In poking around for that Genesis Mini 2 post, I discovered a ResetEra thread (I know, but bear with me) which delivered some info on how the Lunar franchise is regarded at its current owner, GungHo:
The poster is Robert Boyd from Zeboyd Games, creators of the solid Sega CD tribute Cosmic Star Heroine (among other titles), so the statement is credible. The info is "a few years" old, and this very well might have been something GungHo just made up to turn down a non-Japanese studio seeking to take over a Japanese franchise, but it's the most recent reliable info we have.
This prompted a followup post, though, from an unnamed colleague of his who seems to be a U.S. video game executive (they claim to have pitched a concept for a new Lunar game Boyd had to GungHo numerous times). They offer their own rationale for why the Lunar IP isn't active:
There's also a bit about Metacritic scores that I didn't clip because they don't even have the scores right, and I'm not in the business of knowingly disseminating false info here, especially given how excruciatingly hard it is to get bad info out of the Lunar fandom.
I laid into this post pretty hard, to the point where I found myself subsequently wondering: was I being fair? So I took some time to reflect upon my words, and I came to the conclusion: yes, of course I am wholly correct, and there is no need to revise my initial impression whatsoever. All right, the post kind of set me off, but I think there's reason to be skeptical.
Let's examine each assertion in turn here:
- The Japanese execs believe that a Lunar without Game Arts founder Takeshi Miyaji is doomed to fail and can't replicate his magic - that the late Miyaji was as crucial to Lunar as Hideo Kojima is to Metal Gear. The Kojima idea is ridiculous and deserves rejection outright. For one, Lunar has a clear team of strong creatives identified with the franchise - Kei Shigema for story, Toshiyuki Kubooka for character design & art, Noriyuki Iwadare for music, etc. For another, if you're going to put one of those creatives in the role of "defining auteur," it would inarguably have to be Kei Shigema. Putting Takeshi Miyaji in that role is unreasonable even for an executive to believe.
The question becomes, then, how much of Lunar's success would be attributed to Miyaji by Japanese execs. Miyaji is nebulously credited as a "designer" on the original Lunars, and unlike the more renowned members of the Lunar team listed above, there's not much about his contributions out there. I see random Reddit stuff saying "gameplay," which makes sense considering his job title and what's not covered by other personnel, but let's level here - while Lunar's gameplay is functional to good, it isn't remotely what distinguishes the series.
Takeshi's brother and Game Arts co-founder Yoichi, who is credited in the also-nebulous producer role on Lunar projects, actually is the one who's more commonly speaking out in interviews. (He has the final slot in the slate of interviews in the SSS Newtype mook, bookending Shigema's leading slot, and is giving interviews on Lunar with relatively frequency in Mega Drive Fan and other publications.) Now, if it were Yoichi being credited with Lunar, I could see his fellow executives thinking, oh, of course the producer was really the one who made this project a success; screw the creatives. The "designer," though? Yes, respect for those who have passed carries significant weight. It's more plausible, though, that this is the bitter conclusion of someone who couldn't convince Japanese execs to give their friend their dream job - oh, they're all hung up on their perfect colleague who's long gone and won't make way for the real geniuses, etc.
Plus: come on. Regardless of nationality, these are executives. When did reverence for anybody or anything ever stop an executive in pursuit of bucks? - The Japanese execs believe that Dragon Song proved a Lunar game can't be successful without Miyaji. The invocation of Dragon Song made me very suspicious that this was just fan speculation. Obsessing over the inconsequential Dragon Song as the Source of All Ills in the Franchise is a very Lunar fan thing to do. Also, I thought, there have been successful Lunar games after Dragon Song, such as Harmony and the mobile remake - and, as pandorkful points out, executives adooooooore their remakes.
Back up, though. Do we (meaning: I) know that Harmony was successful? I'm sure there are Japanese numbers out there in the ether, but to my knowledge, we don't have any global sales figures (VGChartz isn't reliable). Determining Harmony's success is complicated by the Eternal Blue rights situation, which would have been a roadblock to doing a sequel regardless of sales, so we can't use the lack of a sequel as a barometer of success. Now, the team behind Harmony was obviously crying to do a Four Heroes Lunar 3. They didn't get to do that (thankfully). Can we use that to gauge success? Again, there are complicating factors: TPTB might have felt odd about jumping right from 1 to 3, or about entrusting this team with a new Lunar, or about the greater outlay required for a sequel. Harmony seems to have been popular enough in its day, but, again, that's a subjective assessment. As for the mobile version: Lord, who knows.
