Art & Creativity Quote by Nobuo Uematsu

Uematsu is asking for permission, not just applause: permission for game music to be treated as music, full stop. The phrasing is tellingly careful. “We hope” spreads the burden beyond the lone composer-genius myth and onto a community of creators, fans, and producers who’ve all had to argue that what happens inside a console can still count as art. “Eventually” admits the uphill timeline: game scores weren’t simply overlooked, they were structurally dismissed as functional sound, tech garnish, kid stuff.

The key move is “personally prove.” He’s not claiming game music already moves people (it obviously does); he’s pointing to the gatekeepers who don’t believe it until it’s staged in the right room, for the right audience, under the right lighting. The subtext is concert hall politics. An “occasion” isn’t just a performance, it’s a cultural trial: orchestral arrangements, formal venues, critics in seats, legitimacy conferred by tradition. Uematsu’s career sits right at that pivot, when JRPG melodies traveled from 16-bit limitations to symphonic tours and arena sing-alongs, forcing a rethink of where emotional authority comes from.

“Impress” and “move” make a strategic pairing. Impress is for skeptics who value complexity, craft, pedigree. Move is for everyone else: the players who carry these themes like memory triggers, tied to grief, triumph, adolescence, and time spent in invented worlds that still felt real. Uematsu isn’t begging to be taken seriously; he’s forecasting the moment game music stops needing an asterisk.