Greatest Video Game Composers: Nobuo Uematsu - Article

by Taneli Palola , posted on 10 January 2017 / 10,853 Views

Working as a video game composer seldom lends itself to a lot of mainstream attention. Most people who work in the field won't receive any widespread recognition for their work outside of the video game industry and fans of the games they create music for. Yet, there are a select few individuals whose works have propelled them to a status above most of their peers and into the mainstream.

Such names include the legendary Koji Kondo, whose music on countless Nintendo games has made him perhaps the most widely known video game composer of all time, Jeremy Soule, whose work especially on the Elder Scrolls series has brought him a lot of mainstream attention, and the composer whose career we're looking at today, Nobuo Uematsu.

Uematsu began playing the piano at a young age, and was mostly self-taught, never taking any formal music lessons. Prior to his career as a video game composer he worked a variety of different jobs, often relating to music in some way. While working in Tokyo he was approached by an employee of Square about possibly composing music for some of their games, and Uematsu agreed to this.

However, initially he did not consider this an actual career choice. Instead he saw video game composing as something that would allow him to earn a bit of extra money while also working at his other job as well. He joined Square in 1985 and composed his first music for a video game called Cruise Chaser Blassty, a sci-fi RPG which released in 1986.

During his first two years at Square, Uematsu composed music for a variety of different titles, including a few games that would later be considered minor NES classics such as 3-D Worldrunner and Rad Racer. Other less notable releases of the era that contained Uematsu's music included King's Knight in 1986 and Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School in 1987, which has the distinction of being one of the earliest dating sims.

Quite early on in his career at Square Uematsu would meet Hironobu Sakaguchi, who asked him to compose music for some of the games he was making at the time. Uematsu agreed to do so, and many of both men's most notable early works were with these titles, which included the four games I mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, it was a certain game released in late 1987 that would launch both their respective careers in the video game industry and convince Uematsu to become a full time composer. This game was, of course, Final Fantasy.

The story behind the development of Final Fantasy has been told countless times, from it being Sakaguchi's final attempt at making it in the industry before giving up on his career and going back to school, to its name being a reference to that very fact (something many disregarded as a myth). Still, one story that is undoubtedly true is that Square was in great financial trouble at the time and Final Fantasy was the game that saved the company from closure.

Uematsu's compositions for the game have become some of the most recognisable video game tunes in existence. The first game introduced three of the series' most important recurring themes - The Prelude, the Main Theme, and the Victory Fanfare. Sakaguchi had given Uematsu great freedom in composing music for the first Final Fantasy, only giving a handful of instructions and emphasising that it shouldn't sound like Enix's Dragon Quest.

Working with the Famicom/NES brought with it numerous restrictions for the composer that made creating music for its games a challenge. The system had only three channels reserved for music, but Uematsu was able to get a lot out of the console. Even though it would take a few more years for him to truly hit his stride, his earliest soundtracks already contain numerous excellent pieces of music.

The success of Final Fantasy quickly led to the creation of a sequel and Uematsu was the natural choice to compose the music for Final Fantasy II. The soundtrack itself is perhaps among Uematsu's less notable works in the series, with very few songs that have managed to truly stand out. However, this is the game that introduced the world to the Chocobo Theme, which has since appeared in practically every single entry in the series. Overall, his first two Final Fantasy scores were good but lacked the brilliance of his later works.

1989 saw Uematsu work on two different titles: the Japan-only RPG Square's Tom Sawyer, based on the famous Mark Twain novel, and The Final Fantasy Legend, which was Final Fantasy in name only in order to capitalize on the success of the series. It was actually the first game in the SaGa series, and the first RPG released on the GameBoy.

The following year was slightly busier for Uematsu, as he not only returned to compose music for the sequels to two of his earlier games - Rad Racer II and Final Fantasy Legend II (he worked together with Kenji Ito on the latter title) - but he also created the soundtrack to the next main installment in Square's now flagship franchise - Final Fantasy III.

By this point Uematsu had clearly begun to define his own style, mixing and implementing various different musical styles in his compositions to create the sound that he would become famous for. The music in Final Fantasy III is notably more complex in comparison to his earlier works, clearly showing Uematsu's development as a composer. With this soundtrack he was already pushing the limits of what could be achieved with the NES soundchip, and in my opinion showed people the first signs of the kind of music he would soon be creating with a new console generation.