Which brings us back to Dragon Song, which is the last new Lunar game. The post places undue emphasis on Dragon Song being representative of the series, and that's a very executive-dumb conclusion. I still have a hard time making the jump here, though. While its failure might have contributed to a perception of Lunar as irrelevant (though surely someone, even an executive, would dimly realize that it failed because it was a slipshod production, not because of the name?), and while the multimedia push they attempted for the 32-bit Magic School not working out how they wanted might have helped cement an idea of non-duology Lunar games being tough sells, I have difficulty believing that the performance of a 15+-year-old spinoff in a franchise that's had higher-profile releases since would be the defining factor in it not seeing further activity - surely not over "old IP; irrelevant; also, a pain in the ass legally for a long time." - The Japanese execs believe the Metacritic scores prove a new Lunar game could never be any good. This, I completely reject. Metacritic-watching is a U.S. thing. Yes, it's a hobby among American execs, but Japan isn't going to use a U.S. site as the Definitive Barometer of Game Quality. Also, no one cares about Metacritic scores for 16- and 32-bit games (and you shouldn't, because many of the publications from the day don't have their scores extant in any online form and can't be included in the Aggregated Portrait of Popular Sentiment). Get serious.
Two additional thoughts. One: I enjoyed Cosmic Star Heroine, and I have no doubt that Robert Boyd would approach the task of creating a proper Lunar game with due respect. I'm glad he wasn't handed the Lunar franchise. Beyond any other factors, creating a Lunar game requires a certain...innocence and faith in the better nature of humanity that I'm not sure any American indie dev, or perhaps any individual on the face of God's green Earth, has it in them to give in 2022.
Two: I'm not finding it right now, but in either this thread or a connected one, Boyd shares a nice tale of meeting Victor Ireland at an E3, and him talking about how much he loved Lunar, and Ireland replacing a game that got stolen on him and even giving him an old Eternal Blue pin for good measure. He noted at the end how it was difficult to reconcile the man he met with Ireland's popular image. It recalled a memory of an indirect interaction I had with Ireland back in the day, when I posted casually on an AOL thread about having waited for a while for the Lunar manuals I'd ordered for my secondhand copies. Though it wasn't my intent to get his attention, Ireland had posted in the thread a few times, and evidently, he was still reading, as the manuals were in my mailbox the next week. All right, he was just sending something for which I had already paid, but it was evidence, like Boyd's story, that there is a dude who actually cares in that guy, and it makes me a bit wistful. I wish that dude were in charge of Ireland's actions more reliably.
In other news, this is the 28th post on this site that is in some way related to Lunar. Jesus.
You may have heard that the Sega CD Lunars aren't going to be on the Genesis Mini 2 novelty plug-'n'-play console. Or maybe you haven't; that's kind of the thrust of this post.
Actually, odds are good you haven't even heard of the Genesis Mini 2 itself. Let's back up.
Sega - Sega themselves, not the hired guns to which they've relegated previous efforts - got into the mini console game a few years ago, producing a mini Genesis with all the usual suspects from that Steam pack you probably have, plus a few significant bonuses like Castlevania: Bloodlines. This year, they announced a sequel to that effort, this time with Sega CD games included. As Working Designs' RPGs are by far the most fondly-remembered titles on that platform, the people who still care about mini consoles in 2022 were waiting with bated breath to see if the Lunars and Popful Mail (no one's waiting for Vay) would be included. Well, the final list of games for the U.S. version was just released, and, no, the WD games aren't on there. Which is a bit of a kick, since the Lunar titles (and Popful Mail) were announced for the Japanese version of the console, which prompted a new piece of Lunar fanart from Toshiyuki Kubooka. That's probably the biggest impact this decision is going to end up having so far as Lunar is concerned, or perhaps as far as anything is concerned.
