This week in North America and Europe, the remastered versions of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 will be available to anyone who owns a PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Vita. HD graphics and the International Version content aren’t the only things added to these remasters, with Square Enix also revamping the music.

As Music Director Keiji Kawamori told Polygon, “When it comes to remastering the Final Fantasy X soundtrack, I felt that the only way to achieve the quality that the fans would be satisfied with was to have the original team members work on it.”

Originally, the plan was to have Final Fantasy X HD give you the option to switch between the old and new background music, but as Kawamori explained, that didn’t end up happening for the final product:

Because the original PlayStation 2 version used a built-in tone generator with limited memory capacity, I wanted to fully re-master the soundtrack using current technology in order to match the HD re-mastered graphics. At first, our plan was to allow players to switch between the original and re-mastered soundtracks while playing the game. However, we encountered issues along the way that unfortunately prohibited us from implementing this feature.

Legendary Final Fantasy Composer Nobuo Uematsu also said of the soundtrack remaster, “If we’re remastering the soundtrack, we might as well change it dramatically than conservatively, right?”

Have you had a chance to listen to any of the remastered music yet? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments below.