Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
During the production of "Final Fantasy Type-0", the development team explored the possibility of a high-definition port of the game. The idea never went beyond experimentation as the team was focused on keeping the game as a portable experience. The team also experimented with a sequel on eighth generation consoles, but production was halted when the development team were transferred to "Final Fantasy XV". After some time working on "XV", original director Hajime Tabata decided to develop "Type-0 HD" for eighth-generation consoles. The game began development in mid-2012, around the same time "XV" was shifted onto PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One. Tabata came on board in July of that year as director and producer, though his involvement was fairly minor due to his directing duties for "XV". The main development was handled by HexaDrive, who had previously collaborated successfully with Square Enix on "The 3rd Birthday", and had developed the high-definition remasters of "Ōkami" and "". The remaster was intended as an incentive for "Final Fantasy" players in both Japan and the west to purchase eighth generation consoles before "XV"s release. The original plan was for a port to both the seventh generation PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, and eighth generation consoles. After the PS4 proved popular at the 2013 Tokyo Game Show, and as Tabata had no development experience with seventh generation console hardware, the team focused on the eighth generation versions. According to art director Yusuke Naora, moving from the PlayStation Portable to eighth-generation hardware proved hard for the team. Despite early claims, no version of "Type-0 HD" was developed for the PlayStation Vita. According to Tabata, this was due to difficulties in porting between console and Vita development environments, and his wish for a playing experience he could only envision on home consoles.
Music of the Final Fantasy series
"Final Fantasy X-2" (2003), was the first direct video game sequel to any "Final Fantasy" game. Despite having composed the majority of the soundtrack for "Final Fantasy X", Nobuo Uematsu did not contribute any music to the project. No tracks from "X" or other games in the series were used in the game. In an attempt to make a different style of music for the game than previous franchise titles, Square brought Noriko Matsueda and Takahito Eguchi on board to compose the music for "X-2", as the developers felt they were the "perfect fit" to incorporate a "pop" style into the music. The game includes two songs with vocalized elements, one of which, the J-Pop song "real Emotion", was written by Ken Kato and composed by Kazuhiro Hara. The other, J-Pop ballad "1000 Words", was written by scenario writers Kazushige Nojima and Daisuke Watanabe. Matsueda and Eguchi composed and arranged the track. Both songs were sung by Jade Villalon from Sweetbox in the English version of the game, and are available as bonus tracks on the Japanese release of her album "Adagio". In the Japanese version of the game both the songs were sung by Kumi Koda and were released as a single entitled "real Emotion/1000 no Kotoba". Koda also released her own English versions of the songs on her CD single "Come with Me", with slightly different versions of the lyrics than Jade. In addition to "Come with Me", the collection of music for "Final Fantasy X-2" includes the two-disc soundtrack album, a piano album, a soundtrack album for the "Final Fantasy X-2 International + Last Mission" version of the game, a single for the song "Eternity ~ Memory of Lightwaves", and a set of three singles themed around the three main characters of the game.