Nobuo Uematsu and Yoshitaka Amano Team Up to Bring Two People Together

Those two names might not mean much to you at first glance if you don’t keep track of historic game developers, but you would recognize their work in a heartbeat. Both of these men were reasons the Final Fantasy franchise was (and is) so vastly successful, with Uematsu composing the most memorable scores in gaming and Amano providing extremely rich concept art and character design. Needless to say, getting these two men involved in a project is a recipe for its success and someone actually got them to collaborate on his proposal.

EGM and 1UP editor-in-chief James Mielke (aka “Milkman”) sat down with both Uematsu and Amano for what they thought were simple press interviews. Much to their surprise, Mielke asked some pretty ballsy requests of these two artistic legends.

He asked Uematsu-san to plunk out a little ditty on his piano that could somehow be playing when he proposed to his girlfriend. Well, Uematsu took the request seriously and managed to compose a breathtaking 30-second, loop-friendly melody. Given the beauty of the piece, now titled “The Milky Way,” Mielke decided his previously intended Say Anything presentation wouldn’t cut it and instead had a music box made to immortalize the song.

Amano-san was tapped to design the all important ring for the occasion, and it turned out beautifully. Mielke had the ring cast in platinum with a ruby inset to create Amano’s vision of two entwined arms wrapped around a heart. Sadly, the actual ring wasn’t ready at the time of the proposal so a loner ring, inset with the ruby, was used and presented alongside Amano’s drawing instead.

As if this wasn’t enough for the single most romantic moment a gaming journalist is capable of, he also managed to time the proposal with his beloved’s birthday in a quite B&B a few miles south of Paris. Oh, and the best news of all: she said yes.

Congratulations, James and Joy.

So, on behalf of hopeless romantic male gamers everywhere, thanks Milkman for setting the bar so impossibly high. As if we didn’t have enough trouble finding a date already.

The full story (complete with video featuring Nobuo’s composition of “The Milky Way”) can be read at Milkman’s personal blog at 1up.com.