shiningforcethings

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It’s everyone’s favorite vengeful centaur, Earnest.

#shininginktober #inktobe

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Shininginktober late Day 6 - Sarah. I picture her as the best at wind magic out of the monks.

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decided to do a lil drawing of Bowie from Shining Force 2. might colour it in the future idk

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the hunt for unused content in the game itself is not doing so hot, so i went to look for some old magazines and was immediately rewarded. Again, eternal thanks to Sega Retro for archiving this stuff.

There’s a magazine with some interesting stuff from three months before the game’s release:

“…the king of Guardiana said, ‘you are our last light’…“

First of all, pink haired Simone! Just like in the GBA games. Her face has a few details different as well, there’s an actual line for her nose, lighting in her eyes, which she only gets when looking at you in the final version, and a weird line on her forehead i can’t understand. The whole scene also looks lighter but i don’t how much of that is printer effects.

Anyway, while I like the auburn hair more, I have no clue why they would change it, and bringing it back for the GBA makes me think that at least the designer preferred the pink version. Interestingly her artwork in the manual already implies that, her hair is not pink there, it would probably be too obviously contrasting with the game’s version, but it is far lighter than in game.

Her text is also different here. I have translated part of the JP intro before, she talks of Max and Cain’s bloodline instead, no mention of Guardiana and its king. Makes me wonder if these lines survived in the JP rom, the US rom has unused lines for her but all of this intro was altered in localization, so they tell little of what the JP might have.

Moving on, Ken has completely different sprites, and mind you, they kick ass, I’m wondering big time why they were changed. I guess the perspective might be a little off, but, you should not talk to me about perspective lol. The lower body is also not moving much, but that wouldn’t be reason to change the whole shading. Notably, the spear seems to be part of the character instead of a different sprite, and is accurate to the knights’ artwork.

I didn’t even notice at first, but you can see an axe on the loose behind the sprite, meaning weapon sprites and animations were already in, but unfinished.

For further evidence here’s Max’s sword learning how to levitate as well. This sword sprite is also cooler than anything in the actual game.

It also took me a ridiculously long time to notice Max has no MP here. Perhaps there was no egress at this point, or you’d have to gain the MP to use it first? sounds bad. But Max’s magic suffering late changes would explain the oversight in the final version where his MP continues to grow despite learning nothing but Egress. Would also explain Egress requires exactly 8 MP, which is kind of a random number for a basic and unique. It would come to make a little more sense in future games where the heroes have Bolt and you have to actually manage their MP if you want to be able to retreat later on, but Max has no other spells here.

Of course, the other possibility is that Max was meant to learn more spells. With the trend of GBA version things being planned for the classic all along, it wouldn’t surprise me. This is probably the moment I should bring up that the final game has exactly one dummied out spell, which just so happens to cost 20 MP, a weirdly high cost for a test/placeholder feature, and very in line with the costs of Supernova in the GBA version.

For minor details that don’t excite me as much, Guardiana castle had a gate at some point, and plenty of chickens as well. Even I can’t make a theory out of that, they are probably placeholders.

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this one is super old eheheh but shining force is one of my fav games ;; i might actually redraw this one day ....

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Shining Force World Book translation - part 5

Previous part here

Villain time. I’m getting deja vu.

Runefaust - Structure

The evil group clashing against the Shining Force

The Runefaust army planning to take over the world, led by Emperor Ramladu, is organized as seen in the diagram below. They have brought suffering to peaceful countries and also to the force standing against them. The five subordinates of Ramladu listed below are also all cruel and strong opponents!

Emperor Ramladu - Emperor of Runefaust [the diagram shows Darksol and Elliot under his direct command]

Darksol - Runefaust’s advisor [the diagram shows Balbazak, Mishaela and Cain under his direct command]

Balbazak - General of the Runefaust Army

Commander of the Magic Beast Corps - {Priests, Hellhounds, Brass Loaders, Skeletons, Sea Bats}

Mishaela - General of the Runefaust Army

Commander of the Monster Corps - {Dullahans, Manarina Mages, High Priests, Horsemen, Belials}

Cain - Runefaust Army

Commander of the Silver Knight Squadron - {High Priests, Dullahans, Manarina Mages, Gargoyles, Golems}

Elliot - Runefaust Army

Commander of the Cavalry Corps - {Brass Loaders, Priests, Skeletons, Pegasus Knights, Lizardmen}

[Note: the Brass Loader was localized into Artillery in the english, and Priest into Dark Priest. The change in this last one is kind of interesting and happened with other enemies so i decided to not use the localized names and point it out.

