So a Decisive Battle / Boss Theme cover from Final Fantasy VI was going to be an inevitability, I suppose. Definitely a track that I knew I would get to eventually, but for the longest time I didn't have any inspiration to do it. Then the inspiration hit me all of a sudden and I didn't wait to get started on this one. I hope you all enjoy it!
After a brief hiatus from working on new content for my channel, I finally made my return with Dark King, the final boss theme from Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest! I know this game has its fair share of haters, but I quite enjoy the game for what it is, and everyone knows it has a rocking soundtrack! I hope you guys enjoy this one!
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Summer 2001 was an interesting time for me. I had moved out of my home state to the East Coast and was trying something new in the work arena. Previous jobs had come and gone, and nothing really stuck, so rather than continue to flounder, I thought I would change my course. I quickly found out that my newly chosen path was a huge mistake, and within just a few short months, I would move back to my home state and get back on the career path I started on, albeit in a different direction. But for a few months in the middle of 2001, I lived about 45 minutes from the ocean, and had a fairly eye-opening experience learning about the differences between small town midwestern life and what life was like in the south.
During my stint on the coast, I spent a fair amount of time on my off days looking for entertainment. Whether it was browsing music shops, used video game stores, pawn shops, etc., I found ways to occupy my time when I wasn't working. And of course, there were also movie theaters. One of the more highly anticipated releases the summer of 2001 was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was to be the debut film from Square Pictures. Having played and enjoyed Final Fantasy VII just a year or so prior, I was looking forward to the movie. I thought the idea of using full computer animation for everything was novel at the time and assumed the storytellers at Square had a good chance of coming up with a good story.
Continue reading In Defense Of...Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within
Well, it's been a while since I've done one of these! I was replaying Final Fantasy VII recently, and this track really stood out to me when it played in the game. I've heard it plenty of times while listening to the soundtrack on its own, but something about hearing it in the context of the game really made it hit that much harder. On the Other Side of the Mountain is already a pretty straightforward acoustic piece, so my cover is just a 1:1 recreation. Nothing fancy, no frills, just a quick playthrough of a nice tune. A little bit different from my usual metal covers, but I hope you all enjoy this one just the same!
Truth be told, I've only dabbled in Final Fantasy XIV a bit, and I'm not sure if I actually heard this theme in the game or not. But when Torn From the Heavens came up as an 8BBG track, I was really intrigued and was looking forward to working on it. I was working on my recently posted Those Who Fight cover at the same time as this one, so that's where most of my creative energy went during that time, so this ended up being pretty much a simple recreation of the original track. Nonetheless, I still think this cover turned out pretty decent, and I hope you all enjoy it!
Final Fantasy VII's main battle theme Those Who Fight has always been one of my favorite tracks in all of VGM and was one of the main tracks I wanted to cover when I started my channel. I purposely held off on doing it though because I didn't think I could do it justice at the time and wasn't confident that I would be able to make the cover I really wanted to make until I had some experience under my belt. So fast forward about a year and half later, I've improved and somewhat learned the ropes with making these covers, and I finally feel like I've 'found my sound' if that makes sense. The time finally felt right to create my own interpretation of a very important piece of music. Was it worth the wait? Yes, it was. I can confidently say that I made the cover that I always wanted to make. I still don't consider it perfect, but after delaying it and working on it for an extra week, I knew I would never be 100% satisfied with it. It's time to call it done and move on. It's extremely gratifying for all the ideas I had swirling around in my head for the last couple of years to finally come to fruition, and I really hope you all enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed making it!
I've been wanting to get around to doing some full metal covers from Final Fantasy VII since I started my channel, and I finally felt like the time was right to start making them. FF7 has probably my favorite soundtrack from any game ever, so I really wanted to have some experience under my belt before tackling anything from it. Birth of a God plays during the Bizarro Sephiroth fight at the end of the game, and it's a really awesome track that I've always enjoyed. Expect to see more FF7 covers over the next few months!
I've been itching to get back to Final Fantasy for a while, and I've had an arrangement of this track sitting around for a couple of months, so the time was finally right to put my spin on this one! This is a track I've had my eye on covering since my Final Fantasy IV Zeromus cover from about five months ago. The Zeromus cover has always been my favorite, and, with both tracks being pretty similar, it just seemed inevitable that I would get around to this one eventually. I hope you all enjoy it!
