Lunar

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www.hardcoregaming101.net/lunar-the-silver-star/
www.hardcoregaming101.net/lunar-eternal-blue/

Two of the standout RPGs from the 16-bit, both initially released on the Sega CD.

This series of articles has been sitting around on my computer for nearly four years, so I've finally gotten them all together! In the next couple of days, we'll also be posting reviews for the other two Lunar games (i.e. the bad ones).

[toei]

First, let me say I enjoyed the articles. Definitely a long time coming! I didn't know anything about Studio Alex.

 I notice a number of little mistakes, though - missing words, mostly, and a few extraneous commas. A few examples from the first few paragraphs:

Paragraph 1:
which often so tight it even affected the size of the script
-were often

Paragraph 2:
But Lunar was still one of the most ambitious, and most well-loved of these efforts
-No comma necessary before "and most"

Paragraph 3
English translations were typically poor, where Final Fantasy II‘s slapdash English writing, was accepted as a professional product
-to the point where, and no comma between "writing" and "was"

I know from experience that editing yourself is the hardest thing to do, because we read our own writing as we thought it up rather than how it is on the page. If you're interested, I wouldn't mind doing a quick round of corrections on those two, since this is a pretty major article and all. Listing everything in the forums is kind of a drag.


Also, it just struck me for the first time that Ramus is a lot like a young Taloon.

[KGRAMR]

I really need to try the series someday. I was going to burn a CD-R to play it but my Sega CD died years ago so i'll try it on PS1. Good article BTW

[Discoalucard]

Apr 4, 2018 22:45:01 GMT -5 toei said:

I know from experience that editing yourself is the hardest thing to do, because we read our own writing as we thought it up rather than how it is on the page. If you're interested, I wouldn't mind doing a quick round of corrections on those two, since this is a pretty major article and all. Listing everything in the forums is kind of a drag.

Yes please! You should see the other Lunar articles queued in the system too (I think).

[Amelia]

Awesome! Looking forward to reading the whole thing when I have more time.

For some fun trivia, technically Nall can participate in battle under very specific conditions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwIzdaOd0vk

[toei]

I've gone over those two and fixed what I caught. I'll take a look at the upcoming ones later, probably tomorrow.
EDIT - I did. Man, Dragon Song sounds like a perfect example of what not to do in RPG design, wherehas Magical School could probably be rescued by a hack drastically reducing the encounter rate.

[bladededge]

Both Silver Star and Eternal Blue have a generally happy, positive tone and outlook which doesn't seem to come up very often in JRPGs and makes them a joy to play. They just genuinely feel different from nearly everything else out there in the classic RPG realm. I think maybe Skies of Arcadia is the only thing that comes close?

In the 'making-of' features that came with the PSX Silver Star Complete and Eternal Blue complete, I believe Victor Ireland explicitly says that the actors from the game were from a community theater down the street from Working Designs HQ. I don't have access to my discs at the moment, but I'll try to remember to get a timestamp when I can.

I feel like Eternal Blue made a strong implict suggestion that the 'Blue Star' was in fact Earth, and Lunar was earth's moon? The edits to the frontier in Silver Star Complete even make it look like the moon's surface.

I've always maintained a personal canon that Althena, Zophar, and other entities from the Lunar series were something akin to the gods of Roger Zelazny's novels, particularly Creatures of Light and Darkness and Lord of Light. That is, 'sufficiently advanced' people in a science fiction far future, rather than a generic fantasy world. Althena the terraformer, Althena the entity jumping from body to body. Might be about as valid as Dark Side of the Rainbow, but it definitely adds an extra layer of depth to proceedings in the two games.

[kaoru]

Apr 5, 2018 13:30:57 GMT -5 bladededge said:

Both Silver Star and Eternal Blue have a generally happy, positive tone and outlook which doesn't seem to come up very often in JRPGs and makes them a joy to play. They just genuinely feel different from nearly everything else out there in the classic RPG realm. I think maybe Skies of Arcadia is the only thing that comes close?

I'd say the first Grandia, another GameArts game, is pretty similar in the fun childhood adventure feel. Until the plot shows up about 2/3 through it. Not unlike Lunar. Been a while, tho.

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Apr 5, 2018 0:57:38 GMT -5 toei said:

I did. Man, Dragon Song sounds like a perfect example of what not to do in RPG design, wherehas Magical School could probably be rescued by a hack drastically reducing the encounter rate.

Yeah, Magic School could be salvageable if the fan community waded into it. It's still not a patch on the real games but would be a fun diversion. But the game is absolutely unplayable on a regular Saturn - I was only able to tolerate it by using the fast-forward function on emulators. On the other hand, Dragon Song is a lost cause even if you did fix its mechanical failings.

Anyway, the first Grandia may as well be Lunar 3. It doesn't QUITE have the same look or style, but it's pretty similar in a lot of ways, including a logical progression of its battle system, and in the way that it's a coming-of-age adventure. Even has some similar characters and plot twists.

The pieces on the later games get into it further, but basically, there were production issues with the Saturn version of Magic School Lunar which caused a lot of bad blood between Game Arts and Studio Alex, which resulted in the series being a legal quagmire for a number of years. During that time is when Game Arts created Grandia by themselves.

[toei]

That explains the noticeable drop in the quality of the writing in Grandia VS Lunar. I'd always associated Game Arts with RPGs, but I guess they really weren't known for them until joining up with Studio Alex. They did make Zeliard, though.
Also, is this the first case of a pro writer being hired out to write a RPG? I know Sega hired the mangaka Makoto Ogino to write and co-direct King Colossus the same year.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Nice article, Lunar 2 is probably my fav 16-bit RPG. If you want to play the MCD original without the stat and graphics changes and with free saving, there's a restoration patch over at romhacking.net.

[Ganelon]

Great article for a series that reached the pinnacle of the traditional JRPG genre. A real shame that the friction between Studio Alex and Game Arts prevented a long-awaited Lunar 3.

SoMoGa actually released an update for Lunar Silver Star Story Touch a few years back that included remastered visuals and MFi controller support. Here's a link: toucharcade.com/2014/08/13/lunar-silver-star-story-touch-version-2-update/

It may be worth mentioning this update and including screenshots for comparison.

[Discoalucard]

The rest of these are up!

www.hardcoregaming101.net/magical-school-lunar/

www.hardcoregaming101.net/lunar-dragon-song/

I actually meant to so a supplementary section on the drama CDs and manga, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Will tack that on the end of Dragon Song in a bit.

Apr 5, 2018 21:40:15 GMT -5 Ganelon said:

Great article for a series that reached the pinnacle of the traditional JRPG genre. A real shame that the friction between Studio Alex and Game Arts prevented a long-awaited Lunar 3.

SoMoGa actually released an update for Lunar Silver Star Story Touch a few years back that included remastered visuals and MFi controller support. Here's a link: toucharcade.com/2014/08/13/lunar-silver-star-story-touch-version-2-update/

It may be worth mentioning this update and including screenshots for comparison.

Neat, I did not know this! Actually, my app of Silver Star Story had frozen for quite a long time updating, maybe it was hanging on this revision. I'll have to try again to see if I can actually get it to download.

[ResidentTsundere]

I was kind of curious about Lunar Walking School, but it doesn't sound that great.

[kaoru]

Apr 13, 2018 2:35:50 GMT -5 ResidentTsundere said:

I was kind of curious about Lunar Walking School, but it doesn't sound that great.

Walking School (which is the Game Gear version) is fine. I played it a while ago. Not amazing, but decent cute, fun and quick, while pretty simple. It's apparently Magic School (which is the Saturn version) that's horrible.