This music, for instance has a pretty startling effect on me.
A bit of background on the music and the composer for a start...
Nobuo Uematsu... Nobou's story starts at the age of about 11 or 12, when he started playing piano. Self-taught, he later joined several amateur bands, playing keyboard, and took a part-time job in a music shop. In the shop he was approached by a member of the Square team, who commissioned him to compose some pieces for their latest project. He took the job, considering it as occasional work on the side to his part-time job. He provided soundtracks for several relatively unsuccessful Square games until the publication of Final Fantasy, which both saved Square from bankruptcy and paved the way for Nobuo's career.
My own first impression of Nobuo's work, and indeed, Final Fantasy, was in Final Fantasy VII, widely considered to be one of the best games ever, and the best of the Final Fantasy series. This was the first Final Fantasy to be rendered in 3D, and also was the first to be published on disc, rather than cartridge, as part of Square's move from Nintendo to Playstation.
The piece of music in question (Aeris' Theme - or Aerith's Theme for anyone outside Europe) is particularly striking due to it's placement in the game. Anyone still reading this piece is more than likely a Final Fantasy fan, or is well versed in the spoilers lurking around the internet, so I'll plough forward with reckless abandon. The music is used as Aeris dies. My initial reaction was "Fuck. I think I had some pretty decent materia on her", which was then replaced by "Meh, she was my weakest character, couldn't give a shit." Eventually both of these were replaced by a realisation that this was the end of the character (disturbing xkcd-style patches and restarting the game aside), and that she wasn't coming back.
As sad as it is, I was pretty struck by this (though I was 9 years old, I was surprised by everything). Now when I hear the introduction to the song there's a mixture of emotions... The strongest one would have to be sadness. And it's not sadness at the fact that a character in a game had died, and the effect it had on the rest of the game (and the especially eerie boss fight afterwards . Eerie due to the absence of the normal boss music). When I hear the piano I think about how sheltered I was that, at 9 years old, I had my first real introduction to death, and how lucky I was not to have experienced a death in my family, or even extended family. It was really one of those "loss of innocence" moments... And I think the saddest thing about it is that it was a lonely one. Rather than being something that would bring people together, this was for me alone, and the characters on the screen were the only ones who could relate to the troubling thoughts brewing in my head...
Until my brother caught up with me in the game.
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