shipped 3.48 million copies worldwide, with 2.62 million of those copies being shipped in Japan and 860,000 abroad. Final Fantasy Collection sold over 400,000 copies in 1999, making it the 31st-best-selling release of that year in Japan. Final Fantasy Anthology has sold approximately 364,000 copies in North America. Final Fantasy VI Advance sold over 223,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2006, one month after release.