Final Fantasy has a lot of minigames but few are as bizarre and as beloved as Blitzball, a version of underwater soccer invented for Final Fantasy X. That game’s director and producer, Square Enix veteran Yoshinori Kitase, recently revealed one of the inspirations for the fictional sport: Star Wars.
Blitzball is played in a giant sphere of water that hovers in the air. It’s like a combination of soccer and rugby, with players ramming into each other and doing special kick moves to try to score points by knocking the ball into a high-tech backboard.
Unlike most Final Fantasy minigames, Blitzball plays a major role in FFX‘s story. In addition to being the backdrop for the game’s stunning FMV cutscene intro, it’s also the main vocation of the central protagonist, Titus. NPCs you meet out in the world can be recruited to play on your team, and finishing at the top of the league is required to unlock a special late-game item.
So how did Kitase come up with it? He was talking about how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took inspiration from Final Fantasy when he mentioned that his own work on the franchise was inspired in part by things like Star Wars.
“One more [example of a Star Wars influence in FF] that came to my mind is from Final Fantasy X, where I had to create [Blitzball] for the game inside the fantasy setting,” he told IGN at the Lucca Comics & Games Festival 2026. “And I used an idea from Star Wars Episode I where there’s this [pod]race and the fact of using sport inside a fantasy context, I took this idea directly from Star Wars.”
Star Wars creator George Lucas’ own idea for podracing grew out of his love of car racing and hot rod culture. Little did he know it would help spawn a completely different fictional sport in a completely different universe. Weirdly enough, Blitzball has been mentioned in the Star Wars galaxy before.
Author Mike Chen namedropped it in his Star Wars novel Brotherhood. Confirming that it was a deliberate reference to Final Fantasy and not just a name he came up with independently, back in 2022 he tweeted, “Blitzball is basically underwater hockey played as a minigame in Final Fantasy X. As a former NHL writer, I freaking loved Blitzball and spent hours winning leagues.”
