Saturn Lunar The Silver Star pre-release version

[SegaSonic91]

Does anyone have pictures of this? The game went through many, many changes before finally being released, almost a year later than planned. I started buying Jp Saturn Fan in August 95. I bought it through to Oct 01. Sadly, I lost the whole collection along with my collection of of Mean Machines/MM SEGA (Feb 91-Oct 96) and Megatech magazines.

In that first issue of Saturn Fan, it included a double sided poster with a "major" announcement (Tohshinden, LMAO! pictures and interview) one side and pictures+interview of Lunar on the other side. The announcement was talking about the changes and enhancements being added to the game. It showed screenshots of Burg and the world map. The name did not change to "Silver Star Story until Feb 96. The game looked 250% better to me than the game I eventually purchased on 25 Oct, 1996. I was so disappointed by that game because I love the original so damn much. The game started off as a direct, highly enhanced remake with added elements. What was finally released was nothing like that. I still hate that the last 25% of the game was all but axed. For the first 6 hours, I was in heaven. Lunar's song on the boat brought tears to my eyes, I loved it so much. My opinion started to change the closer I got to the end of the game

I would love to find anything that exists of the pre-release version. The only thing I have is two tiny screen shots of the VERY first version of the game in Game Fan. It looks exactly like the MCD version with greatly enhanced colour. One was a battle shot in the White Dragon's cave, I think the other was Burg. Haven't seen them for a long time.

[Black_Tiger]

The original Lunar SS also changed towards the end. I don't remember everything I noticed in Japanese mags bitd, but one thing which stood out most was that Nash had blonde hair until the end and looked ridiculous.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

I'll see what I can find in my own archives at home... I used to have them years ago on my website, but it's been so long that they seem to be gone now.

My Lunar fan page does have some shots from the Saturn version of Eternal Blue though, if that helps: http://www.techhouse.org/~lou/lunar/...unar2pics.html

(Scroll down to the bottom. I referred to it as "Director's Cut" as it didn't have an official English name at the time).

[SegaSonic91]

Thank you, those screen shots look very familiar


I still have US and UK magazines with very early shots of MCD Lunar. The first being from the Tokyo Toy Show 91 reveal of the MEGA-CD. My love of Lunar really started there. I would love to have the Saturn Fans where EB was announced because I would actually be able to read it now. From what little I *could* read back then, and that was only self-taught, they spoke of the 4 dungeons cut from the MCD version that were being added back in, which is of course common knowledge, but I would love to see what else they spoke about. There was a lot of gorgeous artwork in all of the Saturn EB articles that were used when planning the MCD game. I would also love to be able to read all of the stuff from SSS interviews as the game was being shown each fortnight. I would love to know why JAM fucked up the first game so much, grrr!

I will warn that a fanboy rant follows

The particular UK mag I am speaking of, I only bought a few times. Every single issue had lots of Lunar stuff in the Japanese section. The US mag I am thinking of I only bought twice. It was some kind of SEGA only offshot of EGM I think. Both issues of that mag had Lunar as well. Fast forward to early 94 when I started seeing reviews of the, ahem, "English" version which of course was only released in NA. I started a search that took 6 months to finally own the game. The first of which was a Japanese version which I loved even though I had no idea what I was doing. I got stuck because I could not get the axe to appear in the woods and gave up. I FINALLY found the US version at a shop selling used import US games and got it for Christmas 94. I was sneaky though and swapped the US disc for my Jp disc so I could play it earlier, ha! The save even worked with the US version unlike EB because of how much WD fucked with the game, grr! So I played it and was still stuck at the damn woods not being able to make the axe appear! I was not going to play the game Christmas Day because I knew I was stuck anyway. I DID play it later that night and after trying to sell the diamond, TADA! The axe was in the Wierd Woods! I finished it 2 days later and it was the most magical, wonderful experience I had ever had with a game. Not until (eventually) getting EB (another tale of many many months trying to buy it) and Grandia in Dec 97, did anything ever come close to it. They are my equal no.1 favourite games ever and that will never change. Damn I loved Game Arts back then. Their MCD games were so awesome. I would love to see what the MCD version of Grandia would have looked like.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

I'm a huge Game Arts fan myself (as if the name on here didn't give it away )... Hell, way back in 1994 or so, I was one of the first people with any Lunar home page in the internet. That page as it stands right now is basically just the same old page from way back when, 1990's web design and all. I think a dev over in Game Arts also used to visit my page on occasion.

I know I used to have some pre-release Saturn Lunar screenshots on my page, but it may have been lost in the 15 years or so since I first got them with all the crap that my page, my computers, etc., have gone through during that time. I still haven't had a chance to check any of my old archives (sick baby at home, unfortunately, but he's starting to feel a bit better) to see if I can find them.

