Despite the dearth of new material, Remastered Version takes the form of a two-disc set versus of the 1991 release's one. The effect is something akin to putting Pixar-style 'outtake' gags into the credits for The Return of the King.Д«ut there's one other difference between this CD release and the original: It comes on twice as many discs. None of these pieces add much to the soundtrack in fact they feel rather anticlimactic, having been shoehorned in after the powerful ending theme. The only new content on Remastered Version comes in the form of a collection of stings and fanfares at the end of the collection: Brief throwaway snatches of music like that ditty which accompanies the brief gyrations of the dancers who appear in towns across the world and perform on command. It sounds no more compressed than the original, nothing is clearer or muddier, and no virtual instruments have been pushed forward in the mix. Thankfully, upon giving the new CD release a spin and comparing it to the original game soundtrack - 1991's Final Fantasy IV Original Sound Version - it quickly becomes clear that the Final Fantasy IV Original Soundtrack Remastered Version makes no appreciable changes whatsoever to the game's audio mix. Not that FFIV's soundtrack (brilliant as it was) necessarily presented listeners with the most subtle or nuanced dynamic range, but still.ДЇinally, an official rendition of the battle themes that last longer than the first round of action. What possible improvements could a remastered CD hope to offer? If anything, reworking the music runs the risk of making it less faithful to the original game audio thanks to the music industry's obsession with loudness, compression, and normalization. After all, remastering generally improves the audio fidelity of a music recording, but Final Fantasy IV was all-digital from start to finish: Digital samples produced by a machine and recorded onto a digital medium. This may seem an odd concept on the surface.

Now, more than 20 years later, Square Enix has issued a 'remastered' version of the Final Fantasy IV soundtrack (in Japan, anyway a U.S. Just as John Williams' score helped sell Star Wars as a grand, sweeping sci-fi epic, Nobuo Uematsu's music and the Super NES's sophisticated sound chip made the RPG - a frankly limited and linear take on the genre, to be honest - seem like the most majestic thing we'd ever played. It also infused Final Fantasy IV, a game heavily inspired by theatre, with a cinematic ambiance. It represents one of those pivotal moments when technology, game design, and personal ambition came together at once to push the medium forward into the future. In the annals of video game music history, Final Fantasy IV's original soundtrack holds a special place.

Final fantasy iv soundtrack