Also, there’s no enemy called Manarina Mage in any version. It’s either a mistake or an implication that every mage you fight in the game is from Manarina, which feels kinda nonsense.]

Keep reading

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Shining Force World Book translation - part 6

Previous part here

This is it for this book for now, there’s an interview with the developers as well but that kind of stuff is always harder for me to translate, and I have other things I want to be doing, so I don’t know when I’ll be getting to it. There are also sections on items and magic but they don’t really say anything interesting.

Full Guide to the Continent of Rune

Keep reading

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Shining Force Data Collection - May 1992

These are from a special on japanese magazine Beep! Megadrive. I haven’t translated most of it because it’s your typical character stat analysis and item/magic list, but there were some fun character tidbits as well.

Protagonist

Leave the finishing blows to him

Character: A typical man, doesn’t talk much. Many warriors admire him and join his force.

Special skills: He’s the only one capable of ordering the wild members of the Shining Force to retreat.

Mae

Daughter of the Knight Captain, running through the wide fields

Character: Super harsh. Though that’s what you can expect of a knight that was also raised like a princess.

Special skills: Her father was the Knight Captain Varios. Her bloodline is as good as it gets for a knight.

Keep reading

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Shining Force Pre Release Coverage

yes i have made a post about this before but i was a baby with one magazine. Now i’m a big 90s kid who has gone through the entirety of the Beep Megadrive archives from 1991-1994, as one does. Get ready for what might be my biggest post ever, I don’t wanna break it into parts for the timeline vibe.

To contextualize the following dates: the game came out in Japan on March 1992.

October 1991

More cool sword animations for Max. Also it took me way too long to realize this background is also not anywhere in the final game, though the final Gate of the Ancients bg does take a lot from it. Apparently it was once meant to be an indoor location with torches.

Keep reading

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Shining Force 2 Pre-release Coverage

Post on the first game here

Let’s continue our deep dive on old magazines. Again most of my info here are from the Beep! Megadrive magazine, but I did manage to find some footage from old Sega videos as well.

For context again, the game released in Japan on October 1993.

June 1993

Unlike the first game, which showed very few regions during pre release, this one is eager to show a bunch of new places, probably because it can’t generate hype about a unique battle system anymore. Bowie and a parade of peculiar placeholders take a good tour around the continent.

Save for the wall decoration and possibly the colors, it’s hard to judge on print, New Granseal’s castle is pretty much the final version. Same for Arc Valley’s escher-like dungeon, as the magazine puts it.

Keep reading

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Some Slades

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So today I think I'm gonna post some of my old Shining Force fanart because I discovered there's a shining force tag and now no-one can stop me. Harpy queens were the worst but they were also super cute I thought, so I drew one. Normally I'd post fanwork over on my side blog but Shining Force is hard-wired into my psyche and I just feel like main is the right place to post it.

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Syntesis (or Synthesis) from Shining Force 3, scenario 2. It's still criminal we did not get Scenarios 2 and 3 in other countries. I will FOREVER be mad about it. I studied Japanese as my major. When I went to study in Nagoya, what should there be in my dorm, but a Sega Saturn? And a copy of Scenario 1! So my little nerd self booted up that game and then marched herself to Osu and was delighted to find copies of Scenario 2 and 3 in a 2nd hand place. It was horrible when Julian fell off that cliff cos everyone is talking in a boatload of keigo and kenjyougo which I hadn't gotten used to at the time, so it was like 'Noooo come baaack you're the only one I fully understand!' And then I translated the opening as part of a uni project thing and I got the comment: 'I don't care who this Medion is or if his mother is worried about him'. Like I don't think you understand, I have cared DEEPLY about who this Medion is for like 13 years and been unable to do anything about it.

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Julian. Challenges a vandal to single combat, gets thrown off a cliff, washes up on a shore with all his equipment, immediately joins another army/battle. Has the best battle music (I will fight you). I think when I replayed after making this, I'd slightly misremembered events, but this is still the gist X3

Also his scenario is the most bonkers. With the most number of unusual party members. You get one or two outlying classes in a regular shining game alongside the usual centaurs, elves and hoomins, but Julian gets a dragon man, an ancient dragon, a unicorn, a fairy (the twinkly kind) and an ex-yuki onna.

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