Someone on Twitter who's apparently been translating promo material about this device claims to have gotten a secret DM from Victor Ireland they had to promise not to show to anybody (oh, boy) in which Ireland says they didn't offer him enough money. We can skip the debate as to whether this is authentic, because: I thoroughly believe that if they approached him at all, Sega did not offer Victor Ireland enough money. Despite the Sturm und Drang in enthusiast circles, this console is not a major initiative for Sega. Particularly the U.S. version: they're producing only 1/10 the quantities of the original machine. It ships from Japan - Sega of America isn't even involved in production. Sega's clearly not investing much outlay in this product.
That's the thing: this machine isn't going to sell to anyone outside of a very small bunch of enthusiasts, and Sega knows that. There's a variety of reasons for this:
- Nintendo's 8-bit and 16-bit libraries ended up viewed as more historically-significant and, bluntly, better than Sega's. We can debate the factuality of this (Robert Schmitz once said something to the effect that the best RPGs were on Nintendo but his favorites were on Sega, and I kind of echo that sentiment), but that's more or less where the historical assessment has fallen. Furthermore, the current popular conception of the 16-bit era (as opposed to the professional/historical perspective) casts Nintendo as unflaggingly dominant and Sega as an afterthought also-ran - which is completely incorrect but depresses general interest in the Genesis library.
- We live in a significantly different landscape re: streaming than when the NES Classic was released six years ago. One of the reasons the NES Classic was so popular at the time is that there wasn't an official way to enjoy an endless tap of classic Nintendo games on a modern platform. Now, we have exactly that from Switch Online. For classics from any outlet, in fact, streaming and handheld rerelease collections - be they on Switch, mobile, or, now, Steam Deck - are the current way to go. Anything you actually have to hook up to a TV seems dated and requiring undue effort.
- The image of Sega mini consoles has been dampened considerably by cruddy third-party releases. This is the least of the factors, but: remember the cheap AtGames console that popped up in Bed, Bath & Beyond with a ton of bootleg games on it? It was Sega's salvo after the NES classic, and they blew it. In fact, I'm pretty sure there was a number of drugstore Genesis plug-'n'-plays on the market even before the AtGames. Sega only cared to release a proper mini Genesis a few years later after the widely-panned AtGames machine and its slapped-together kin. This new mini comes a few years after that. By now, who cares?
- The Sega Genesis core library has been released to death. Nintendo's classic library is officially available only on Nintendo machines. Sega's classic library is available on various flavors of PC, Nintendo, Sony, Xbox, mobile - sometimes in multiple versions on the same platform (the 3D AM2 stuff, Sega Forever). It's good that Sega is committed to having these games widely available (or, more bluntly, to milking every single cent it can out of them). But it has devalued the library.
- The Sega Genesis core library has been released on and is available for peanuts in a solid format on Steam, the closest thing we have to a universal perma-platform. Yeah, that collection was released 12 years ago. It's still an excellent option for playing those games. You can get like 50 games for $10 on sale! It's delivered huge value for me over the years! It introduced me to Streets of Rage, Shining Force, Fatal Labyrinth, Golden Axe III! (Um, also Sword of Vermilion and Golden Axe II, but not every title can be a winner!) I have a copy of Phantasy Star II I can play whenever I want! Are there minor emulation hiccups? Those in the know assure us there are. You know what the people who are significantly bothered by that are gonna do? Emulate unofficially, using the software and settings of their liking.
The point is: Even if the Lunars were on the Genesis Mini 2, the Mini 2 is a niche product, and it wouldn't help get the games in front of a significantly greater number of people. Expensive-yet-inconvenient dedicated retro machines get a lot of press because they appeal to the type of enthusiasts who fill up game journalism. If you're deep enough into the scene to have even heard of the Genesis Mini 2, chances are you're perfectly capable of playing the Sega CD Lunars through unofficial emulation tailored to your preferences. Yes, if they'd gotten on the Genesis Mini 2, there might have been an article or podcast mention or two on the Sega CD titles, which might have sparked interest in a few readers or listeners. But widespread interest and an infusion of new fans is going to take a rerelease collection on a major platform.
(Note: I've seen assertions that the rights Ireland still holds extend to the audio dub tracks only. If so, he might as well hold the rights entire, since releasing the Sega CD Lunars without the original English audio is like...well, releasing a Sega CD mini without the Lunars.)
Wow, it's been a hot minute since we had Luminarise material on here. Hopefully, that'll change shortly. I promised this would get translated, and better late than never.
