Moon: Remix RPG Adventure

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure[lower-alpha 1] is a 1997 role-playing video game developed by Love-de-Lic and published by ASCII Entertainment. The game was first released for PlayStation on October 16, 1997, and was re-released as part of the PlayStation the Best line on November 5, 1998.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure
Developer(s)Love-de-Lic
Publisher(s)
  • ASCII Entertainment (PlayStation)
  • Onion Games (Nintendo Switch)
Director(s)Kenichi Nishi
Designer(s)
Artist(s)Kazuyuki Kurashima
Writer(s)
  • Yoshiro Kimura
  • Taro Kudo
Composer(s)
Platform(s)PlayStation, Nintendo Switch
ReleasePlayStation
  • JP: October 16, 1997
Nintendo Switch
  • JP: October 10, 2019
  • WW: August 27, 2020
Genre(s)Role-playing
Mode(s)Single-player

Although the game was featured prominently at E3 in 1997 with plans to release the game the following year, ASCII decided not to release Moon outside Japan.[1][2] The game was advertised shortly afterward for a US release in GamePro magazine,[3] but was never published by another company. Despite its critical praise as a role-playing game that defies convention in its own genre, Moon remained an extremely obscure Japan-exclusive title. English fan translations have been attempted before and stalled.[4][5]

A Nintendo Switch port of the game was announced and released in Japan on October 10, 2019 by Onion Games, Yoshiro Kimura's development studio. A Western release with official English localization has been confirmed to be released on August 27, 2020.[6]

Plot

Moon begins with the protagonist, a small boy, playing a new RPG called "Moon" (a.k.a. "Fake Moon") on his "Gamestation". The game begins with the player controlling the Hero of Fake Moon in a 10-minute game-within-a-game, Fake Moon being something of a parody of Japanese RPGs of the 16-bit era.[7] Convoluted JRPG stories are skewered by the minutes of a nonsensical backstory, which Boy skips through before the player can read it. Queen Aphrodite has been abducted and taken to the moon. The perpetrator, Dragon, will wreak millions of calamitous years upon the people of Love-De-Gard with her power. Yet, the people have produced a hero who must travel to Dragon Castle and destroy the beast. After playing through a few typical RPG scenes (random battles, an airship sequence, etc.), the boy is ordered by his mother to go to bed and obediently does so. However, the television on which he was just playing Fake Moon switches back on by itself, and the boy is sucked into the world of Moon, a land called "Love-de-Gard." Its people and its story resembles Fake Moon's.

Setting

The player must explore a vast world named Love-De-Gard. A dragon has swallowed the moonlight, with calamitous consequences. Castle Love-De-Gard houses the King's room, the Minister's room, the throne room, hallways, the balcony, the soldiers’ room, and the King's toy room. In Castle Town, Boy finds Fountain Square, a floristry, a general store, a bakery, a bar, and Yoshida's home. At Rainbow Rocks, there is Granny's house, Tao's hiding place, the rainbow machine, and Boy's house (which was formerly Nikka's and Pokka's house). In Tropical Field, one discovers Whaleshell Cove, Ossan's Cave, Tamaya's, American House, Windmill Hermitage, and Eco-Club Headquarters. One sees, in the Valley of the Wind, Twilight Canyon, Splitting Sunbeam Road, and Wildcat House. There is Mushroom Forest, which contains Burrn Hall, Adder's House, Mushroom Forest itself, and a haunted house. Within Technopolis, Boy sees Doctor Steinhager's office, Technopolis proper, Club Techno, and the V.I.P. Room. Bali Bali is its own location, as is the moon.

Gameplay

Time follows a set calendar that runs in real time. The Day of the Sun, a day-off, is the equivalent to Sunday. The Day of the New Moon is Monday, The Day of the Bonfire is Tuesday, The Day of the Tear is Wednesday, The Day of the Leaves is Thursday, The Day of the Neka (Real Moon's currency) is Friday, and The Day of the Echo is like Saturday. The world's inhabitants (and the animal's souls, too) follow their own regular schedules each week. Hero leaves behind the corpses of the animals he's killed all over the world. Boy must catch the soul that manifests, whereupon the soul is whisked away to the Moon and the Boy obtains "Love". A soul appears during a certain time of day each week.

The player increases Boy's Love Level by discovering the secret wishes of Real Moon's people. Boy must then grant the idiosyncratic wishes of each person. Sometimes Love comes from readily apparent events, but there are secret and time-limited events Boy must fulfill. "Love" grows by levels. The player preserves progress by going to bed and entering a dream state. By leveling up Boy, the time he can exist in the world (his "action limit") increases. When Boy's "action limit" falls to 0, it's game over.[8]

In the game, the player can change the background music at nearly any time. One can purchase or find "MoonDiscs" (M.D.), each of which grants 1 new song performed by commercial artists. Some locations, of course, have programmatic music. The player can also collect other special items. "Name cards" are cards featuring the in-game characters, which reveal information and hints about their background and wishes. "Chips" are integral to the game's story. They act as sacred texts that reveal the past, the present, and the future of Real Moon. The player must decide what to do based on the words and pictures featured on the chips.

Development

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is the first of three games developed by Love-de-Lic, a game developer made up of former members of Square. After leaving Square, the group worked on the game ambitiously for over two years.[7] It was first previewed in Weekly Famitsu on May 23, 1997.[9] Moon was directed by Kenichi Nishi. He was aided in the game's design by Yoshiro Kimura and Taro Kudo. The game's backgrounds and maps were designed by Akira Ueda. Character and monster designs were handled by Kazuyuki Kurashima.

