*Sigh* What happened to GameArts?

[EurAsianGirl]

They used to be my number one favorite video-game company but with their atrocious release of Dragon Song (shudders) and somewhat lackluster Grandia 3 plus with both Lunar and Grandia still on hiatus concerning new releases its really making me worry about the future of both my two favorite RPG series of all time.

Does anyone know what's happened to them and Shigema or even if they're still making RPGS....

Also sort of another topic starter but who here misses Working Designs badly, granted it seems like XSEED is becoming the new Working Designs and they're great I love them but it still would be nice to have another publisher who brings out obscure traditional RPGs (NIS is okay but most of the stuff they do is loli-fanservice moe moe -Dragon Diamond-)

I just loved how Working Designs seemed to really love the gamers and really put alot of effort into most of their packaging and translations.

Is Gaijingames even still doing stuff?

[Shiva Indis]

Hi, welcome to Lunar Threads! And thank you for the research opportunity.

Yoichi Miyaji, ex-Game Arts CEO, sold his stake in the company to GungHo in 2005. Grandia III came out soon afterward and I doubt I need to tell you it didn't turn their fortunes around. They haven't done much since then, but their Wii Ware puzzle game Magic Obelisk is a good time.

Kei Shigema owns his own game scenario writing company, Gekko, which gets no shortage of work. They were involed with stuff like Sands of Destruction and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. And lots of anime license games, especially Shonen Jump properties. Did you know Shigema writes for the Way of the Samurai series?

Gaijinworks has been quiet since Blaster Master last year. Perhaps the folks taking digs about how it'd keep taking Vic forever to get products to market are justified?

Also, you sound like a loli-hating old fart. High five!!

[whitedragon_nall]

Wow! Great info Shiva! I had no idea Gekko was involved with Castlevania: OoE. Have any links I can check out?

[Shiva Indis]

I'm glad you asked.

http://www.gekko.co.jp/

[Sonic#]

Also sort of another topic starter but who here misses Working Designs badly, granted it seems like XSEED is becoming the new Working Designs and they're great I love them but it still would be nice to have another publisher who brings out obscure traditional RPGs (NIS is okay but most of the stuff they do is loli-fanservice moe moe -Dragon Diamond-)

I miss the atmosphere surrounding Working Designs' productions more than anything else. I always expected they would be bringing a high-quality product with a quirky sense of humor that still knew when to be serious. The voice acting was good for the time. On the other hand, the delays were annoying, even if it wasn't their fault.

One problem right now is that there aren't as many traditional RPGs to bring this way. As far as I can tell, we hit the peak with the Playstation, rode a long and slowly declining trail with the PS2, and are now back to the trail of infrequency. Another problem is that some of the RPGs seem quite prominent in Japan, but no one has picked them up, for some reason or another (Xenoblade).

I actually don't compare XSEED to Working Designs in my head. XSEED is far better adapted to the business end than Working Designs seemed to be, releasing multiple products per year without as much apparent delay. I also feel like they sometimes make different selections than Working Designs would have. (I have nothing against that.)

Finally, wasn't GameArts working on Grandia Online? Is that still in open beta?

[whitedragon_nall]

I'm glad you asked.

http://www.gekko.co.jp/

Thanks! I had no idea they had their hands in so many projects.

[Shiva Indis]

One problem right now is that there aren't as many traditional RPGs to bring this way. As far as I can tell, we hit the peak with the Playstation, rode a long and slowly declining trail with the PS2, and are now back to the trail of infrequency. Another problem is that some of the RPGs seem quite prominent in Japan, but no one has picked them up, for some reason or another (Xenoblade).

In the PS1 era gamers everywhere wanted the same sorts of products, but tastes have increasingly diverged. Japan always prefers RPGs, as they have for the past quarter century or so. And it seems like the things they think are classic, most of the rest of the gaming public has come to find cliched.

Finally, wasn't GameArts working on Grandia Online? Is that still in open beta?