I agree that SSS really changed a bit too much over TSS and I'm not sure why they did that, although, apparently that is currently the preferred time/plotline as all the subsequent remakes more or less followed that same storyline. EB was certainly much more faithful to the original (sometimes to a fault -- some stuff in the EB remake made more sense in light of the MCD original than the Saturn/PSX remake). My only complaint about it was what they did to the Phantom Sentry/Star Sentry/Star Dragon (well, and making Poe Sword more expensive and less powerful :P ), but that's a small nit.

My own most difficult moment with TSS? It has to be Lann Island, the place with the fake Dragonmaster. I couldn't find where in the cave the bastard was for ages... The issue was that the design of the cave made it almost impossible to see the little doorway leading to where he was -- it just looked like another wall. :P

That said, I'm not sure how a MCD version of Grandia would've been -- especially since Grandia, originally, was more or less designed to push the Saturn to its limits with tons of hand-optimized Saturn assembly code and whatnot.

[SegaSonic91]

How cool to think that a Game Arts dev visited your page! Very cool indeed! I also do remember that cave and getting stuck there. Wandering for hours trying to find that damn door, lol. I played that game once every few months throughout the 90's and it still took me a while to find it sometimes. With EB, it was a part with lots of moving platforms which lead to a boss. I had no problems the first time I played but the second time, I was going around in circles for hours. Was very annoying! One thing I will say about the MCD games, the day I could play the Japanese versions and fully understand them was a very happy day. It was almost like playing them for the first time again!



Game Arts were by far my favourite 3rd party dev through the 90's. Urusei Yatsura: Dear My Friends, Gun Griffon 1&2, Yumimi Mix (and Remix), Dinasour Island and if course, Alissa Dragoon were all fantastic or amazing games for me. I do wish they made a Alissa Dragoon 2 on the MEGA-CD though. It is so sad to see that they barely exist anymore Once SEGA became a third part dev, by default they became my fav 3rd party. My inner SEGA Fanboy would not have it any other way . Game Arts had disappeared by that stage anyway. It's a shame they dumped SEGA and the DC after so many good years together and made SEGA sequels on the PS2 only. They did suck though so it was a great loss I guess.

I will see if I can grab those old mags with pre-release TSS shots. I remember that Lunar had brown hair in the TTS 91 shots. It looks like an animation similar to the intro of the final game but is not actually *in* the final game. I think some of those shots have blonde Nash as well. I am also going to try and start collecting Mega Drive Fan and BEEP! Mega Drive magazines from Japan. They should provide lots goodies for MD games. Saturn Fan are a bit harder to find. When I was living in Japan, I tried finding shops that sold old game magazines but being in the middle if nowhere, I had no luck. They were all very thick magazines, and that was after the magazine started releasing fortnightly in late 95. It would be too pricey to buy the individually online and worse still, shipping would be a fortune! I will wait until my next trip to Japan to look for them.

I will give a quick summery of my Eternal Blue woes. I was in the shop that I bought TSS from one day after the game released in the US. She told me that she had EB coming that day. I got all excited and then she said she only had one copy and it was already sold and she could not order any more. The worse thing was her showing me the damn thing when it arrived. I was so depressed by that. I had already tried everywhere to get my hands on the Jp version between Dec 94-March 95 to no avail. When my mum got a credit card in 96, I asked if I could use it to order some games over the phone from America. I phoned one of the big mail order shops in Game Fan and ordered EB. 10 days later a package was thrown onto my front steps. I ran outside, grabbed the package and tore it open as fast as I could. And there it was, finally, almost a year after it was released in the US. Now the bad part. When I tried to take the disc out, it was REALLY tight in the case. I tried for at least 10 minutes to carefully pull it out. When it finally came loose, I heard a crack, uh oh! My heart sank as I looked at the back of the disc and yep, the was a very small crack that went a CM or so into the data area. I waited up to 3am again to call that shop and order another along with Popful Mail (god I hate the US version of that game! ) I was told that EB was out of stock, I could have cried! I ordered it anyway but I knew that the game probably had a fairly small print run and that it would never be in stock again. To my my shock and surprise, a package turned up another 10 days later and it had not only Popful Mail but Eternal Blue as well. I think it took me over an hour to remove the disc a second time, lol! I kept it in a CD case for years after that. Although I hated the changes and horrible Americanisation of the game, I loved it soooo much. It sure was worth the wait! I really wish that there was a Lunar 3. We Lunar fans have been waiting far too long for it. It's just a damn shame that the development of Lunar 3 hinged on the sale of that crappy Lunar Genesis on the DS. Big surprise that it failed!

