Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster Soundtrack

Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster Soundtrack, 2021, Nobuo Uematsu / Various

To its credit, Final Fantasy II was a daring departure from its predecessor’s best-selling formula. Unfortunately, FF II’s gameplay innovations were poorly executed, while its narrative degenerated into an endless chain of fetch quests. For Final Fantasy III, then, Square handed the reins back to series founder Hironobu Sakaguchi. And just as Final Fantasy had refined ideas introduced by Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy III took its cue from the monstrously successful third instalment of its fiercest rival. More precisely, FF III introduced a richer job system that gave the gameplay enormous depth. Combined with a vast world to explore, the result is quite arguably the series’ greatest 8-bit entry. It is all the more astonishing, then, that the Pixel Remaster marked the first time Western players could experience FF III in its original 2D form.

Equally, the Final Fantasy III soundtrack stands as Nobuo Uematsu’s finest chiptune score – broader in scale than its predecessors and showcasing his assured command of the NES’s sonic limitations. Yet, like the game itself, Uematsu’s score remained comparatively obscure next to other Final Fantasy soundtracks. One reason may be that Final Fantasy III received relatively few ports, which also meant fewer chances to rework the music for more capable hardware. Crucially, none of the arrangements for the Nintendo DS, mobile-phone or PSP versions equalled the quality of the Final Fantasy I and II PlayStation arrangements, which would go on to underpin all future versions of those scores, including the Pixel Remasters.

That means the Pixel Remaster version of the Final Fantasy III soundtrack did not have an established template in the same way as FF I and II. Combined with richer source material, it is hardly surprising that this emerges as the most ambitious of the three NES Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters – the one most willing to move away from the original. Of course, that is a relative distinction. The FF I and II remasters were essentially superb sonic upgrades, and could hardly have stayed closer to their existing arranged models. Also, the Final Fantasy III soundtrack rarely departs from the lavish high-fantasy orchestral style established by those earlier releases.

There are structural similarities too. Like the FF I and II remakes, this version of the Final Fantasy III soundtrack extends its running time largely by repeating material while clothing it in fresh orchestration. The arrangements follow the same broad method as those earlier games, thickening textures and adding instrumental colour and tasteful counterpoint without distracting from Uematsu’s glorious melodies. As on the Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster, the arrangers do a stellar job. At the time of writing in August 2021, these Pixel Remasters were easily among the best-orchestrated game scores of the year, displaying a command of the ensemble’s expressive possibilities rarely heard in contemporary game music.

So how far, exactly, does the Final Fantasy III soundtrack stray from the NES original in its Pixel Remaster form? A handful of cues are genuine reinventions of their source material – and often those are precisely the moments where this version most clearly improves on the original. On the 8-bit hardware, both “Road to the Summit” and “Gishal’s Veggies” showed promise but were simply too brief to leave a lasting impression. The Pixel Remaster adds substantial new material, and “Road to the Summit” suddenly becomes an inspiring, upbeat march balancing bombast with just the right degree of light-hearted buoyancy. With its intricate woodwind writing, “Gishal’s Veggies” recalls the more playful side of Hitoshi Sakimoto’s Final Fantasy XII. “Requiem”, previously little more than a brief game-over cue, is transformed into a Baroque-inflected lament overlaid with plaintive choral textures.

The Pixel Remaster’s most significant changes, however, concern not structure but mood. This is also the aspect of the score likely to prove most divisive. The clearest example is “Eternal Wind”, Final Fantasy III’s beloved world-map theme. Driven by an intriguing arpeggio with an irregular stop-start motion, “Eternal Wind” was an unusually ethereal overworld cue for an 8-bit RPG, built around one of Uematsu’s most intricate, long-breathed melodies. The Pixel Remaster reimagines it as a sweeping pop-orchestral piece whose swooning romanticism sacrifices much of the original’s subtlety and idiosyncrasy. Importantly, though, there is no denying that, taken on its own terms, this new version is still highly effective.

Other examples of stylistic streamlining are easy to find. Uematsu used phase-shifted square-wave channels in cues such as “The Boundless Ocean” and “Elia, Maiden of Water” to create iridescent textures – qualities the Pixel Remaster replaces with fairly conventional, though once again beautifully executed, orchestral writing. Other tracks, including “The Hidden Village of Fargabaad”, “Hyne’s Castle” and “The Forbidden Land Eureka”, were full of subtle emotional shading: melodically beautiful, but with tension, agitation and foreboding quietly bubbling underneath. Again, the Pixel Remaster has limited patience for such ambiguity. “The Forbidden Land Eureka” becomes a convincing take on fantasy-adventure tropes, including staccato choral writing, while “The Hidden Village of Fargabaad” emphasises the setting’s earthy qualities through rustic woodwinds set against warm strings. Most of these rearrangements work extremely well – but they do not supersede the NES originals or emerge as the definitive version of the score.

Of course, the arrangers also often remain quite close to the source material, sometimes while working hard to overcome its limitations. In its original form, “Hometown of Ur” was pretty, but also static and faintly somnambulistic. The Pixel Remaster supplies exactly what it needed: more instrumental colour and some discreet counterpoint to make the cue less monotonous. “Return of the Hero”, a triumphant march, naturally makes a stronger impression when arranged for full orchestra, communicating its swaggering grandeur much more convincingly. “Living Forest”’s chromatic arpeggios and glissandi already hinted at the mysterious, otherworldly atmosphere Uematsu was aiming for. Yet it is really only in the Pixel Remaster version that the cue fully lands, clothed in carefully chosen acoustics that suggest a vast place hidden behind walls of mist.

Elsewhere, the arrangers scarcely need to exert themselves to make an impression. Tracks such as “Sailing the Enterprise”, “Flying the Enterprise” and “The Huge Battleship Invincible” already possessed an infectiously joyful character on the NES, and the new arrangements expand on that quality with consummate skill. What is striking throughout these cues – and indeed throughout the score as a whole – is the sheer beauty of Uematsu’s melodies. Sensitively assigned to the right solo instruments and rendered with appreciably lifelike sound, his melodic lines are often simply gorgeous, reaffirming his status as one of game music’s great melodists. Listen to the boundless energy of the middle section in “Ending Theme”, which sounds like a trial run for Final Fantasy VI’s own glorious ending music: this is game music at its most soaring and adventurous. FF III’s Pixel Remaster may smooth away some of the NES original’s quirks, but the reward is another excellent orchestral fantasy score.