Welcome to Level 10 of Level-Up Friday’s. Wow Level 10 huh. Well moving along.

FINALLY!!!! Square-Enix has finally announced the US and EU release date for Final Fantasy XIII and it is(Drum roll please) March 9th 2010. This is a little bit earlier then most were expecting it to be(Most were expecting a April launch at the earliest). The announcement came via an incredible new trailer so give it a google if you want to check it out I’m sure a ton of sites are hosting it.

In other Square-Enix related news it seems as if the company intends to revive the Lufia franchise(known as Estopolis in Japan). It was revealed that Taito(a company under Square-Enix’s ownership) will be working on the game and that the team behind the original Lufia games on the SNES will be behind the new game although a release date and a platform have not yet been verified. I would personally guess that the game will be on the DS but who knows maybe Square will surprise us and make the game on PS3 or 360.

Lastly the game that Namco Bandai was teasing has been revealed and it is a Keroro RPG(More commonly known as Sgt. Frog in the states) Makes sense as the game was listed as Next RPG Project K. Obviously the K stood for Keroro in this case. The only details we have thus far is that the game will be for the DS. Aside from that next to no information is known about the game.

Now for this weeks topic.

Motoi Sakuraba, Tenpei Sato, Nobuo Uematsu, Yuki Kaijura, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Shoji Meguro. What do all these names have in common? They are all composers for some of the best RPG’s around. Yet they never seem to get the admiration they deserve. All to often you see a review of a game only mention the music in passing and never even mention the composer who made it all possible. This is a travesty when the composers doing work for RPG’s and really gaming as a whole are far and away the most talented composers in the world putting those in Hollywood to total shame.

Think that last statement might be going a bit to far? Well sorry to say it’s not. I will say this. I have not experienced a good movie soundtrack in quite awhile. Reason being the vast majority of “Soundtracks” in movies these days are nothing but licensed teeny bopper music thrown into a movie to get it to sell(Transformers and Linken Park anyone?). Rarely are soundtracks straight up composed from scratch and when they are sorry to say they pale in comparison to the things being created in the world of gaming.

Why you ask? Simple. A movie is 2 hours long(these days often much shorter then that) and most of that time little to no music is actually being played.  A game can be anywhere from 10-60+ hours and more often then not music is always playing. Most RPG soundtracks have more then 100 songs on them. All different songs all incredibly composed.

The other simple reason for gaming soundtracks being better is emotion. Now I can truly say no BS or anything like that that I have never been emotionally affected by a soundtrack to a movie. Sure I have heard some good  soundtracks that added to the movie(not recently though). But still none that hit me emotionally. However on the gaming front you have incredible pieces of work from games like Final Fantasy, Disgaea, Persona, Valkryie Profile and even non RPG games like Halo have incredible soundtracks that hit you with incredible amounts of emotion.

One of the best examples of emotion in music when it comes to gaming is the Song Heptica(KOS-MOS) from Xenosaga episode III by Yuki Kaijura. The song is very well done and I challenge anyone to listen to it and not be able to feel the sadness that emanates from the song. Other great examples are To the place of the Gods from Final Fantasy XII by Hitoshi Sakimoto and the classic Liberi Fatali from Final Fantasy VIII by Nobuo Uematsu. All incredible songs and filled to the brim with emotion.

This is just the smallest little tip of the ice berg here.

But still even with all these incredible songs no one seems to give these incredible composers the credit they deserve. Maybe it’s about time that happens. Next time you are playing a RPG or any game for that matter and hear a song you like. Head over to Wiki and look up the composer see who wrote the song see what else they have done appreciate their talent and work. These people add a lot to the games we play and are often overlooked. I think it’s about time that changed.

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