Music Edit

Main article: Final Fantasy VIII: Original Soundtrack

Cover of the Final Fantasy VIII: Original Soundtrack.

The game's soundtrack was Nobuo Uematsu's 23rd work for Square. Released on four
compact discs by DigiCube in Japan, and by Square EA in North America, a special
orchestral arrangement of selected tracks from the game (arranged by Shirō Hamaguchi)
was released under the title FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC: Final Fantasy VIII, and a
collection of piano arrangements (performed by Shinko Ogata) was released under the
title Piano Collections: Final Fantasy VIII.
The Final Fantasy VIII theme song, "Eyes on Me", which Uematsu wrote and produced for
Hong Kong pop diva Faye Wong, sold a record-breaking 400,000 copies, placing it as the
best-selling video game music disc in Japan until the release of "Hikari" by Hikaru Utada
for Kingdom Hearts. It won "Song of the Year (Western Music)" at the 14th Annual Japan
Gold Disc Awards in 1999, the first time a song from a video game won the honor.
Another popular song from the score is "Liberi Fatali," a Latin choral piece played during
the game's intro. The sorceress theme "FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC" was mixed
with "Liberi Fatali" and played during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens during the
women's synchronized swimming event.
The Black Mages, a band that arranged music from Final Fantasy video games into rock
music, arranged five pieces from Final Fantasy VIII. These are "Force Your Way" from The
Black Mages published in 2003, "The Man with the Machine Gun" and "Maybe I'm a Lion",
from The Skies Above, published in 2004, and "The Extreme" and "Premonition"
from Darkness and Starlight.

Development Edit

Yoshitaka Amano's renditions of Squall and

Seifer, though not representative of their in
game appearances, still show their visual
similarities, most noticeably the scars across
both character's faces, each given by the other
in battle.
Final Fantasy VIII follows Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII in displaying a world with
high technology, diverging from the more traditional medieval feel of the original titles. Final
Fantasy VIII diverges further still by focusing the story on the characters over the world
events. Character designer Tetsuya Nomura wanted the game to have a "school days" feel.
Because director Yoshinori Kitase already had a story in mind in which the main characters
were the same age, the idea worked. Thus, they created the concept of military school-like
academies in which the students would train to become mercenaries.
Further on, scenario writer Kazushige Nojima planned for the two playable parties featured
in the game—Squall's present day group and Laguna's group of twenty years in the past—
to contrast with one another. Leading to Laguna's group consisting of characters in their
late twenties and have a lot of combat and teamwork experience, while Squall's party was
young and inexperienced, and Squall himself not initially able to understand the value of
friendship. The fan reception to the story of Final Fantasy VII influenced the way Nojima
wrote Final Fantasy VIII, and thus no main character dies, and the game does not rely so
heavily on flashbacks to deliver information. Laguna's time was intended to comprise the
first half of the game, but a lot of his story ended up being cut.[5]
With Final Fantasy VII, the main protagonist (Cloud Strife) had a reserved nature that led
Nojima to include scenarios in which the player can select Cloud's responses to certain
situations and dialogue. With Final Fantasy VIII, Nojima wanted to give players actual
insight into what the protagonist was thinking and feeling, even while the other characters
remained uninformed. This led to Squall's "internal monologues" that appear in transparent
text boxes throughout the game.

Kitase also expressed desire to give the game a deliberately foreign, largely

European atmosphere. As part of Releases Edit

PC version Edit

The game launcher of the 2013 re-release version.

Final Fantasy VIII was the second Final Fantasy game to be ported to a Windows platform.
It was released on December 31, 1999 and re-released on December 5, 2013 for Steam.

The Steam version comes with several in-game enhancements, including a speed-up
option to fast-forward through cutscenes and FMVs, as well as built-in cheats, such as
"Battle assist", which makes battles almost impossible to lose.

Similar to Final Fantasy VII, the re-release version comes with the Magic Booster feature
that allows the player to boost their characters' magics to 100. Achievements and cloud
save data storage are also available. Windowed mode and high resolution displays (up to
1920x1080 @ 60Hz) are now supported. However, the game still uses the original midi
tracks from the 1999 version, rather than the PlayStation version music, unlike the 2012 re-
released Final Fantasy VII that has received a musical update. Chocobo World is playable
directly from the launcher after booting up Final Fantasy VIII.

System requirements Edit

These system requirements are for the re-released version.
 Minimum Recommended

Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows Vista/7/8

OS
XP/Vista/7/8 (32/64-bit) (32/64-bit)

Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU 3GHz

Processor 1Core CPU 2GHz or faster
or faster

Memory 1 GB RAM 4 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT or

Graphics DirectX 9.0c compatible card
faster

Hard Drive 4 GB available space 4 GB available space

Sound Card Integrated sound chip or more Integrated sound chip or more

DirectX 9.0c DirectX 9.0c

Others
Square Enix account Square Enix account

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered Edit

See also: Final Fantasy VIII version differences

The remastered version was announced on June 10, 2019 at the E3 event, with graphical
improvements including character models and textures. The game retains its original 4:3
aspect ratio in both FMVs and real-time graphic rendering. The music is unchanged from
the original PlayStation version.[10] The remaster was made in cooperation with the French
developer and publisher Dotemu.[11]
The initial plan was to release the remaster on current-generation hardware with
unchanged graphics. However, as Final Fantasy VIII celebrated