Luckily, Square and their friends decided to do exactly that, and the events have transpired in much the same way as the above-detailed hypothetical situation. As I sit here typing to myself, the tiny plastic block containing the ludicrously named Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is encased in post-consumer recycled waste materials and either hurtling or preparing to hurtle over the ocean in a pressurized husk, a journey which, once it concludes, will result in the game cartridge being inserted directly into my slot.
One of the initial DLC songs that is already available is Ride On from Final Fantasy VIII. It's the airship song! I love that song and will buy it immediately. When I was a little younger I imported the soundtrack from FFVIII well before the game's English release. It was four goddamned discs! I remember being so excited to get it in the mail, and I had spent like $35 on it, and when I got it my friend was there to see me open this weird Japanese envelope. And I pulled it out, and it said Final Fantasy VIII on it, and I hadn't told him what I was getting, and he was all like "HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT AAH AAAAAH!!!!" and then I was like, yeah I bet the music is so good, and he was like let's go home and play it, and I was like why do we need to wait till we get home, I'll play it in the car, and he was like what? how do you. And then it hit him, that cruel truth. I had imported a soundtrack and not the game. This was the first moment I realized I was not like the other boys.
I listened to that four-disc soundtrack about 100 times before I ever played the game, knowing virtually nothing about the story. I constructed an entire narrative in my mind, based solely on listening to the songs consecutively and imagining what could be happening to justify the action. The story I made up in my head ended up being about three shakes of a tallywhacker better than what the final game was like, but those songs are now imprinted on my very soul (and the FFVIII soundtrack remains seriously underrated due to the general "this game was sort of pee-ish" impression many sad piles of honk have of it). This is just one story I have about the music of a single Final Fantasy game, something that made an incredible impact on me. I have stories like this for almost every Final Fantasy game, and I bet lots of other people do too. Now we can listen to it all again, while tapping on a plastic screen with a novelty stylus.
Man, do you know what is even sorta trippin' me out about this game? I hear some of the background movies show dialog windows that have the original Japanese text in them, and the series timeline you progress through has the Japanese logos and the Japanese release years. They also say that the vocals for the Final Fantasy IX theme song are the original Japanese ones. As a guy who knew that the U.S. release of Final Fantasy IV was a butchered murder scene from a time dating all the way back to when Hey Arnold first began airing, I couldn't be happier that they're disregarding "localization" in favor of a more literal conversion for this game. The nostalgia I have for the games stays with me in a "game experience" sense, but my love for the series transcends formative youth experiences and jumps straight ahead to Real Series Chronology, as it should be. My love is for The Series, not "my nostalgic experiences with the series," well, it is a little.
Some Internet toilet floaters seem to be a bit chuffed that Square Nix decided to forego mutilating the game for us purty-talkers, but when you think back on it, I'm sure there were plenty of perfectly reasonable reasons for it. For one, the videos probably would have been a real pain in the dong to re-record using the English versions. That is, they would have been, if there were even original English source games in existence that they could record from, seeing as how games like Final Fantasy III never even got an English release using its original NES assets and they'd have had to bung up some DS remake garbage in the background, which would have caused me to literally squirt fully-grown adult Chocobos out of my masculine implement. Another reason could be that matching the timelines and logos for the European version and the American version separately would have been impossible and hilarious, and we'd have games like Final Fantasy VI being the Game Boy Advance version and chronologically placed on the timeline after Final Fantasy X in the UK.
But soft, what about my precious Memories of Life lyrics? The only thing I can come up with on that is that the notes on-screen were timed with the Japanese cadence of the vocals, and substituting the English version in there would have screwed up our critical chains. Honestly the English lyrics are pretty ridiculous anyway, maybe it is better in Japanese where the sounds do not instantly transform into meaning.
Anyway I'm losin' it over here, these few days cannot pass quickly enough. I wanna equip little doo-dads on my cute dudes and dudettes and trade some Brown Notes via StreetPass. I want to sit on the train with my headphones on and then look across the aisle to the old lady, scared out of her mind at my very presence, then lock eyes with her, and mouth two English words she cannot possibly understand:
ride on