Yeah, it went public in 2009 and I think it's still in beta. It's one of the free to play/microtransaction type MMOs.

[EurAsianGirl]

Hi, welcome to Lunar Threads! And thank you for the research opportunity.

Yoichi Miyaji, ex-Game Arts CEO, sold his stake in the company to GungHo in 2005. Grandia III came out soon afterward and I doubt I need to tell you it didn't turn their fortunes around. They haven't done much since then, but their Wii Ware puzzle game Magic Obelisk is a good time.

Kei Shigema owns his own game scenario writing company, Gekko, which gets no shortage of work. They were involed with stuff like Sands of Destruction and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. And lots of anime license games, especially Shonen Jump properties. Did you know Shigema writes for the Way of the Samurai series?

Gaijinworks has been quiet since Blaster Master last year. Perhaps the folks taking digs about how it'd keep taking Vic forever to get products to market are justified?

Also, you sound like a loli-hating old fart. High five!!

Thanks very much for the warm welcome

Aww that sucks that Kei Shigema disbanded from GameArts and that GameArts has basically been taken over by new people. Damn this is exactly like how the original creator of Final Fantasy left Square and made his own studio, Mistwalker.

Hopefully Kei Shigema and his team can start back up the Lunar and Grandia series from their new
company. Do you happen to know if Kubooka and Iwadari are apart of his new studio?? Or any of the original team members that worked on both the Lunar and Grandia series??

Never heard of The Way Of The Samurai series and I'm not really a huge fan of Castlevania but I have heard of Sands Of Destruction for the DS. I had no idea Shigema was involved with that game, now I might just check it out after all. I avoided it before cause I heard that it was a really bad game but if Shigema was involved with it it can't be that bad.

Gahh that sucks, Vic really needs to get GaijinWorks off the ground or no one will ever take him seriously ever again, is he even still around places, like does he have a Facebook....

Ha-Ha and no I'm not a loli-hating old fart, (I'm only 19, born in the exact year the Lunar series was created, I'm a Lunar baby ) Just a loli-hating, rabid feminist girl who believes that Loli, Moe and Hentai, Eroge objectification of women is demeaning and subjugating towards women. Also I prefer my RPGs with class that are real traditional RPGs and not just disguised as RPGS but are more like fan-service hentai games. But glad to see another loli-hater *high-fives back*

[EurAsianGirl]

Also sort of another topic starter but who here misses Working Designs badly, granted it seems like XSEED is becoming the new Working Designs and they're great I love them but it still would be nice to have another publisher who brings out obscure traditional RPGs (NIS is okay but most of the stuff they do is loli-fanservice moe moe -Dragon Diamond-)

I miss the atmosphere surrounding Working Designs' productions more than anything else. I always expected they would be bringing a high-quality product with a quirky sense of humor that still knew when to be serious. The voice acting was good for the time. On the other hand, the delays were annoying, even if it wasn't their fault.

One problem right now is that there aren't as many traditional RPGs to bring this way. As far as I can tell, we hit the peak with the Playstation, rode a long and slowly declining trail with the PS2, and are now back to the trail of infrequency. Another problem is that some of the RPGs seem quite prominent in Japan, but no one has picked them up, for some reason or another (Xenoblade).

I actually don't compare XSEED to Working Designs in my head. XSEED is far better adapted to the business end than Working Designs seemed to be, releasing multiple products per year without as much apparent delay. I also feel like they sometimes make different selections than Working Designs would have. (I have nothing against that.)

Finally, wasn't GameArts working on Grandia Online? Is that still in open beta?

I mostly just miss the packaging of Working Designs, not even XSEED does the type of packaging and limited editions that Working Designs cranked out.

Again though XSEED in my mind is this generations new Working Designs and they're becoming a very respectable one at that as they do try to have packed limited editions but again nothing comes close to what Working Designs achieved in that arena.