Music

The soundtrack to Moon was composed by over 30 independent Japanese musicians, perhaps the most prominent of which is The Thelonious Monkees, Love-de-Lic's internal name for its sound team, headed by Hirofumi Taniguchi. He would later compose music for Love-de-Lic's other games, as well the games from its spin-off companies. The game's musical score is a wide mix of genres ranging from pop music to traditional Japanese koto music, as well as having both instrumental and vocal tracks. One of the gameplay mechanics of Moon called the "MoonDisc" (MD) player even allows the person playing the game to arrange their own soundtrack with up to 36 pieces of music, for certain situations during the story.[10]

One of the soundtrack's most recognizable songs is The Thelonious Monkees' KERA-MA-GO, a theme song of the game's idol singer character Kris. In reality, the song was sung by a 12-year-old American girl named Krysta Ashley Schulze, who just happened to be vacationing in Japan with her family at the time and had no prior experience as a recording artist.

The first of Moon's soundtracks was released on a single disc in 1997 alongside the game itself, but many of the MD tracks were absent, most likely due to legal issues from the many artists that composed the music.[10] In December 2002, a 3-disc set titled The Sketches of Moondays: We Kept Our Promise To You was released by Sten Och Flod and Underground Liberation Force Records. The set contains all of the game's music in a total of 63 tracks.[10] One of its tracks, "Promise," was remixed for the 2001 Melody of Legend: Chapter of Love compilation disc.[11]

In 2006, Olio Music, an online music store, re-published both albums, as well as releasing two compilation albums: one containing arranged music from the game, and one containing new music composed by the "MoonDisc" artists.[12][13][14][15]

Merchandise

A companion book titled Moon: Official Book was also released by ASCII. Another book titled Tsukiyo No Aho Dori: Moon Side Story was released by Jugemu Books. It features a story by Yoshiro Kimura and illustrations by Kazuyuki Kurashima.[16]

Nintendo Switch port

On the Japanese broadcast of the September 4, 2019 Nintendo Direct presentation, Yoshiro Kimura's development studio Onion Games announced a Nintendo Switch port of the game, which was released in Japan on October 10 of that year.[17] Afterwards, the studio announced via Twitter that this version would receive an English localization, to be released in Western regions some time after the Japanese release.[6] He has since reaffirmed that the game will be released outside of Japan "soon" after the Japanese release at an interview during Tokyo Game Show.[18]

Tim Rogers, one of the writers from Kotaku, has been confirmed to be a writer on the English translation.[18] It is scheduled for release worldwide on August 27, 2020.[19]

Reception

Despite its lack of sales, Moon was widely praised for its innovation and is seen as a game that breaks the norm of conventional role-playing games, parodying many aspects of the genre itself.[8][7][20]

In 2000, Famitsu listed Moon in its top 120 PlayStation games of all time for scoring 32 out of 40.[21] Wyrdwad of RPGFan calls Moon one of the greatest RPGs ever made and cites it as being "nearly perfect in every way."[8]

Notes
  1. Japanese: ムーンリミックスRPGアドベンチャー Hepburn: Moon Rimikkusu RPG Adobencha

References
  1. IGN staff (October 7, 1997). "Ascii Drops RPG". IGN.com. Retrieved 2008-10-29.
  2. IGN Staff (August 4, 1997). "Ascii Speaks". IGN.com. Retrieved 2008-12-13.
  3. love-de-licious (July 30, 2008). "Love-de-links". Archived from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
  4. Sgeos. "Unofficial Moon Translation Project". Sennue.com. Archived from the original on 2008-10-10. Retrieved 2008-11-08.
  5. "Moon: Remix RPG Adventure PSX Translation". Retrieved 2011-12-06.
  6. @oniongames (2019-09-04). "It's true! Onion Games is bringing the cult-classic 'anti-RPG' MOON to the Nintendo Switch" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  7. Bruno de Figueiredo. "LOVE-de-LIC". GameSpy.com. Archived from the original on 2008-11-09. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
  8. Wyrdwad (May 14, 2006). "RPGFan Reviews - Moon". RPGFan.com. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
  9. "Weekly Famitsu ~ May 23, 1997 ~". NCSX.com. May 23, 1997. Archived from the original on November 20, 2006. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
  10. Wyrdwad. "RPGFan Soundtracks - The Sketches of Moondays: We Kept Our Promise To You". RPGFan.com. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
  11. "Melody of Legend ~ Chapter of Dream". Chudahs-Corner.com. Archived from the original on 2008-03-02. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
  12. "close up #005 Moon Sound Track "Mburrn"". Olio-Music.jp. Archived from the original on 2007-02-19. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
  13. "close up #007 Moon Sound Track "Mburrn" vol. 2". Olio-Music.jp. Archived from the original on 2009-04-02. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
  14. "close up #009 Moon Sound Track "Mburrn" vol. 3". Olio-Music.jp. Archived from the original on 2009-04-02. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
  15. "close up #011 "Mburrn" presents Ten Years After". Olio-Music.jp. Archived from the original on 2009-02-12. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
  16. "月夜の阿呆鳥―Moon side story (じゅげむBOOKS) (単行本)". Amazon.co.jp. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
  17. moon [Nintendo Direct 2019.9.5], retrieved 2019-09-05
  18. Kohler, Chris. "22 Years Later, A Major Milestone For RPGs Is Finally Coming West". Kotaku. Retrieved 2019-09-17.
  19. Romano, Sal (July 29, 2020). "Moon for Switch launches August 27 in the west". Gematsu. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
  20. Klepek, Patrick (March 3, 2003). "Giftpia Preview for GameCube - Gaming Age". Gaming-Age.com. Archived from the original on February 7, 2003. Retrieved 2008-10-29.
  21. "Top 120 Famitsu". Gaming-Age.com. June 2000. Archived from the original on 2011-06-05. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
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