Yesterday's Japanese Nintendo Direct was slightly different to the one we received in the west, and amongst the differences was the news that cult classic Moon is making a very welcome comeback.
Described as an 'anti-RPG', the game originally released on PlayStation back in 1997. It stars a boy who is initially seen playing an RPG called 'Moon' before being sucked into its in-game world. From there, players must explore the game's world while on a mission to recover its missing moonlight by collecting 'Love'. It's basically like Inception, but more moon-y. It has some pretty intriguing ideas behind it, for sure, and could be a great game for anyone interested in Japanese-only releases.
You see, the game was supposed to arrive in North America around the same time as the original Japanese release, but publisher ASCII US eventually decided against it, despite the game being heavily promoted at that year's E3. 22 years later, and here we are with a western release on a Nintendo console.
Here's a list of key features, straight from indie dev studio Onion Games:
[KEY FEATURES]
• Conquer a game with a clear conscience in this Zero-Battle RPG! Free monsters’ souls!
• Collect dozens of “MoonDiscs” containing original songs, and choose your own favorite background music!
• Follow the real-time daily lives of Moon World’s NPCs, day and night, all week long!
As you can see in the tweet above, Moon is set to launch in Japan on 10th October, but the worldwide English-language release is also coming soon after.
Intrigued? Let us know if you'll be keeping an eye out for more on this one with a comment below.
Comments 28
Cool! I've heard good things about this one. Hopefully, it'll be as delightfully weird as Dandy Dungeon
most exciting news of the direct frankly
It's so weird. I love it.
I really don't understand this. And I want to play it.
MC reminds me of Rayman.
M-O-O-N. That spells something.
A Freddie Mercury reference (0:40 - 0:43)? I'm in.
Never heard of this, but I'm interested. Sounds really unique.
Been waiting 22 years for this. Was keeping fingers crossed from the direct that we'd get a translation!
I wanted to get this but there were no fan translations I could find. There are only 3 or so ps1 titles that I want that don't have a translation now.
I'm not sure about what I just saw, but I'm positively curious
didn't know onion games has been around that long, only know them for blackbird and that office rpg.
Wow, this looks and sounds awesome and strange. Can't wait to try it.
OMG!!!!!!!
So excited to play this, hopefully the Dreamcast’s LOL gets a port. Long live the Switch port machine! Anything is fair game!
Thats totally plok
This should give us all hope that other region-locked gems of the past will find their way to western/worldwide releases. I remember back in the day my friend had a hacked Sega Genesis and was playing this Japan-Only game that looked incredibly fun. He said it was called "Shining Force" and I have longed to play that game ever since. I just hope someday they localize it and I am finally able to play it in my native language.
So excited for this!
This reminds me of Sega RPG's
Describing a game as an "anti-RPG" makes no sense to me. I have no idea what this is supposed to be.
I've no idea, either, but I'm intrigued. The Anti-RPG tagline is enough to make me curious, and a battle-free adventure is an interesting idea to me. Will check it out.
@Patron Nice try, dude.
It stars a boy who is initially seen playing an RPG called 'Moon' before being sucked into its in-game world. From there, players must explore the game's world while on a mission to recover its missing moonlight by collecting 'Love'.
ISN'T THAT THE EXACT SAME PLOT AS Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love??
Hell ... even the art style looks similar between the two ... as well as the gameplay.
Great underappreciated gems the Tingle games are.
@fafonio Love-de-lic, who developed this game, split off into three studios after closing: Skip Ltd., Punchline, and... Vanpool, who developed Tingle's Rosy Balloon Trip of Love. It's most likely a deliberate homage.
@Heavyarms55 Won't somebody think of poor monsters that The Hero of Every RPG Ever Made mindlessly kills for the benefit of gaining EXP.
That's at least the starting premise. It's meant to sort of poke fun at other RPGs. The "Moon" game in the introduction is shown a few scenes at a time as a spoof of 8/16 bit RPGs, particularly Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Things like Dragon Quest-looking menus and as I recall a dragon boss that was clearly meant as a homage to Square 16-bit bosses.
ASCII never translated it? Well good thing they changed their (Japanese) corporate name to Enterbrain later because this fells like a kind of exited-brain moment. (probably not, seriously though this was around the time ASCII's US branch changed its name to Agetec and as I recall, were they not a bit more of a budget-game publisher after that?)
@KingMike Ah okay, thanks for the explanation. That makes more sense.
@burntsienna wow... awesome info. Thanks! It does make sense
@burntsienna Either that, or it's a similar case to Alpha Dream's Tomato Adventure and Superstar Saga, where similar art assets were taken from the former for the latter.
Either way, happy to learn about this game. not sure what I'm seeing, but it at least has me curious about the game.
Looks intriguing, to say the least.
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