I hope your little boy gets better quickly!

[Dragonmaster Lou]

You should probably visit http://www.lunar-net.com when you get a chance. Sadly I haven't gone there in a while, but it's a great place to find all sorts of old Lunar fans. They also have translations of Lunar manga and such there as well.

Anyway, I can't find my old SSS pics... I guess I lost them in a hard drive crash many years ago. I even tried going to the Internet Archive, but nothing stashed there either. However, Lunar-Net.com (suggesting you visit it made me want to see if they had something) apparently has some. Check this out: http://www.lunar-net.com/sssc/artwork-media.php

Thanks for the wishes on the baby. I think he's getting better... Just teething and still getting used to sleeping in his bedroom... LOL, there were times when I've hummed Luna's song to him to calm him while crying.

[IrishNinja]

^yeah, GA visiting your page is pretty awesome. i don't even remember which 4 dungeons got cut from the better-sounding sega-CD Lunar, it's been far too long since i played it.

[SegaSonic91]

The very first scan are the shots from Game Fan I referred to. The second long strip article marked Dec 95, are the shots I remember from the Aug '95 Saturn Fan "poster". Toushunden S announcement one side, Lunar shots and interview on the other. Sadly, that article does not contain the best shots from that poster thingy. There was some shots of Burg, it was gorgeous. It showed Arles, Luna and Ramus crossing a bridge with flowing water powered by a water mill as well as some other shots of Burg that looked far better, and bigger than the eventual release. Like everything in the game, it seemed to be scaled down in size from the MCD original. I hated that about certain towns in SSS. They were huge in the original and sometimes only a third of the size in SSS. I also did notice something though, I noticed that even in 95 they had the wandering enemies rather than random battles, I always thought that was a later change.

Those 2 original shots in Game Fan made me so damn excited when I saw them, I will never forget the day I saw them, haha! I'm such a geek Or so my sister always tells me. That interview with Game Arts in Game Fan brings back bad memories. Bloody talking about Lunar 3 like it was coming after Eternal Blue as the world and his dog thought would happen. Instead, they just kept shitting on original fans by re-making the original over and over. Destroying it little by little each time. I must admit that I never made it out of Burg in the PSP game which I of course pre-ordered before it was released in Japan. I don't remember much, but I think Burg was much more like the early Saturn version.

Thanks for the link too!

[Dragonmaster Lou]

No problem.

[zyrobs]

There was a demo disc released in 1996 April, no clue which version it is closer to.
Note however that those early screenshots you've seen could've been just doctored Sega CD shots and not Saturn ones.

You can download the demo from Archive.org of all places.
https://archive.org/details/cdrom-saturn-lunar-hibaihin

[Team Andromeda]

The particular UK mag I am speaking of, I only bought a few times. Every single issue had lots of Lunar stuff in the Japanese section.

Was this Magazine SEGA Pro ? . They had tons of early Lunar Coverage and even had a phoneline number you could ring up to listen to some of the games early speech - Those were the days

[SegaSonic91]

Was this Magazine SEGA Pro ? . They had tons of early Lunar Coverage and even had a phoneline number you could ring up to listen to some of the games early speech - Those were the days

It was SEGA Pro! The phone lines and things didn't apply to me though

There was a demo disc released in 1996 April, no clue which version it is closer to.
Note however that those early screenshots you've seen could've been just doctored Sega CD shots and not Saturn ones.

You can download the demo from Archive.org of all places.
https://archive.org/details/cdrom-saturn-lunar-hibaihin

Wow, I don't remember a demo disc ever being mentioned in Saturn Fan. Thank you! I am just about to install a mod chip in a second Jp Saturn I bought, can't wait to try it!

But no, the early screen shots were 100% Saturn. If a screen shot was not authentic, Saturn Fan would always have a note underneath it stating it was form another version or that it was a mock up. They did this with EB's Saturn announcement, it had Mega-CD screen shots. I can't imagine Japanese mags doing that though, especially when advertising "huge exclusives!" as they always liked to do. They would sometimes advertise that some big, new announcement would be made in the next issue. I would get really excited to see the next issue a fortnight later. It usually ended up a big disappointment. The one time it did not let me down was the ESP announcement issue with Grandia's 8 page debut and EB's announcement along with Magic School Lunar. Some of the other ESP members were announced, such as Treasure and Quintet, but they only had interviews. Quintet was a major letdown as a Saturn developer considering the amazing trilogy of action RPGs they made on the SFC. The Saturn could have done with a couple more awesome action RPGs.