1991 was the year that saw Uematsu go from being a merely good composer to becoming a genuinely great one, and he did it by composing just one soundtrack the entire year – the one for Final Fantasy IV. It was by far his most complex and exhausting soundtrack yet, made possible and at the same time more difficult to create due to this being his very first project using the-then new Super Famicom hardware, which he wasn't at all familiar with at the time.

Together with the Square sound team he spent several days literally living at Square's headquarters, learning the new hardware and its features and quirks, mostly through trial and error. The end result was very much worth it, as Uematsu created what is still often considered one of his best works. Numerous tracks have remained popular throughout the years since the game's release, to the extent that at one point the song “Theme of Love” was actually included in some Japanese music schoolbooks.

In 1992 Uematsu worked on two games for Square. The first of these was Romancing SaGa, for which he only provided a single arrangement of a song he had originally composed for The Final Fantasy Legend a few years earlier, and the second was the soundtrack to Final Fantasy V. It once again marked a huge increase in scale. The soundtrack for FF IV had been under an hour in length, for example, whereas the one in V clocked in at over two hours.

This score is also one of his more overlooked and is often even forgotten in the pantheon of Final Fantasy music. The soundtrack has never been as popular as the ones in the two games that surrounded it, nor does it contain as many beloved songs as many of Uematsu's other works, but there are a few notable songs that have become clear fan favourites, such as the ever-popular “Clash on the Big Bridge”.

Still, there's no denying that this soundtrack feels a bit underwhelming after IV. It has definite high points, but in comparison to the other two SNES Final Fantasy games it doesn't quite reach the same great heights, mostly due to it having quite a few forgettable tracks. None of it is bad, but there simply aren't as many great tracks as in most of Uematsu's other soundtracks from this era onwards.

1993 was a very slow year for Uematsu, as his only work on a new video game was providing two arrangements of his earlier songs for Romancing SaGa 2. Besides that, he worked on a few albums featuring music from Final Fantasy V, such as Final Fantasy V Dear Friends, an arranged album containing select music tracks from the game. The main reason for this was that he was already busy at work on a project that many still consider his greatest achievement as a composer, the soundtrack to Final Fantasy VI.

With the release of Final Fantasy VI, Uematsu cemented his place as one of the best composers working in the industry. He had created a style that was entirely unique to his music, ranging from classical symphonic music to heavy metal and from Jazz to electronic music, and nowhere had this been as apparent as in this soundtrack. It features numerous tracks that have become some of the most popular and well liked tracks in the entire series, and as a whole was easily Uematsu's most comprehensive and varied work up to that point.

With the music in FF VI, he took the series' sound to a much darker place. The setting and the world had a very different feel as well, replacing the usual medieval fantasy world with a more technologically advanced one. In this soundtrack, Uematsu created some of the most elaborate pieces of video game music ever conceived for a video game at that time, with tracks like “Aria di Mezzo Carattere” and “Dancing Mad” serving as great examples of this.

After Final Fantasy VI there was a longer than usual gap before the next entry in the series came out. This allowed Uematsu to compose music for other projects in the meantime. The first of these was 1995's Chrono Trigger, another exceptional Square JRPG on the SNES. Most of the game's soundtrack was composed by its original composer, Yasunori Mitsuda, but when he contracted stomach ulcers due to overworking himself to exhaustion Uematsu joined to project of finish the soundtrack, composing nine tracks for the game.

1996 saw him compose music for two other titles, a Japan-only sci-fi adventure game called DynamiTracer, and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, the first spin-off title in the Front Mission series, which had Uematsu once again working together with Mitsuda on a soundtrack. Uematsu has said that Mitsuda worked so hard on the soundtrack that he had to hospitalized at one point during development. These two games allowed Uematsu to try different things with his music, with Gun Hazard for example having an industrial, almost mechanical sound to much of its music.

Uematsu's next project would be the one where most people were first introduced to his music. This was of course Final Fantasy VII. With this soundtrack he continued on the path that had begun with Final Fantasy VI, taking the music to an even darker place both in style and tone. This was also the first game in the series that featured a song with actual digitized vocals (“One-Winged Angel”).

The music in the game has a more down-to-earth feel to it compared to earlier games in the series. There aren't as many silly or playful songs. Uematsu has attributed this to the overall style and atmosphere of Final Fantasy VII, as he felt that the crazier songs found in earlier titles wouldn't have fit the game's mood. The soundtrack is one of Uematsu's best works and features many of his most recognisable and well-known themes of all time.

Final Fantasy VII also marks the beginning of a streak of several amazing soundtracks for Uematsu. He had done excellent work in the past as well, but in between there had always been some soundtracks that were merely good not great. During the late 90s and early 2000s there was nobody in the video game industry creating music as consistently good as Uematsu.

