Do We Really Need Another Lunar Remake?
No.
So it looks like Game Arts is furthering their plans to become a B-grade Falcom with yet another rehash of Lunar: The Silver Star. To be fair, Lunar hasn’t been whored out nearly as much as Ys; the new PSP version of the game marks only the third trip back to the Lunar well for Game Arts, a developer who isn’t known for much else these days (god do I ever miss the first Grandia). But for as much as I enjoyed Silver Star the first time around–well, it was technically the second time because I only played the PlayStation remake–I’ve never really felt to dip back into the series again. To me, it seems that the Lunar series–and even the first set of remakes–were products of their respective time periods, and more than a little irrelevant today.
The Sega CD Lunars, The Silver Star and Eternal Blue, were notable more for their technical achievements than for their gameplay, which actually spruced up your typical turn-based monotony–if only by a little. What stunned and delighted gamers back in those days of “multimedia” was the fact that Lunar contained voiced and “animated” (using the term very loosely, here) cut-scenes; this was a big deal to people stuck with the limitations of your standard 16-bit systems. In a nutshell, Lunar was a big, goofy fantasy anime, back when Japanese animation was barely talked about and hidden in small quantities on video store shelves. If only for novelty value alone, the Lunar games were worth playing in the mid-90s.
So what about Working Designs’ remakes half a decade later? Even though the Lunar gameplay was a bit dusty and rusty by the turn of the millennium, the PlayStation remakes of Lunar were a little more justified than 2009’s PSP revival; but like the original Lunars, they’re really the products of their time. Both PlayStation remakes of Silver Star and Eternal Blue were released at the top of Working Designs’ game, a few years before the words “Victor Ireland” were a joke in and of themselves on the Internet. The remakes also came at a strange time during the late 90s/early 00s when there was a real backlash against newer JRPGs from fans who wanted the genre to return to its simpler roots; since we didn’t have the DS RPG deluge to fulfill our old-school needs, both Lunars hit the spot nicely. And I probably don’t need to tell you that Working Designs’ American Lunar revival happened just around the same time anime was absolutely exploding in the States–there really couldn’t have been a better time in history for Lunar, or Working Designs.
So now that we’re a decade away from the most notable remakes in the series, what reason do we have to go back to Lunar, especially since all of the game’s former doofy anime charm is currently being sucked out by strange, isometric graphics? Nothing is stopping crafty PSP users from playing the original games on the go, and even though Game Arts is promising new content, I can’t really think of anything in the Lunar universe that needs expanded upon–I was so Lunar-ed out by the end of Eternal Blue that I never bothered playing through the game’s extensive epilogue.
I kind of feel sorry for Game Arts, since their days as a big-name RPG developer are clearly over; the last big-budget game we’ve seen from them was Grandia III back in 2006, and the less said about that game, the better. It looks like Game Arts is going to be forever spinning their wheels with Lunar remakes, and that’s a bit disappointing–but I’ll be the first to admit that I’d go completely hog wild over a new version of the original Grandia. And now that I’ve set a goal in my life, I’m off to the local wishing well with a big jar of change.
If you can think of a better way to make this happen, I’d like to know.
Related Links:
Dragon Quest III Remake Translation Patch Released
Karateka Remake in the Works
For Love of the Game: Metroid II Remakes
Tags: bob mackey, game arts, lunar, Playstation, psp, remakes, sega cd, victor Ireland, working designs
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Awesome post, you have answered many questions I have been search for the answer to!
I disagree with your post entirely, the world needs a remake that has been done right, the GBA version was a miniature version at best with most of the dialogue re-written while the PSX version had the plot changed with improved graphics, I only hope the PSP version will stay more faithful to the original