My March started out kind of rough with some failed arrangements that never quite came to fruition. About midway through the month, I set those other projects to the side indefinitely and started fresh on this piece, and the inspiration hit me pretty hard and resulted in what I think is my best cover yet. Final Fantasy IV is a very important game from my childhood as it is to my recollection the first RPG I ever actually finished, and it is still an all-time favorite of mine to this day. The game and of course its music composed by none other than Nobuo Uematsu is full of nostalgia for me, so I was glad to finally get around to this one. Working on Final Fantasy music is always very gratifying for me, so expect to see more in the coming months!
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This year has been a good year for me in regards to making progress on beating my NES library. In January and February, I was able to pump out some serious completion numbers. For the first couple weeks of March, I was able to tackle a few games from my sublist of games that I anticipated to be the hardest ones for me to complete. Before all this COVID-19 stuff, I planned to continue putting time into these challenging titles specifically. Things are stressful enough at the moment, so I decided to change my tactics and go with some comfort food instead. My stress reducer of choice was the original Final Fantasy. Now I've beaten this game before, but not before I started keeping records and recording my plays.
Continue reading Maps & Manuals & Self-Isolation
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The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=18893.0
With the year closing in all around us we've had a slight surge of renewed interest in the NES Challenge with a few members putting in some last minute efforts, come old players reappearing and a couple new names added to the scoreboard. We've still got a ways to go, but as of this writing we have collectively destroyed 492 game for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 2019.......which is pretty impressive, but still short of our goal of the entire North American licensed library. Click that link above and take a look at our remaining list of games and jump in and lend a hand. Still a surprising amount of variety to play so no excuses in these last two months!!!
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Final Fantasy VII was released over 20 years ago, but to many it's still heralded as one of the greatest RPGs of all time. Personally, I feel the sacred status some have heaped upon it is a bit overblown, but I won't deny having a big ole soft spot for it. For its time, it was an incredible experience and Square Enix (then Squaresoft) exploited its popularity with spin-off games and merchandise. And despite nearly bankrupting itself with the unmitigated disaster that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the Japanese developer saw fit to make another movie, this time based in the world of Midgar and featuring Cloud Strife, and everyone's favorite villian with an absurdly, impractically long sword. So how does Advent Children hold up? Let's find out together.
Continue reading RF Cinema: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
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Now that I'm forty, and being that it is the dog days of summer, it's about time I managed to accomplish something. I'm sure I did something this year, but my summer list seems a little heavy. Hmm. Still haven't fixed the fence. And all those branches in my backyard... are still attached to that bush for some reason. Well, I've managed to grow up some, I guess. Maybe. Gosh, this is really depressing.
Well, I did manage to do something this year; a certain thing that has dogged my steps for half my life now; a game I had a beef with from way back in 1997. But I was ready and attacked it full force, summons and limit breaks a blazin', and after quite a few gaming sessions I finally finished Final Fantasy VII.
Happy Birthday to me.
Continue reading Final Fantasy VII, Consider This Thy Fork!
Kenichiro Fukui is a composer that few likely know off the top of their head. He began his career as a member of the Konami Kukeiha Club in 1990 under the moniker "Funiki Fukui". The first game he worked on was Sunset Riders in 1991, but he only did the sound effects for the game. His first full composition job was Konami's light gun arcade game Lethal Enforcers. He worked on a few more arcade games at Konami, including 1992's GI Joe with Tsutomi Ogura and 1993's Violent Storm with Seiichi Fukami.
Continue reading Composer Compendium: Kenichiro Fukui
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Many longtime fans of the Final Fantasy series have lamented the direction Square has taken with their beloved franchise, forgoing the classic turn-based battle system (or rather the active-time battle system) in favor of a more action-oriented approach featuring real-time combat. While this rapid evolution of the series is no doubt an attempt by Square to garner new fans and compete with other AAA titles currently on the market, it has left some diehard fans feeling alienated and disinterested with the series. Enter World of Final Fantasy, a new title in the Final Fantasy series that harkens back to the games of old, featuring a slew of familiar characters and mechanics that should make any old-school fan of the series feel right at home.
Continue reading World of Final Fantasy
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