FFVI: The Power Within — Part II: The Dream Awakens

May 31, 2026

Disclaimer: Some links in this article point to live and archived pages where community members voluntarily shared personal information under their handles. In keeping with my own modus operandi, I won't reproduce any of that here, referring to them only by their chosen pseudonyms. Any screenshots containing personal details have been redacted accordingly.

In Part I, it was mentioned that after the ffonline.com April Fools' hoax, someone asked themselves "why not?" That someone was Czar Ben, a writer with a deep interest in Final Fantasy III (VI) and an active presence in the ffonline.com community. He began recruiting volunteers from those messageboards, but it was when his real-life friend entered the picture that things accelerated — his friend's natural charisma and social gifts landed them a programmer. And with that, the core of what would become Dream Horizon Software was assembled. Their first home was the fan site NewFF, which handed them off graciously once DHS found its footing. By late 2000 they had their own corner of the internet at dreamhorizonsoftware.com, announcing themselves with this:

"Welcome to the future of quality American video game development. An oxymoron? We don't think so. And we intend to prove it."

That phrase might read as bravado to a modern eye, but in context it meant something real. The JRPG genre was considered Japanese territory. The anxiety about American industry competing with Japan had been a cultural drumbeat since the 1980s, loud enough that the dean of MIT's Sloan School of Management dedicated an entire book to the question in 1992. The only SNES RPG I can recall that flew the American flag was Secret of Evermore, developed by Square's short-lived North American studio, although in truth that was a Japanese company giving Americans a shot, not Americans seizing one. I loved the game personally, but it was politely received at best and promptly forgotten, its studio quietly disbanded.

So when a group of young fans declared they were going to prove Americans could do this? Yeah. All of us who were that age were in. And from the outside, they had assembled quite the team:

President

Lord Hylan — the social engine behind DHS, the man who could walk into a room of strangers and leave with a team.

Senior Vice Presidents

Freddie — headed the Music Department. I have his TPW music locally but won't be hosting it here — though you can see the titles in the BassJamb app on the desktop.

P0sitr0nic — the creative backbone of the Art Department, responsible for some genuinely impressive sprites. He would go on to create Final Fantasy Shattered Lands and Final Fantasy Cry to Heaven, both of which you can actually play right here on doors98.

Public Relations Department (headed by Lord Hylan)

Lord Hylan, Nasferatu, and DarthTOOPS — whose claim to fame outside of DHS was creating Square's Weakest Link, a fan game that did exactly what it sounds like.

Art Department (headed by P0sitr0nic)

P0sitr0nic, JMR, Nasferatu, NoVa, and Zeobon — Nasferatu pulling double duty across both PR and Art, which tells you something about how lean and passionate this operation was.

Music Department (headed by Freddie)

DJ Olis, Freddie, and A Blue Guitar — three people tasked with scoring what they fully intended to be a commercial-quality RPG.

Associates of DHS

Czar Ben and Lina`chan — the collaborators who worked alongside DHS without formally joining. Czar Ben of course being the whole reason any of this exists in the first place.

By December 2000 the demo had already entered beta [beta] — which, given they had only just launched, was either impressively ambitious or optimistically premature. Probably both. The community that formed around it was real though. By April 2001 the DHS forums had accumulated 327 threads and 11,798 posts across 106 registered members, with a dedicated TPW subforum driving much of the activity. For a fan game in 2001 those are real numbers — this wasn't a ghost town, people were showing up.

And they were actually building something. Media was flowing out of the project; an overworld map was shared with the community, and character sprites were taking shape that showed genuine craft. If you were watching from the outside in early 2001, there was every reason to believe this was going to happen. The member list reads like a small but invested corner of the internet that had found something worth believing in.

The dream seemed like it would become reality. Excitement was building, fans were hopeful, the community was engaged, and the creators were showing off real progress. But things behind the scenes were probably not as rosy as they appeared. By the middle of the year, small things began to happen. The kind of thing you brush off at the time. But as they kept adding up, people started raising an eyebrow.