30 September 2024
Last week, the news that GungHo is releasing LUNAR Remastered Collection on Playstation, Switch, Steam, and Xbox blew a lot of our minds. Releasing classic video games with enhanced graphics, audio, and quality-of-life improvements is a trend that I appreciate. Collecting classic video games is difficult and the physical media from decades ago have a limited shelf life. The Lunar games have always been on the top of my list but also I was not holding my breath to happen.
So, what is Lunar? Lunar began life on the Sega CD with two of the best games that came out on that console: Lunar the Silver Star and Lunar Eternal Blue. Game Arts released the game in Japan and Working Designs localized the game for the US market. I first experienced Lunar the Silver Star when my older brother played it. It grabbed my imagination more than any game. I’ve played through it countless times. The sequel came out a couple years later and it expanded on what made Lunar impressive. They are classic JRPGs with a relatively basic game play, but the characters and the world is what connected with gamers in the 90s.
When the next generation console came out, Game Arts remade the game for the Sega Saturn, and ultimately the Playstation. The games were named Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Etenral Blue Complete. They added new story elements, better graphics, and improved a lot. I still prefer the Sega CD version, but that is mostly because I’ve played through them so much. Working Designs did the localization. I happen to like the localizations from Working Designs, but they are not uniformly loved. They have some childish text and outdated pop culture references.
Working Designs is now defunct, but they own their localization. They were also the reason no one was holding out hope for a remastered version of the games, which is why it was such a shock when the news came out.
GungHo hasn’t given a lot of details, but if reading on their website, the copyright section makes no reference to Working Designs. This lends credence to the thought that this will be a new localization.
The news has lead me to a future project idea. Stay tuned!
