https://twitter.com/RPGSite/status/754019097310928896 Well this came out of nowhere. Blade Arcus from Shining, which is a fighting game featuring Shining characters nobody in the west really knows about cause most Shining games in the past decade have been Japan only, is getting a western release on Steam with online multiplayer. Release date is July 28th. Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/446040/
So rather than bring the company's well-known fighting game to Steam (Virtua Fighter), or localize the company's tatical RPG (Shining Force), they bring the fighting game spin-off to Steam. ...OK.
To be fair, Sega doesn't seem to be handling the PC port. The Steam page shows Studio Saizensen as the publisher and developer. They probably got the license from Sega to publish/port the game.
If Sega is willing to let other publishers port their games on Steam, I hope one day Degica or someone else takes the russian pc version of Sakura Wars and translates it.
This isn't the first time they're letting other publishers do stuff with Sega games/IP. They are letting YS Net self-publish Shenmue 3, and Deep Silver will handle the releases of Sega and Atlus games in Europe. So them letting other publishers re-release Sega games does seem to be possible.
So, uh... Is there any Shining character in this roster I'm actually supposed to recognize? I mean, it's a big fighting game crossover thing, so canon isn't an excuse. At least have a token appearance of Max or Bowie or Jogurt or Darksol. How the heck is anyone who hasn't followed the Shining series since the last localized game supposed to even recognize this as a Shining game?
I don't think it's really possible. I can't even think of any Shining games that've universally gotten the Western Shining community excited since the 90s.
Yeah, it's a really weird game to localize. I don't think I've even ever seen anyone ask for this game to be localized.
The main problem with this game is that it focuses on the "modern" Shining series (the ones where the main character art is done by Tony Taka, and the gameplay is no longer SRPG, but more action-like), and I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure none of them ever released in the west. Modern Shining is like a completely different series in both tone and setting. I don't even thing the first games are canon any more.
I'd probably rather enjoy seeing Sarah or Tao in Taka's style. Too bad Sega seems to prefer pissing in the well of the Camelot-era Shining games. (Meanwhile, Nintendo prints money off of Fire Emblem, a tactics RPG the likes of which modern Sega outright does not make anymore.)
Well, at least that fighting game is fun, hopefully in time, the rest of the Shining games will follow, along with other Sega titles. Would personally like a PC port of the Yakauza games and Vanquish most notably, among many other things.