During this time period he was also dedicating his time exclusively to Square's flagship franchise. In 1999 we were introduced to his next great soundtrack when Final Fantasy VIII was released. The game itself is highly divisive amongst series fans, with some considering it on par with the series' best games, while others consider it to be among the worst. I am among the former group and I think the soundtrack is absolutely fantastic as well.

It continued the trend of having a tonally very dark soundtrack, with a fairly small number of more light-hearted tracks. It also featured the first vocal main theme in series history in “Eyes On Me”. The idea of using a singer in a Final Fantasy game actually originated during the development of VII, but it wasn't until the next entry in the series that the idea came to fruition with the inclusion of Faye Wong as the chosen singer. However, Uematsu's next soundtrack would turn out to be something completely different, both in style and atmosphere.

Final Fantasy IX was released in July of 2000, just 17 months after VIII. It was a massive departure from the direction the series had been heading in since Final Fantasy VI, having a look and feel that was much closer to the series' earlier titles, effectively creating what can be considered an homage to the entire series up to that point. Uematsu's music in the game reflected this shift, featuring numerous fantastical themes alongside the serious tracks.

Due to the game's fantasy setting Uematsu felt that he could once again compose various sillier songs as well. The soundtrack also contains numerous callbacks to older games in the series in its music, with many songs from previous titles in the series making a return in some form. It is yet another magnificent score from the composer, one that expertly combines its myriad different elements and styles into arguably the series' most varied soundtrack. It was also the second game in a row to have a song with vocals as its main theme.

2001 brought with it an end of an era of sorts, as the release of Final Fantasy X marked the first time ever that Nobuo Uematsu did not compose the soundtrack to a main Final Fantasy game by himself. He was joined in the project by Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano. These two were chosen to help create the game's soundtrack because their musical styles were very different from Uematsu's, which helped in creating a highly diverse score featuring a wide variety of musical styles from each composer. Another thing that greatly changed the style of music was Final Fantasy X's Asian influences. Much of the game was inspired by various Asian cultures, and the music was no different in that respect.

While he was now sharing the composing duties with two other people, Uematsu still composed over half of the game's score, and his contributions are in my opinion the overall strongest. Many of the songs he created for the game have since become some of the most beloved in the entire series. These would include tracks such as “To Zanarkand”, “A Fleeting Dream”, and “Otherworld”, among numerous others.

2002 was a landmark year for Uematsu in quite a few ways. Music from the Final Fantasy series had been performed in live concerts before, but in 2002 the first ever concert dedicated entirely to its music - “20020220 – Music From Final Fantasy” - was performed in Tokyo. Following the concert's success, countless other performances of the series' music have taken place, both in Japan and elsewhere in the world. The first such western concert was held in 2004 in Los Angeles.

2002 also saw the release of the game that would turn out to be Uematsu's last major work in the Final Fantasy series for a long time – Final Fantasy XI, the series' first foray into online gaming. Uematsu once again collaborated with two other composers, but this time of the game's 51 tracks he composed only 11, although they do form some of the genuine highlights of the soundtrack.

In 2002 Uematsu would also become one of the founding members of the rock band The Black Mages, which was born with the intention of playing rearranged versions of Uematsu's Final Fantasy music. The band went on to release three very good albums before disbanding in 2010.

The following year Uematsu composed music for two games. He created the main theme for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and the soundtrack to another Japan-only release called Hanjuku Hero Tai 3D. Although the game itself isn't necessarily well-known, it is notable for one reason; it was the last Square game to feature his music as in-house composer for the developer.

In 2004 Uematsu left Square to become a freelance composer, founding his own production company called Smile Please. Despite leaving the company he had spent 18 years working for, Uematsu remained close with the developer, and has since composed music for numerous Square projects. Due to this move Uematsu didn't compose any new music for video games that year, but The Black Mages did release their second album.

2005 was another slower year for Uematsu. He composed music for two more games in the Hanjuku Hero series, neither of which was ever released outside Japan. The following year, however, can be considered a return to form for the composer, thanks in large part to a project created by none other than Hironobu Sakaguchi with his new development company.

Uematsu did return to the Final Fantasy series that year as well, composing the main theme, called “Kiss Me Good-bye”, for Final Fantasy XII. His biggest project that year though was creating the soundtrack for Mistwalker's Blue Dragon, an Xbox 360 exclusive JRPG that saw him once again work together with Sakaguchi. With this soundtrack Uematsu proved that he could still create some magnificent pieces of music and he gave his fans a sign of many great things to come in the future.

