Audio -
The Aria di Mezzo Carattere. The soundtrack for Final Fantasy VI is the work of long-time series contributor Nobuo Uematsu. The score consists of themes for each major character and location, as well as music for standard battles, fights with boss enemies and for special cutscenes. The extensive use of leitmotif is one of the defining points of the audio tracks. The Aria di Mezzo Carattere is one of the latter tracks, played during a cutscene involving an opera performance. This track features an unintelligible synthesized "voice" that harmonizes with the melody, as technical limitations for the SPC700 sound format chip prevented the use of an actual vocal track (although some developers eventually figured out how to overcome the limitation a few years later). The orchestral album Final Fantasy VI Grand Finale features an arranged version of the aria, using Italian lyrics performed by Svetla Krasteva with an orchestral accompaniment. This version is also found in the ending full motion video of the game's Sony PlayStation rerelease, with the same lyrics but a different musical arrangement. In addition, the album Orchestral Game Concert 4 includes an extended version of the opera arranged and conducted by Kōsuke Onozaki and performed by the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra featuring Wakako Aokimi, Tetsuya Ōno and Hiroshi Kuroda on vocals.[40] It was also performed at the "More Friends" concert[41] at the Gibson Amphitheatre in 2005 using a new English translation of the lyrics, an album of which is now available.[42] Dancing Mad, accompanying the game's final battle with Kefka, is 17 minutes long and contains a lengthy organ cadenza. The ending theme, Balance Is Restored, reintroduces various motives from the game, lasting over 21 minutes. The original score was released on three Compact Discs in Japan as Final Fantasy VI: Original Sound Version.[43] A version of this album was later released in North America as Final Fantasy III: Kefka's Domain, available exclusively through mail order from Square.[44][45] Additionally, Final Fantasy VI: Grand Finale features eleven tracks from the game, arranged by Shiro Sagisu and Tsuneyoshi Saito and performed by the Ensemble Archi Della Scala and Orchestra Synfonica di Milano (Milan Symphony Orchestra).[46] Piano Collections: Final Fantasy VI, a second arranged album, features thirteen tracks from the game, performed for piano by Reiko Nomura.[47] More recently, "Dancing Mad," the final boss theme from Final Fantasy VI, has been performed at Play! A Video Game Symphony in Stockholm, Sweden on June 2, 2007, by the group Machinae Supremacy.[48] Graphics Yoshitaka Amano, another long-time contributor to the Final Fantasy series, returned as the image and character designer. Amano provided concept sketches to the programmers, who converted them into the sprites featured in the game due to technical limitations of the time.[49] Liberties were taken during the conversion, such as changing Terra Branford's hair from blonde to green, and changing Celes Chere's outfit entirely. Amano also designed the title logo. The graphics were directed by Tetsuya Takahashi (graphic chief[1]), Hideo Minaba (background graphics[1]), Kazuko Shibuya (object graphic[1]) and Tetsuya Nomura (designer for some characters[1]). In the full motion videos (FMVs) produced for the game's PlayStation rerelease, the character designs featured are based on Amano's designs. Though it was not the first game to utilize the Super Nintendo's Mode 7 graphics, Final Fantasy VI made more extensive use of them than its predecessors. For instance, unlike both Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy V, the world map is rendered in Mode 7, which lends a somewhat three-dimensional perspective to an otherwise two-dimensional game.[50][51][52]
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