While the English-speaking world has yet to be assured of a localization, December 13 will see the release of Chocobo’s Dungeon: The Labyrinth of Forgotten Time for the Nintendo Wii in Japan. The Square Enix dungeon crawler is the direct descendant of two Playstation titles and its music launched the careers of composers Masashi Hamauzu and Kumi Tanioka. The upcoming title will be scored by Joedown Studio, the music production company based in Hokkaido responsible for the soundtrack to Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. [More about Joedown’s remixes of Uematsu’s tunes after the jump.]

The Chocobo Tales original soundtrack might have been destined for collector’s item status, both for the quality of its remixed Final Fantasy tracks and the difficulty of procuring them. Since the item is digital and accessible only by downloading its contents from iTunes Japan, there will be no ebay bidding on it. Joedown Studio is an independent music studio and their arrangements of the canonical Squaresoft tunes has shown careful consideration for the material, some of which has undergone numerous revisions already.”Chocobo Village” is a deserved tribute to Masashi Hamauzu’s spirited soundtrack to the original Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon for the Playstation. It segues briefly into Hamauzu’s “Chocobo’s Happy Christmas” song, which was released separately from the game as a promotional item around the holiday season. “Battle Scene from Final Fantasy I” faithfully renders the iconic fight song in a driving keyboard arrangement. “Fiddle de Chocobo” resurrects the hillbilly treatment from Final Fantasy VII, while “The Book of Sealings” from Final Fantasy V is the closest the album comes to moodiness, with a higher tempo keeping the song fresh.

While the bandwidth of the Nintendo DS sound card puts a damper on the instrumental richness of the synthetic tracks, the album gets some mileage from riffing within the constraints of those limitations. Take for instance the nod to the 8-bit sound card, “Retro de Chocobo.” As a harbinger of things to come, the Hokkaido group’s work on Tales has a lot going for it. The quality of the upcoming project by Joedown can be ascertained by visiting the official website for Labyrinth of Forgotten Time and clicking on the music icon for three samples.

Having heard what they can do with the DS, the arrangements for the Wii Nintendo console are looking to be this season’s definitive Square Enix music arrangement project. Something perhaps to hold over us RPG nostalgia fans until the Black Mages swing into action with album three in ‘08.

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