Final Fantasy composer nobuo uematsu reveals how the series' iconic victory madman unexpectedly gets a strong kick

Since its first release in 1987, Final Fantasy Series’ iconic victory has been a big fanfare in most of the long-running RPG series. However, series composer Nobuo Uematsu recently revealed the unexpected discovery of the music programmer, which allowed him to allow him to give the final fantasy theme and for the final driving of Drumbere, a real boxing, a real pundullumby dropereat primer drumbimper time.

In a recent sold out event Watch the gameUematsu discusses the Score of Final Fantasy III in detail. With a piece of music that comes with a variety of music, including comics, Uematsu regards Final Fantasy III as a turning point, he established a way to create music for RPGs.

Uematsu stressed that there are significant differences in the music quality of Final Fantasy III compared to Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, although they are composed of the same equipment and the same console (Famicom/nes). Although most games use only four audio channels from NES, Uematsu revealed that Final Fantasy III used a lot of specific drum sounds on Channel 5, which was stumbled upon during development.

Uematsu recalls that one day, the game's music programmer Hiroshi Nakamura came to him with the sound of kicking and drums he found. Uematsu is very excited about it. While the NES's “White Noise” channel is available for ho-caps and similar bulging percussion effects, this kick drum sound provides what Uematsu has been looking for to add more driving rhythms to combat themes.

However, Nakamura expressed doubts about this, worried that this might cause game problems. “The programmers at the time were afraid of bugs, so they didn't want to play the kick drums,” Uematsu explained, adding that he reassured them that he would stop using the kick drums if it caused the problem.

Fortunately, no such problem occurred. Uematsu successfully used this drum sound to create a fantastic hit version and added a driving drum beat to the battle theme. He particularly emphasized the importance of Nakamura's kick drums for Final Fantasy III's “This is the last battle” and proudly observed that the first four bars “still have a rich sound to this day”.

Uematsu has been even 35 years old and he still really wants to know exactly how Nakamura encountered drums, but obviously the music programmers don't remember anymore. Uematsu joked, “He must have been erased by aliens.”

NES only has five audio channels. “Pulse Wave” channels 1 and 2 are the main channels for melody, “triangle Wave” channel 3 is usually used for bass lines, and the fourth channel is used for “white noise”. Channel 5 is for PCM samples (can be used for relatively high-quality sounds, such as voice samples). “I didn't know that channel 5 at the time,” Uematsu revealed. He added that such a sample took up a lot of memory, so “almost no one has used it.”

According to Uematsu, he asked a young colleague to give an opinion on how voices are created. “I wasn't an engineer at that time, so I didn't know the details, but I think they were definitely doing something on the PCM channel,” they provided, saying, suggesting that if the developers of Final Fantasy III were able to make drum sounds without using imported waveform data, they might have cleverly leveraged the ON/OFF capability of the PCM channel. The behavior of turning on and off channels may have been used to generate such sound without the use of limited memory. However, it will be a mystery until someone who is actually engaged in the game reveals how it is done (if anyone remembers).

Uematsu believes that Nakamura Hiroshi Nakamura is involved in Final Fantasy III to help him shape his ideas into music and convince him to blend various types of music (such as ridiculous works) to make the RPG's soundtrack even more interesting.

Photo by David Wolff – Patrick/Redferns by Getty Images.

Verity Townsend is a Japanese freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for Game News website Automaton West. She also wrote articles about Japanese culture and film for various publications.