However, XSEED's translations are very, very good and I might even like them slightly more than Working Designs after seeing how they translated Trails In The Sky. Honestly that is one of the best translations in video games that I have ever seen, and really I don't think I would of liked it as much if Working Designs translated it. I mean don't get me wrong I love Working Designs translations but I think XSEED has surpassed them in that arena. If Working Designs were still around and they had done the translation to "Trails In The Sky" it honestly would of been too juvenile and had really immature over-the-top humor. XSEED on the other hand manages to make the dialouge really humorous but does it in a more tasteful, adult way. (You seriously need to play that game to see what a good translation is about, that game also contains my favorite translated line in any video game yet.)

As for traditional RPGs I think the only real good ones this generation are again, Trails In The Sky or Sora No Kiseki (Though technically it's a last gen game that is just finally being released in America this gen so I don't know if it would count lol) Tales Of Vesperia, Arc Rise Phantasia Ar Tonelico 3 (Mostly because I just love the Ar Tonelico series in general) and Tales Of Graces F (If it comes to America this gen lol) Hopefully Final Fantasy XIII 2 will exceed our expectations and also be good after the horrible XII and XIII but I'm not betting on it. But yeah basically besides those games I just listed, this gen is seriously lacking in good, original, traditional RPGs.

Huh what different decisions does XSEED make from Working Designs 0.0 What do you mean by that....

Yeah I know about Grandia Online but when are they going to ever make Grandia 4 or is the Grandia series suffering the same fate as the Lunar series.... And if they do make a Grandia 4, it better be more like 1 and 2 and less like 3.

[Alunissage]

Huh what different decisions does XSEED make from Working Designs 0.0 What do you mean by that....

I'm sure Sonic# will answer for himself, but I expect he means the translation choices. Silver Star Harmony's Japanese script is the same (barring the added scenes, obviously) as that of both Silver Star Story and Lunar Legend, but those three games were localized by three different publishers who all made different decisions about the English text. XSEED had WD's script in hand, but also had their own translator and often preferred to start from that person's translation, going in a different direction with the dialogue and perhaps with their reading of the character. Also, WD made some changes beyond just text that XS was unable and/or unwilling to recreate, such as tweaking the monster stats and changing the lengths of scenes and the character portraits that went with them, and of course from the point of view of the NA player who is familiar only with WD's version it looks like the changes are in the XS version.

The various differences are not monolithic, of course; some may seem "better" and some "worse" for the individual. Mainly they're just... different. (All three companies had to deal with errors in the original Japanese version that got propagated, of course. Also, I've kind of left out Ubi's treatment of LL because its lack of a final edit does tend to put it qualitatively below par relative to WD's and XS's versions, not just different. Too bad.)

On a separate note, would you mind not making your replies all in red, or other bright colors? It's not the easiest thing on the eyes.

[Sonic#]

Alunissage actually got most of what I was thinking of. Yes, it's partly the philosophy of porting in that day, and partly what Working Designs did... they were very willing to adjust game stats, and had a practice of going straight for a very quirky sense of humor whenever a joke was deemed untranslatable. As someone who studies texts that are sometimes very loose translations of texts in other languages, and made better for that looseness (Petrarch's sonnets, for instance), I appreciate the effort to improve an original.

Otherwise, what I meant was that, if Working Designs and Xseed were in existence at the same time, I have a hunch that they wouldn't always pick the same games to port. (Feel free to challenge my logic here - I didn't watch either company too closely.) For instance, Xseed publishes RPGs nearly exclusively. And they publish a few in a year, which gives them greater opportunity to bring over series games like Ys and Wild Arms. Working Designs didn't have as much breadth for selection (producing maybe 2 games a year), and a good portion of the time selected shooters or similar games (RayStorm). Especially later in the company's history, they were highly selective about what they would bring over - no portable games being a huge difference between him and Xseed. Victor Ireland turned down publishing Lunar Legend because of the cartridge format and because it was mediocre. As well, it's likely he would've turned down Lunar DS and the recent DS remake as well.

Of course, if they were around at the same time, it's likely that Ireland might prefer the PSP as a more viable platform, and Xseed might have translated more non-RPGs to tide them over. They're each companies of their times, but I find the differences interesting to think about.