Better know your Guardians!
Queen Candidate Support Project 1: Questionnaire for the Guardians
The Floating City may be in the midst of the Queen Examination, but some might be thinking: "You know, I really don't know that much yet about the Guardians!" So I, Cyrus, have taken it upon myself to conduct a survey among the Guardians - with the complete cooperation of the Royal Research Institute. There were a whopping 20 questions in all! [Note: Unfortunately, the Royal Translator failed to receive a budget allocation, so we have translations of only the nine questions available from the public promo video.] Use this information as you see fit: to identify Guardians on your wavelength, or to gain a better understanding of the one who's captured your heart. Oh, also: I've taken the liberty of omitting honorifics at places in the survey comments. Well, without further ado! (byline: Cyrus)
- I don't care for the rock-opera remix of the opera Shovel Knight composer virt did for OCRemix's Balance and Ruin FF6 fan album. It's a landmark achievement in terms of production values for fan remix projects, but it's not very listenable. Like, good for you that you made an FF6 track, or something kind of based on one sort of, sound like "Bohemian Rhapsody," but I put the damn thing on, and within a minute or two, I'm holding my forehead and muttering, "oh, God, just go away." It's extremely Drama Kid - involved with itself and demanding and screamingly insistent on attention, attention, attention. The singing gets gratingly whiny and increasingly histrionic about a who-cares Romeo and Juliet plot that has jack all to do with FF6; it's wrapped up in its own irrelevancies and doesn't want much to do with its source, I imagine, because it just can't bear to share the stage. By the time the lead starts screeching for a knife to stab someone - who? I don't know; the song doesn't know; I most certainly don't care - at around the five-minute mark, I'm ready to walk it out the door. My ears greatly prefer "The Nightmare Oath" (which they must have been tempted to cut given a contribution from virt; I'm so glad they didn't) and the vaporwave cool of "On the Run", a vocal remix of the Returners theme takes the source in a completely new direction but is still of a piece with it, musically and thematically.
- I don't care for the opera. Yes, it was a novelty in its day: the composition is markedly more elaborate and "mature" than its contemporaries, in that it sounds more similar to classical pieces than 16-bit leitmotifs that loop after a couple minutes, and it was neat to note, "hey, that electronic trill on the soundtrack kind of sounds like a human voice." For U.S. RPG fans, it was a big departure to advance the story in ways other than combat, through elementary hitting marks and cues and such, because our domestic market for RPGs was so precarious that the other 16-bit titles that did this more extensively and better never reached our shores. The five-minute race to prevent Ultros from shoving a Looney Tunes 10-ton weight onto Celes to stop the performance, where you have to weave your way through the maze of rafters above the stage and try to avoid fights or wrap them up ASAP, is neat. The actual pincer fight with Ultros above the orchestra pit, with the conductor joining in to score the battle, is neat.
There's a lot that's good in it! But *only* good. The scene doesn't deserve its mythic status. I think of other RPG setpieces, and the bombast is not only impressive to the senses but also bolsters the storytelling. Lunar: Eternal Blue's opening cinematic, of Lucia awakening on the Blue Star, establishes its key character and her place in Lunar's history wordlessly, demonstrating fluency in the language of cinema its predecessor did not have. FF7's raid on Reactor No. 1 used the new freedoms of 3D to play with scaling and camera angles in its environments, lending an unprecedented sense of scope and looming threat to its world and the challenges its protagonists faced. The opera, though it does feed one of FF6's themes, doesn't further its enduring, actually-worthwhile message, the one about finding a reason to live when you've lost everything; instead, it's the centerpiece of the particularly nasty version of the "give up on being a strong, independent woman and start being a fainting damsel" storyline that had moments here and there in '90s gaming (Sonya in the MK movie, Lucia herself a bit) and is impressed upon Celes so the devs can play lip service to the idea of female leads but job them in favor of putting over their real favorite, Locke - to the detriment of both characters' development, and the neglect of their core issues of dealing with previous misdeeds and projecting one's past onto others respectively. Other than shoving Celes in a helpless-princess role, the scene doesn't even have any relevance or emotional resonance for our actual cast, revolving instead around the fates of the cast of an in-game play. It could be cut entirely from the game with no loss to the story.
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