JRPG legends Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu are reuniting once again, 38 years on from their first collaboration on the oft-forgotten King’s Knight, which is more than welcome news after so much recent chatter surrounding Uematsu’s possible retirement putting together entire video game soundtracks.
The two genre veterans have a long and storied history together. Sakaguchi is of course known as the main creator behind Final Fantasy, while Uematsu has composed some of the series’ very best musical moments, but the duo worked together on other one-offs as well, from Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey to the upcoming Fantasian: Neo Dimension.
In an interview with a J-Wave radio show called Tokyo M.A.A.D spin, Sakaguchi reportedly confirms that the winning duo is now working on a dark fantasy game together that’s currently in development at his post-Square Enix studio Mistwalker. (Thanks to Twitterer Genki for the spot.)
Sakaguchi reportedly explained that “composing the full soundtrack is a bit difficult for Uematsu-san,” though he’ll be contributing to the unnamed game’s OST in some form.
Uematsu himself recently said he was going to “cut back” on video game work to pursue “the music I want to make,” since banging out the dozens of tunes that go into long JRPGs is a “time commitment,” to say the least. “Everybody calm down! There seems to be some misunderstanding, but I’m not retiring from video game music work,” he clarified at the time. “I would like to continue to work on jobs such as one theme song.”
Fantasian: Neo Dimension, a re-release of the duo’s lovely Apple Arcade adventure, is escaping its mobile prison cell and coming to all consoles and PC on December 5.
You might find some of the duo’s incredible work on our best JRPG games of all time list.