[Lunar Eclipse]

Aww that sucks that Kei Shigema disbanded from GameArts and that GameArts has basically been taken over by new people. Damn this is exactly like how the original creator of Final Fantasy left Square and made his own studio, Mistwalker.

There's a major difference here in that Shigema's group has no specific allegiances. It's not like Sakaguchi, who now does games exclusively for Mistwalker. GameArts can always simply contract Gekko to write the scenarios for their RPGs, and it's not as if their relationship with Shigema has soured or anything. He seems to genuinely enjoy revisiting the Lunar world.

Do you happen to know if Kubooka and Iwadari are apart of his new studio?? Or any of the original team members that worked on both the Lunar and Grandia series??

Er, I might be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure Kubooka worked for GameArts in the same capacity as many illustrators. In other words, he was not officially "part" of GameArts and wasn't sitting in their offices all day twiddling his thumbs when he wasn't drawing pictures. I think he did perhaps act as the animation coordinator which makes his role slightly more extensive than that of, say, Kosuke Fujishima or Mutsumi Inomata (since you used Tales as an example earlier), but the point is that I'm pretty sure he's someone that they can just go fetch whenever they like. As far as what he's doing now ... uh, character design for Phantasy Star 0 is the last thing I remember seeing from him in the video game realm. I'm almost certain the story is the same for Iwadari. He's a composer-for-hire who I think always has been. He's a staff member for Lunar and Grandia, but not a staff member of GameArts.

So in short, those three could still be brought together with relative ease. It's just a question of whether or not GameArts wants to continue the series. With the new Smash Brothers title having just been announced, it's very possible Nintendo will contract GameArts to do work on that series again, potentially blocking them out from doing something independently for the next year or two. I suppose we'll see. Of course, if they're called back and do profit reasonably from their relationship with the Smash Brothers franchise (as it seems they did last time), then we might get another treat upon completion of the project as we did a couple years ago with Silver Star Harmony. I guess we'll just need to wait and see.

[Imperial Knight]

I'm almost certain the story is the same for Iwadari. He's a composer-for-hire who I think always has been. He's a staff member for Lunar and Grandia, but not a staff member of GameArts.

You are correct. Indeed, Iwadare has worked on many games from companies other than GameArts as well as projects not related to video games.

[Shiva Indis]

As far as what he's doing now ... uh, character design for Phantasy Star 0 is the last thing I remember seeing from him in the video game realm.

Idolm@aster keeps Kubooka pretty busy, I think.

[Nobiyuki77]

I'm almost certain the story is the same for Iwadari. He's a composer-for-hire who I think always has been. He's a staff member for Lunar and Grandia, but not a staff member of GameArts.

You are correct. Indeed, Iwadare has worked on many games from companies other than GameArts as well as projects not related to video games.

I believe the company that Iwadare works for is Two-Five. They're hired by various studios to do music for videogames and other things. Iwadare's latest work is the new Ace Attorney Investigations game in Japan.

[Lathaine]

Well, I can answer the stuff about Gaijinworks as I've been doing some research. They have been pretty busy lately according to Vic and it does show with their releases. So far the have released Alundra, Arc 1, Arc 2, Arc Arena, and Arc 3 for PSN by partnering with Monkeypaw. They plan to release these titles to the European PSN in due time as well but have run into some inane difficulties with Sony Europe. They are about to release Vanguard Bandits to the PSN by December. Vic has said it takes way too much work to port games to PSN and the reward is minimal. According to him it would take at least twice the sales they get to make porting an untranslated RPG worthwhile. But of course if they get really successful with future games it could happen and they have already kind of let slip the first game to be localized from the PSX era would likely be Langrisser if the sales are high enough. Vic said he does the current PSN stuff as a labor of love for fans. As an aside this may explain why PSN has so few games on it compared to what's possible. I would love to see Suikoden 2 get a PSN release but the environment may make that really hard. Vic has also let slip he plans on bringing over to PSN his other PSX titles including the shooters. Now Square has no interest in licensing the Taito games RayStorm and RayCrisis so those won't be making it to PSN. I have heard Vic has started to try to see if he can bring both PSX Lunars to PSN but very little is known other than he has started the process of doing so and is trying to navigate the legal minefield of getting those games to PSN. However, with the announcement of Lunar: SSS touch I have hope Game Arts and Gung Ho will not get in the way. Especially since Gaijinworks is probably our best bet of PSN Lunars since XSeed shows no interest in the idea and Ubisoft hasn't even brought it up.

