third Ogre game which would balance the "soft" concepts of Tactics Ogre with the "niche" style of Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen. He also wanted to steer series developer Quest Corporation into developing a more mainstream role-playing game. In the event, Matsuno left Quest for Square, going on to develop Final Fantasy Tactics as a spiritual successor to Tactics Ogre. Ogre Battle 64 was the first Ogre title developed by Quest after Matsuno and other staff left for Square. Production began sometime prior to 1997 for Nintendo 64 (N64), at which point it was known only as Ogre Battle Saga. During this stage, the developers were debating whether to release it as a standard cartridge, as a title for the disc-based 64DD, or both. While apparently planned for the 64DD, it later settled into being a standard cartridge-based game. It was credited as having the second-largest N64 cartridge at 320 megabits. It was also the first in the series to use 3D graphics. The characters were designed by Toshiaki Kato. The team created the character models to appear realistic, using 3D graphics to create them. This provided difficulties for the modeling team due to the hardware. Music The music was co-composed by Hayato Matsuo, Masaharu Iwata and Hitoshi Sakimoto, all returning from previous entries in the series. Matsuo had previously held a minor composing role for the original Ogre Battle, but for Ogre Battle 64 he was given a far larger role. For Sakimoto and Iwata, Ogre Battle 64 was their only work for the N64 platform. Sakimoto commented later than he found transferring his music into the N64 sound environment hard due to his lack of knowledge with the hardware. A soundtrack album was released by Datam Polystar in August 1999. Release The game was announced in April 1997 as Ogre Battle 3, with a planned completion date of March 1998. Originally planned to release under that title, in June 1999 the game was officially retitled to Ogre Battle 64. Quest also announced that Nintendo would act as the game's publisher, allowing for a greater marketing scope. It released in Japan on July 14, 1999. The game was supported by multiple pieces of additional media, published through several different outlets. Six guidebooks were released, including various levels of explanation for levels and mechanics. Additional releases included an artbook featuring designs and illustrations by Kato, who comic