Music of The Sa Ga Series - SaGa

The original SaGa series consists of Makai Toushi Sa·Ga (lit. "Warrior in the Tower of the Spirit World ~ Sa·Ga"), released for the Game Boy in 1989, Sa·Ga2: Hihō Densetsu ("Sa·Ga2 ~ The Treasure Legend"), and Jikuu no Hasha ~ Sa·Ga 3 ("The Ruler of Time and Space ~ Sa·Ga3 "), both of which were released for the Game Boy in 1990. The three games were published in North America as The Final Fantasy Legend, Final Fantasy Legend II, and Final Fantasy Legend III. The original releases spawned only one album to date, a combined soundtrack album for all three games. Another album was released in Japan on September 9, 2009, SaGa 2 Hihou Densetsu Goddess of Destiny Original Soundtrack, which is the soundtrack album for the Nintendo DS remake of SaGa 2, SaGa 2 Hihou Densetsu Goddess of Destiny. The soundtrack for the DS remake of SaGa 3, SaGa 3 Jikuu no Hasha Shadow or Light Original Soundtrack, was released on January 12, 2011.

The music of SaGa 1 was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, and that of SaGa 2 by Uematsu and Kenji Ito, while the music of SaGa 3 was composed by Ryuji Sasai and Chihiro Fujioka. Uematsu has stated that while SaGa 1's music could be made of better quality, the emphasis was on enjoying the game, and not solely its appearance or sound. The Game Boy's sound hardware was different than that of the Famicom, which Uematsu was used to composing for at the time, with new stereo and waveforms and only three notes; as a result, Uematsu struggled with deciding how to work with these, developing new themes for the music in the process despite SaGa 1's director Akitoshi Kawazu's desire to have the music be in the same vein as Square's preceding Final Fantasy titles. Uematsu has stated that the Game Boy was a system he would like to compose for again. SaGa 2 was the first soundtrack or album that Kenji Ito worked on.