Is Square Music Worthy of U.S. Mainstream Release?

by Joseph Rodriguez 

Square's Final Fantasy VII has sold millions of copies in its native Japan, and over a million here in the U.S. The 4-CD soundtrack to the Japanese FFVII, composed by Nobuo Uematsu, has done phenomenally well, reaching the No. 3 slot on the mainstream music charts. Yet there has been no American release of the soundtrack. Why is this?

Maybe Square feels that the soundtracks wouldn't be successful in mainstream release?

Obviously Square feels that their music is worthy of mainstream release in Japan, having released CD soundtracks to nearly every video game made by them since Final Fantasy IIIj for the Famicom. If they feel this way, perhaps they should release a much smaller run at first in the U.S., gauging the market for future video game soundtracks.

Perhaps Square thinks that the U.S. market expects CD-quality sound?

The fact that nearly all Squaresoft music is created using the Playstation's MIDI chip rather than Redbook audio, the most common format for CD-based games, leads to this possible reason. The explanation given by Square is quite obvious: Redbook audio eats a lot of CD memory. To use CD-quality sound, they would have to make the games much shorter and use much less full-motion video (another memory hog) to free up room for it.

This is the reason that when the CD soundtracks are released in Japan, they take much more room than they do on the game media. Example in point: Square's FFVII soundtrack takes up four discs. The entire Playstation game itself (including MIDI music) only takes up three.

Well, maybe they feel that RPGs are not as successful here in the U.S. as in Japan?

This is undoubtedly true. Still, they're very successful here, if not as wildly successful as they are in Japan. In fact, the best-selling Final Fantasy VII has dispelled the myth that RPGs are a "niche market," the excuse most often given for not translating and releasing Japanese RPGs in the U.S. If this is their reason (and this is the most likely) maybe we can expect to see later game soundtracks released here.

Square has been getting better at giving their U.S. fans the same advantages as their Japanese fans. Hopefully, these advantages will soon include soundtracks. Until then, we'll have to be satisfied with imports.