Music History - Final Fantasy
The music of Final Fantasy series spans a number of titles, popular compositions, and soundtracks released through the popular RPG games Final Fantasy developed by Square Enix. New music has been produced since the release of Final Fantasy I in 1987. The game series has also inspired video games, motion pictures, merchandise, and fan art. Final Fantasy music relates to the music of the Final Fantasy series of video games along with the various soundtracks, arranged, and compilation albums. The music varies greatly from light background music, to peaceful instrumental music, and intense rock battle music. Almost all of the games have been accompanied by soundtrack albums released, along with orchestral vocal, or piano arrangement. Compilation albums have also been released. The history of “Final Fantasy Music” can be roughly divided into two eras, the Uematsu Era and the post Uematsu Era.
Nobuo Uematsu Era
Nobuo Uematsu while working at a music store in Tokyo, was approached by a woman who proposed for him to create the music for Square in which he agreed. At first, he viewed the work as more of a side gig, skeptical it would pan out to full time work. While maintaining his other jobs until eventually taking a full time position at Square. He was the sole composer for Final Fantasy until 2001, where then he was joined by two others.
In the first game, Hironobu Sakaguchi advised him to create basic town, and battle themed music, while leaving him a lot of room for creativity otherwise informing him of the technical limitations of the Famicon system. Uematsu’s work on Final Fantasy III is considered as one of the best soundtracks on any NES game ever released. Changes to technology on the SNES amounted to a composition process that Uematsu noted it was "excruciating".
The style of Final Fantasy IV music had a Celtic influence and was performed by Maire Breatnach, and resulted in a release of a piano arranged album, which has occurred for every Final Fantasy title since. After gaining experience with the SNES’s sound technology, he felt that the music of Final Fantasy V was an improvement from the previous game.
The soundtrack for Final Fantasy VI is considered one of the best ever released in video game history and was the first to include a vocal track, "Aria di Mezzo Carattere". With Final Fantasy VII, the games began to be developed on the PlayStation which allowed for higher quality music, but Uematsu used the sequence format instead. He noted that the change to the CD format has “definitely been the biggest change", in the video game music industry. He went on to produce music for Final Fantasy VIII and IX before being joined by other composers.
After Uematsu Era
Final Fantasy X, released on the PlayStation 2, the soundtrack was contributed to by Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano. Uematsu produced 51 tracks, while Hamauzu produced 20 tracks and Nakano with 18 tracks to the game. The two other music producers were chosen to add variety to the game’s music, which includes a soundtrack album, piano, and vocal arrangement albums as well as an EP of tracks by Uematsu. Uematsu, along with Naoshi Mizuta and Kumi Tanioka were responsible for the score of Final Fantasy 11. It was the last title for which Uematsu was the main producer, as he resigned from Square Enix in 2004. The game’s opening music features Esperanto lyrics.
Hitoshi Sakimoto was the main composer for Final Fantasy XII experienced difficulties in filling Uematsu’s role but decided to make a unique score. Final Fantasy XIII (2009) was composed by Masashi Hamauzu, and Uematsu was hired through his "Smile Please" studio to fully score Final Fantasy XIV, the first game in a decade to be scored entirely by him. Yoko Shimomura was the lead composer for Final Fantasy XV, and composed roughly 80% of the music for the title. She was involved with the music of Kingdom Hearts, a fusion game between Square Enix and Disney. Final Fantasy XV marked the first project she contributed to the series. She was brought on board the project in 2006 and continued working for the entire 10 year development cycle.
Final Fantasy Soundtrack History
Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II - Although composed separately, music for Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II was released together. The official original soundtrack of the first two Final Fantasy games weren't released until October 2002. However, an album titled All Sounds of Final Fantasy I•II is an arrangement of the soundtracks and were composed, and was released under DataM/Polystar’s record label (and later NTT Publishing) on February 28th, 1989.
Final Fantasy III - Final Fantasy III Original Sound Version was released by Square Co./NTT Publishing in 1991, and is a compilation of almost all of the music as it can be heard in the game. It has subsequently been re-released by NTT Publishing in 1994 and 2004.
Final Fantasy IV - The Final Fantasy IV Original Sound Version is a compilation of all the music in the game and was released by Square Co./NTT Publishing in 1991. It was later re-released by NTT Publishing.
Final Fantasy V - The Final Fantasy V Original Sound Version, is a two-disc album that contains 67 tracks composed by Uematsu that was originally released by Square Co./NTT Publishing in 1992. The album was also later re-released by NTT Publishing in both 1994 and 2004.
Final Fantasy VI - The Final Fantasy VI Original Sound Version is a compilation of all the music in the game and was released by Square Co./NTT Publishing in 1994 and later re-released by Square Enix in 2004.
Final Fantasy VII - The original soundtrack for Final Fantasy VII contained four discs that included over four and a half hours of music. This album was originally released in 1997, but was later reissued in 2004.
Final Fantasy VIII - Final Fantasy VIII’s soundtrack, like all of those that precede it, was composed by Uematsu. It is comparable in length to Final Fantasy VII’s soundtrack and was first released in 1999.
Final Fantasy IX - The music in Final Fantasy IX was the final score that was fully composed by Uematsu. The score was originally released on four discs by DigiCube in 2000, and was re-released by Square Enix in 2004.
Final Fantasy X - Final Fantasy X’s score is the first example of a Final Fantasy soundtrack that wasn’t composed entirely by Uematsu. Composed by Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano the soundtrack was released on four discs by DigiCube in 2000 and was later re-released by Square Enix in 2004.
Final Fantasy XI - The *Final Fantasy XI Original Soundtrack is a compilation of almost all of the music in the game and was released by DigiCube in 2002. The album was then subsequently re-released by Square Enix in 2004.
Final Fantasy XII - Hitoshi Sakimoto primarily scored Final Fantasy XII’s music, though Uematsu composed the main theme. The Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack was released on four discs in 2006 by Aniplex.
Final Fantasy XIII - The music of the video game Final Fantasy XIII was composed by Masashi Hamauzu. The soundtrack was released on four discs in 2010 under Square Enix’s own label.
Final Fantasy XIV - The music for the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV was originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu, though he was assisted by several other composers including Masayoshi Soken and Naoshi Mizuta for later expansions to the game.
Final Fantasy XV - Yoko Shimomura composed most of the score for Final Fantasy XV. The Soundtrack was first released in December 2016, but multiple versions were released in the following years.