Shining Force
| Shining Force | |
|---|---|
| developer |
Climax Entertainment Sonic! Software planning |
| Publisher | Sega |
| First title | Shining Force (1992) |
| Last title | Shining Force (2010) |
| Platform (s) | Sega Mega Drive , Sega Mega-CD , Sega Saturn , Sega Game Gear , Dreamcast , GBA , PlayStation 2 , iOS |
| Genre (s) | SRPG |
Shining Force is a series of video games developed by Sega . The games are assigned to the genre of strategy role-playing games ( SRPG for short ).
description
The first part appeared in 1992 on the Sega Mega Drive and was very much based on the Fire Emblem series from Nintendo, which is unknown in the West . But since Sega sold Shining Force worldwide, it is considered one of the forefathers of the genre in the western world. Thanks to modern graphics and intuitive controls, this game quickly became a sought-after classic. In terms of content, it was strongly linear and was particularly convincing due to the very different characters that accompanied you through the game. Between the fights, you could playfully move in real time through a very limited world represented from above. The fights themselves were turn-based and were presented in the same environment, which was divided into squares for this purpose. The strategic aspect here was above all the correct selection of the respective participating figures, and the correct positioning and order of the moves. The game was not translated into German.
In 1993 a second part was published. The story remained clichéd (including the rescue of a princess), and graphically, no quantum leaps were made; While the battle depictions now offered somewhat finer and more attractive depictions, the overland view known from the predecessor had hardly developed any further. Also with Shining Force II a strictly linear course of the game was still the order of the day: you could make simple yes-no decisions with the main character from time to time, but these had no effect on the further action. After all, the game offered a feature that was unusual for the standards of the time: in the course of the game it was possible to travel to all areas visited so far. For the second part too, Sega did without a translation into various European languages and only delivered the PAL version with English texts.
There are three parts for the Sega Game Gear . The first, Shining Force Gaiden , was released back in 1992, but there never was a version of it outside of Japan.
The second part, Shining Force Gaiden II or The Sword of Hajya , which appeared in 1993, was then also published as an English version in the USA, but not in Europe.
In 1995 the last part for the Game Gear was published, The Final Conflict . Like the other two parts, this game was nothing more than a more or less shallowly packed fantasy story, which was represented with the Shining Force.
In Shining Force CD for the Sega Mega-CD from 1994, individual parts were reused, for example the Shining Force Gaiden, which was otherwise never published in English. The specialty of this CD variant was the continuity between the different parts, which made a character transfer possible. Due to the storage capacity of the CD and the higher resolution of the Mega Drive, the graphics and sound were significantly better than on the Game Gear. Once again, European players had to make do with English texts , despite the space on the CD-ROM , which would have allowed several languages.
A multi-part game was released for the Sega Saturn from 1997, which was divided into three individual scenarios and a so-called premium disc . Outside of Japan, due to the failure of the console in the market, only the first part appeared. This time it was displayed in an isometric pseudo-3D style, and new mechanisms already known from other games were introduced (for example the partner system known from Fire Emblem ). There is no German translation for this part either.
The last incarnation of this series in the strategy RPG genre is The Resurrection of the Black Dragon , a remake of the first Shining Force for the Game Boy Advance , which was released in 2004. In addition to a very significant improvement in graphics and music, there was also an expansion in content that clearly differentiates the game from the original. It was also the first game in the series that was completely translated into German. However, this version is controversial among fans due to various bugs.
For the PlayStation 2 , Shining Force NEO and 2007 Shining Force EXA, two action role-playing games from Neverland and Amusement Vision, were released in the series in Japan and the USA. The response was only mediocre in both cases.
In Japan since 2005 with Shining Road to the Force , Shining Road II and Shining Force Chronicle , all for mobile phones, classic strategy games in the style of the original series have appeared for the first time since Shining Force III .
In autumn 2010 Shining Force appeared as an app for iOS in a nostalgic version with unedited graphics.
Others
- Shining Force was the unofficial sequel to Shining in the Darkness .
- The team at Climax Entertainment that was co-responsible for Shining Force consisted partly of ex-programmers from Enix 's Dragon Quest series. Similarities in the visual style as well as in the user guidance are obvious.
- Sonic was also involved in the development ! Software Planning , a Sega subsidiary that spun off from the parent company in 1995 and developed under the new company name Camelot Software Planning primarily for Nintendo . The highly successful Golden Sun parts they produced for the Game Boy Advance have similarities in style and user guidance to Shining Force .
Web links
- Shining Force series at MobyGames (English)
- Shining Force Central
- Shining World (Japanese)
- [1] Shining Force History on neXGam.de