Music, Mediation, Memory: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy

This chapter explores musically mediated memory in Square Enix’s Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy series, focusing on Nobuo Uematsu’s music for the main franchise Final Fantasy games as repurposed for rhythm-game mechanics. The author argues that the shift from music as an aesthetic feature of games to a mechanical one implicates a particular activation of memory and meanings related to music, genre, and play. Not only does the “rhythm-gamification” of familiar tunes change the player’s relationship to video game music, but it also reawakens and re-inscribes memories of play through processes of "remediation." By bringing Uematsu’s iconic music to the foreground of the game, Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy makes memory and nostalgia a means of interaction.