FMV Hell: Lunar, The Silver Star

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Time once again for a brief look at the Sega CD games that made us women and men (if you're currently a twenty-something, I mean).

The full-motion video in games like Lunar, The Silver Star is unique stuff for a few reasons. First, it was an unfiltered assault of glittery, shojo-eyed anime during an age when most game localisers struggled to hide any cultural evidence that video games indeed come from Japan. Of course, Working Designs is still known for taking some, er, extreme liberties with their own translations and localisations, but by God that's another tome for another night. All you need to know is that Lunar saw its US release in 1993, ages before Pokemon made anime mainstream (bonus fact: anime became mainstream in Canada in 1996, thanks to Sailor Moon recieving an after-school time slot).

The intro for Lunar is also made special by its...lack of animation. Maybe we were too busy drooling on the television screen at the time, but when you watch Sega CD intros in today's age of a thousand frames per second, you begin to notice that the "cut scenes" that wowed us over a dozen years ago are little more than kindergarten-grade cut-outs with pinned, movable limbs.

I'm being a little cruel, however. Lunar might not be the best-aged RPG out there, but like Sonic CD, it contains a lot of heart. And the voice acting, though nothing spectacular, is still a few notches above the horrors that would assault us on the Playstation five years later.

Still, a friend of mine claimed that the singing practise scene in Lunar (about 5:40 into the video) beat the hell out of the opera scene in Final Fantasy VI.

I'm...I'm really not sure about that.

Related Links:

Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going
FMV Hell: Sonic CD

FMV Hell: Sonic CD

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:40:00 GMT

I'm pretty sure most original prints of Sega CD games were long ago ground up into dog food, but the resurrection of Vay on the iPhone got me nostalgic for the anime cutscenes that used to preced certain Sega CD games. Each scene employed about sixteen on-screen colours and had about thirty frames of animation, but there was something charming about those florescent marionettes. They were like figures drawn in an Autistic kid's painting: clumsy, but admirable for the attempt.

(And vasty preferable to the grainy live-action FMV that usually gummed up the games in the Sega CD library.)

The Sega CD is largely considered a failure, but every failed system has its must-own games. Sonic CD was certainly a gem, easily the highlight of Sonic the Hedgehog's up-and-down career. Sonic CD began with the standard Sega CD animated intro.

It's interesting to note that there are a few versions of the anime. Most obviously, there's a Japanese intro and an American one. The animation in both is more or less the same, but wars have been fought over which country has the better intro song. America long ago became familiar with Spencer Nilsen's "Sonic Boom, Sonic Boom, Sonic Boooooom" whereas Japanese children got to hear a song about leather and lace and what might possibly be a chorus that begins with "Toot toot Sonic Warrior."

Here's the Japanese intro stacked up against the American one. Engage comparison.

Either way, the Sonic CD intro is garish and choppy thanks to technical limitations (watch the PC version for a far smoother ride), but it's strangely compelling to watch. Sonic darts across Mobius, racing towards Eggman's latest threat--he's all business, but at the same time it's obvious he enjoys the thrill of simply cutting loose and running. And with no people or vehicles or annoying tag-along friends to slow him down, he can just do what he was born to do: race. It's a bit of well-choreographed simplicity that's absent from games today and Lord knows that especially applies to Sonic games.

By the way, the title of this little "series" is a tribute to AMV Hell. Before I thought of it, my husband and I had a little discussion about what the series name should be.

Him: "How about 'Seedy CD?'"

Me: "Nah, you can't really tell that it's a Sega CD feature."

"All right, what about 'Sega Seedy CD?'"

"That's no good."

"How about, 'My Wife is an Uppity Bitch Who Doesn't Like My Ideas?'"

"How about, 'My Husband's Ideas Are Not Funny?'"

It sounds like the beginning of an epic nerd fight, but we were laughing too hard to take a swing at each other.

Related Links:

Where Is Yu Suzuki?
Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going
Do You Hold Any Hope For Sonic Unleashed?

61 Frames Per Second : sonic cd

FMV Hell: Lunar, The Silver Star

FMV Hell: Sonic CD