Victor Ireland the enemy of Lunar fans

[jos24]

The number 1 enemy of lunar fans is victor ireland game arts has been releasing grandia on different platforms which makes me think that the decision not to release the lunar saga has more to do with victor ireland and his refusal to give up the dubbing of said game although it is true that lunar 1 has redubbing by xseed and that somoga has already used it for its port on cell phones. It is also true that the dubbing of lunar 2 is still missing and this also applies to the sega CD versions that were eliminated from the American version of sega mini 2 due to not have the rights to dubbing in English, I hope Victor would relent and realize that the only ones it affects are the consumers who want these games on the currently available platform.

[Temzin]

Hmm? I'm sure you don't actually mean exactly that, given that without Ireland, 99% of English-speaking Lunar fans, including you, would not be here since the Mega CD originals would never have gotten translated in that era. I understand the frustration, of course, and if internet talk is to be believed, the critical absence of Working Designs-translated TSS, EB, and Popful Mail on the inferior US version of the Mega Drive Mini 2 was indeed due to Sega offering a mere pittance for the rights to release there. Assuming this was actually true, it's easy to feel annoyed that Ireland didn't take one for the team and let Sega pay him peanuts for what would have been the biggest draw on the MD Mini 2, but the blame lies equally with Sega in that case. In any event, Ireland has not been active online for a long time and I believe has health issues; it's possible that he literally isn't reachable for rights even if Sega had been willing to play ball, assuming that was the problem.

But in any event, there are much more important reason why you don't see Lunar collections, and they're in Japan, not tied to something as minor as the US translation: as we have detailed in other threads, including ones where peope thought they could somehow convince Game Arts to let them personally buy the rights to Lunar to make their own sequel, Game Arts is a mere shell of what it once was, none of the original staff are there, Gungho is hardly a major company on its own, and Lunar, despite our love for it, is an extinct series whose last two releases (Harmony, Genesis/Dragon Song) were utter commercial failures. Especially in Japan, you don't get another chance after being seeing as a money-losing trouble-maker. And if zombie Game Arts Japan isn't spending money on developing Lunar ports, you'd better believe the infinitesimally tiny US branch can't, either.

The glorious Mega CD games only came back on MD Mini 2 through the improbable situation of there being a second Mini designed (in Japan) to feature MCD games and less famous MD games, and producer Okunari knew that the Lunars were a must. With these and many other games that had been out of print with no ports for 25 years, he put in major negotiations and legwork to track down old rightsholders and get them on board, likely for very little and based on good will. It is a minor miracle he got Game Arts to somehow sort out the impossible rights situation given the collapse of MCD TSS and EB co-creators Studio Alex. This in turn allowed genius emulation company M2 to work veryyyy hard on the first and likely last, technically challenging MCD Lunar ports. It'd be nice to see them appear regularly on other virtual console stores, but I wouldn't count on it. But note here that this was part of a major Sega project. Game Arts didn't do a thing on the technical level...they "could" have for more than two decades, had they wanted to/been able to.

In other words, outside of the possible and unconfirmed case of the MD Mini 2, the only "enemy" of Lunar fans is the sad fact that a brief and shining collaboration from the 1990s was not sustained (remember that Game Arts made the best games in collaboration with other guests; see also the Dream Team that made Chrono Trigger, whose quality was certainly not captured by the talentless hangers-on who made its sort-of-sequel). Grandia eked out a collection recently, but it has a more recent financial success history; the last successful instance for Lunar was 1998 for EB remake, while still a decline from SSS. That's...a long time ago, I'm afraid, and with subsequent bombs that Grandia did not have.

[Shiva Indis]

I'm disappointed about what happened with the Genesis Mini 2, but I don't see any point in blaming Mr. Ireland for not wanting to give out his rights for small change.

Maybe if they did the sort of charm offensive that apparently went on in Japan we wouldn't have ended up in this spot.

[Ruby]

I definitely wasn't expecting this to be google's first result when I was searching for info about the new Lunar 1 & 2 being remade again.

[Sonic#]

What if Victor Ireland knew that this was in the early stages of being put together, and he waved people off of getting the Mega Drive Mini 2 just for Lunar because he knew another English version was in the pipeline?

There is absolutely no evidence for that, but I am amused how this story is now irrelevant.

[DevNall]

What if Victor Ireland knew that this was in the early stages of being put together, and he waved people off of getting the Mega Drive Mini 2 just for Lunar because he knew another English version was in the pipeline?

There is absolutely no evidence for that, but I am amused how this story is now irrelevant.

To release a new version without working out a deal with him, GameArts/GungHo would have needed to build a new version of the game with a different audio track and a few other changes.

...Seems like that's what the finally decided to do.