Final Fantasy VIII is a
role-playing video game released for the
PlayStation in 1999 and
Windows-based
personal computers in 2000. The game became available on
PlayStation Network as a PSone Classics title in 2009. It was developed and published by
Square (now
Square Enix) as the
Final Fantasy series' eighth title. The game follows the story of a group of mercenaries, who are part of an organization named "SeeD". Their main goal in the game is to stop a sorceress from the future (named Ultimecia) from compressing time. The music was scored by
Nobuo Uematsu, series regular, and in a series first, the theme music is a vocal piece, "
Eyes on Me", performed by
Faye Wong. Thirteen weeks after its release, Final Fantasy VIII had earned more than US$50 million in sales, making it the fastest-selling Final Fantasy title of all time until
Final Fantasy XIII, a multi-platform release. The game had shipped 8.15 million copies worldwide by March 31, 2003.