Lunar: The Silver Star - Development

Development

Lunar: The Silver Star was developed by Game Arts in an attempt to create a role-playing game that would both primarily focus on animation and storytelling. The team turned to scenario writer and novelist Kei Shigema to craft a story that would break away from "hum-drum 'model'" games that "had stories, but had no story-telling". Using the Sega CD's video playback capabilities, animator and artist Toshiyuki Kubooka oversaw the planning of several video sequences that would be coupled with voice-overs to better tell the story of the Lunar world. Settling on an overall fantasy approach as opposed to the popular role-playing alternative of science fiction, the team wanted to explore the mythos and history of a fictional world that would gradually reveal itself to the player over time. Having mostly developed side-scrollers and scrolling shooters for the Mega Drive and PC Engine, Game Arts formed its subsidiary company, Studio Alex, named for the main character of this title, to oversee most of the game's development. Due to time constraints, nearly one-third of the Lunar project was scrapped by the game's release.

Lunar's English version was handled by Working Designs, a small California-based publisher who had previously localized smaller games for the TurboGrafx-16 and TurboDuo. Their biggest project yet, the team, headed by company vice president and chief writer Victor Ireland, took to the project seriously, often collaborating with the original Japanese team themselves. New gameplay elements were often added at Ireland's request, including new sequences such as playing Alex's harp to awaken Luna near the end of the game. Working Designs also put extra effort into the game's packaging, giving the instruction booklet embossed lettering, and having seven separate stamps, each with different artwork, produced for the front of the game discs to increase collection value.

The English script was nearly four megabytes in size, yet Working Designs completed the translation in only eight weeks after a marathon programming session. During translation, the developers did find time to inject some of their own humor in to the game's text, dropping in sentences such as Have you ever tried swimming in lemon jello?, and numerous light-hearted pop culture references not seen in the original version, including allusions to American commercials, celebrities, colloquialisms, products, and role-playing game clichés.