Japanese release: March 1999
North American release: September 9th 1999

Like past Final Fantasies, the game was produced by Sakaguchi Hironobo and the music composed by Uematsu Nobuo.

The demo version of Final Fantasy VIII (the Dollet Mission) that was packaged with Brave Fencer Musashi and the August issue of OPM (Official Playstation Magazine) has quite a few little differences from the final version.
1) Rinoa is very quiet in the demo because she actually doesn't show up until later in the game. The Dollet Mission begins with just Seifer, Squall and Zell, and Selphie joins you mid-mission. That means the had to edit the FMV scenes to completely replace Rinoa with Selphie.
2) The SeeD trainees are wearing their SeeD uniforms as opposed to their casual clothes, which is much more appropriate.
3) The battle system has remain pretty much unchanged, except you will be able to draw 5-7 uses per magic stock rather than the demo's annoying 1-3.
4) The introduction music has been changed. (Apparently when the demo was released in Japan some Japanese fans noticed that the music was similar to the theme from The Rock.
5) Of course, the game does have a better menu than just the vibration option so you will be able to heal, equip etc. between battles.
6) The enemy bestiary for the Dollet area has been completely redone.
7) The time limit for the escape to the beach has been doubled to 30 minutes, which is kind of ridiculous. Who needs that much time?

The game is four discs (although the fourth is the very end of the game)and comes with a mini-walkthrough.

"Eyes on Me" was sung by Faye Wong.