I've emailed Gaijinworks recently to implore them to try their damndest to get the ports as Lunar 2 is likely not getting rereleased by this point probably because Japanese sails of SSH were in the floor. I sent my email about a week ago and haven't gotten a reply yet. I also personally prefer SSSC to what I've seen out of SSH by watching the first few hours of it being played and I would like to see new fans get a crack at SSSC. I've thought of just watching a video walkthrough of SSH all the way through after I play through SSSC again soon to get an idea of what's different and to see the new scenes since the revised difficulty, the dungeon design, and IMO the voice actors, except for Alex which is pretty good, and the rewritten songs turn me off from that game fast. I like my JRPGs to be challenging but not insane. Lunar SSSC and Lunar EBC are really just right as far I'm concerned with the exception of some dungeons being too long.

For the interested I found a video walkthrough of SSH here:
http://www.sorumian.com/LunarSilverStar ... rough.html

Gaijinworks has also partnered with Sunsoft to bring over a variety of their games to NA via the Virtual Console. So far they've ported Blaster Master, Blaster Master Overdrive, Ufouria, Aero the acrobat, Aero the acrobat 2, with more on the way. The project is enormous when you consider Sunsoft has about 100 titles they can port including Albert Odyssey Legend of Eldean, which I'm sure Vic would love to do but that stuff is licensed by Gung Ho right now so we'll see if it happens. This is compounded by the fact Sunsoft bought the rights to all of Nihon Telenet's games, including Cosmic Fantasy 2, with their IP being about 100 strong as well. Apparently Vic was instrumental in the deal to buy their library of games for Sunsoft. Vic has confirmed he is currently working on a Telenet game for localization. This also means between Virtual Console and PSN Gaijinworks is shaping up to be a company that almost exclusively deals with digital distribution gaming, which is interesting. I'm holding out hopes they can just buy the rights to Lunar's localization if a Lunar 0 or 3 ever comes out at this rate because if they have the extra cash to get their PSX games to PSN with little to no reward then I am praying they can get the rights to Lunar again if a 0 or 3 that doesn't suck gets released.

Although I am worried that Game Arts may screw the pooch and give us poor versions of a Lunar 0 or 3. Assuming they ever commit to such a project and with SSH's Japanese sales and the specter of the mediocrity that was Lunar:DS they may just write off the franchise at this point I fear. The fact Gung Ho has told Game Arts they're next project is a Vita Ragnarok game instead of a Lunar EB remake has made me really begin to doubt whether Gung Ho, who is in charge at the end of the day, will ever approve more Lunar games unless its another Lunar: SSSC port to a future system, likely a handheld to shave costs. They may make the success of that game in Japan and America the test of whether to make another game for the series thinking the current climate isn't right yet. Any future remake will simply have to do well in Japan, which SSH failed at, and America to make the cost of another original Lunar game worthwhile to Gung Ho.

Well that's all I know for now and I would like to say hello to everyone out there as I am a new poster here but I've loved the Lunar series since the Sega CD era.

[Kizyr]

Wow.

...thanks for the update! That's seriously informative.

I'm still pessimisting on a Lunar 2 port (or a new version for that matter, but I don't want to go down that road right now). But I do like the idea of more people getting access to some of the other titles -- Albert Odyssey being one of my favorites. KF

[Monde Luna]

That was a good read Lathaine, thanks for the update! I'm also crossing my fingers for a EB remake.