I listened to Nobuo Uematsu when he was underground

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 » gaming music update

So I guess today's big videogame-tunes-hitting-the-online-music-scene news is that a whole load of Final Fantasy soundtracks are now available on the iTunes. Even with the swarm of FF concerts sweeping the nation, it still strikes me as totally-super-mega-crazy-random to see Tidus's grinning mug pop up between, who's on there this week, Dave Matthews Band and, what is this, Gorillaz are still making albums? Maybe this is a step up.

I guess this is nice for all those fans who love the game music and are scared off by the frightening costs of importing discs. There's a pretty good selection, too; they've got every game in the series except Final Fantasy III (don't worry, the Japanese one), plus the two Black Mages albums. (Not sure if that's good or not.) I was hoping that the FF1 & 2 soundtracks might be the retooled versions from Dawn of Souls since they sport the new logos as album art, but it is, quite unfortunately, not so.

That brings up one question: Will people really shell out for MP3s of 8-bit NES music? I mean, currently they have the music from when you sleep at an inn going for the standard 99¢. It's six seconds long! Apparently Apple's solution is to charge a discounted rate ($5.99, even less than the normal full-album cost of $9.99) for each of the NES albums. Interesting. I guess I'll just have to check the Scrobbler in a few weeks to see if the iTunes-ified track names are popping up.

Oh yeah, they changed some of the song titles in re-translation, I guess. It's no big deal since you can change them easily, but it's still sort of funny to see all these new names listed in the store. "Sprouting," for instance, is now "Movement in Green." Whatever!!!!

Also, sup random dude IMing me trying to sell me Uematsu concert tickets. Facebook is such a stalking implement.