The first of these great things was the soundtrack to Mistwalker's second game, 2007's Lost Odyssey. It featured an excellent soundtrack from Uematsu, easily among his best works in the years after he left Square. The music is, as usual for the composer, extremely varied with rock tracks mixed together with classical compositions and electronic music without any one style feeling out of place. It was also around this time that Uematsu began working on an increasing number of games, contrasting strongly with his time at Square where he had usually worked on just one or two games per year.

In 2008 Uematsu stayed very busy, composing music for four different video games, beginning with the long-awaited Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for which he created the main theme. Following this he composed the soundtracks for Lord of Vermilion, Blue Dragon Plus, and Away: Shuffle Dungeon. 2009 continued in a similar fashion, with the third installment in the Blue Dragon series, titled Awakened Shadow, and a little-known adventure game called Sakura Note featuring Uematsu's scores.

2010 was another banner year for Uematsu, with two smaller projects framing a year that saw him make a return to the series that originally made him famous. He created the main theme for Lord of Vermilion 2 as well as most of the soundtrack for the PSP title Lord of Arcana. Yet, it was the release of Final Fantasy XIV that attracted the most attention. It was the first time in eight years that Uematsu had composed an entire soundtrack for Final Fantasy. Of course, as most of you probably know very well, Final Fantasy XIV was an absolute disaster of a game at release, but one of its few genuinely great aspects was its soundtrack.

He had considerable creative freedom in putting together the score for that game because the rest of the team had not considered what type of music they wanted for the title. Uematsu treated the project just like any other, composing a score consisting of a wide variety of different genres of music. When the game was relaunched as A Realm Reborn, much of the game's music was redone by Masayoshi Soken, although some of Uematsu's music from the original game made it into the new version.

In 2011 he once again worked together with Hironobu Sakaguchi and Mistwalker, composing the soundtrack to The Last Story. This marked Uematsu's 6th collaboration with the studio. Initially, he had some difficulties in creating the game's music, as the first three tracks he submitted for the game were all rejected, forcing him to rethink his approach. Sakaguchi was actually worried that Uematsu might quit the project altogether, but his worries were put to rest when Uematsu's next few songs were accepted.

That same year he also composed the soundtrack to a game called Unchained Blades, a mostly overlooked dungeon crawler on PSP and 3DS. Uematsu kept very busy in 2012 as well, providing some music for three different titles, including Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, and composing the entire soundtrack to Level-5's Fantasy Life.

2013 was a year filled with considerably smaller profile titles for Uematsu, providing anywhere from one to a handful of songs for numerous different games, including titles such as Ragnarok Odyssey Ace, Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas, Fairy Fencer F, and NORN9. His only solo soundtrack that year was for a game called Wonder Flick, while he also created roughly half of the soundtrack for Granblue Fantasy. Overall in 2013 he worked on music for eight different games.

2014, on the other hand, was a notably slower year for him. He provided the opening theme for Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters and composed the soundtrack to yet another Mistwalker title, Terra Battle. The following year would turn out to be very similar, with just two games released that year containing his music: Chunithm: Seelish Tact (containing one song from him) and Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force (featuring two).

Over the last few years Uematsu seems to have settled for a fairly relaxed working pace, mostly working on just one or two projects during any given year. In 2016 his only musical contribution for a video game was for a mobile game called Super Senso, and this year his only confirmed project is another little known game called Defender's Quest 2. However, he does also have a few confirmed future projects he is already involved in, namely a title called Project Phoenix, set for release in 2018, and another by the name of Granblue Fantasy Project RE:Link.

As such, fans of Uematsu can rest assured that he will continue composing music for the foreseeable future. He still retains an excellent working relationship with both Square and Mistwalker, alongside numerous other developers he has worked with over the years. Over the course of a career spanning a period of over three decades, from the days of the NES to the present day, Nobuo Uematsu has established himself as one of the greatest video game composers of all time.

His music, perhaps more than any other video game composer's, has been performed live in countless concerts all over the world. He is one of the most diverse composers working in the industry today, being able to effortlessly work with dozens of different genres of music while still making it sound like his own. In my personal opinion, he is the best video game composer of all time, having created many of my favourite pieces of music in general. His music has also influenced countless other composers in their careers, and will likely continue to do so for years to come.

What are your favourite soundtracks or songs from Nobuo Uematsu? Share them below in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading.

Sources:
-VGMdb.net
-Square Enix USA
-VGMOnline.net