If you frequented this blog back in 2012, you probably remember a 68 post series I ran on the history of video game music. While no one website served as my main source for it all, Final Fantasy Shrine definitely inspired the idea. As that community aged, it developed a unique trend towards game, anime, and film music discussion. I discovered a lot of obscure composers there, and that got the ball rolling for my series. One of the things we’ve been doing on FFShrine for ages now is making music compilations to showcase in a sort of knock-out tournament. Themes have ranged from the predictable mainstream to obscurities like “Best of Tim Follin”, but we never actually did Final Fantasy until last year. It turned out to be surprisingly novel, because I hadn’t heard anything since Square-Enix and Nobuo Uematsu parted ways. “Saber’s Edge”, a battle theme from Final Fantasy XIII composed by Masashi Hamauzu, ended up becoming one of my favorite songs in the series.

It’s been a year now, and (probably because I’ve been staying up until 5am watching a baby with absolutely nothing to entertain me) I decided to resurrect the Final Fantasy music knock-out game for a second run. FFShrine is a lot smaller than it used to be, though, and I’m not expecting much participation. So hey, if you’re bored and want to rehash some old RPG tunes, maybe discover a few new ones, stop by FFShrine and check the game out.