Final Fantasy VIII (ファイナルファンタジーVIII, Fainaru Fantajī Eito?) 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, removing magic point-based spell-casting and the first title to consistently use realistically proportioned characters.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 development of Final Fantasy VIII began in 1997, during the English localization process of Final Fantasy VII. 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. The game was positively received by critics and was a commercial success. It was voted the 22nd-best game of all time by readers of the Japanese magazine Famitsu. 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 as of March 31, 2003.