Unfinished Business: Moon Dancer

[Melf]

Among the slew of Genesis titles that were canceled is Moon Dancer, a strategy/RPG that integrated some innovative gameplay mechanics with a large cast and an interesting plot. Some newly-translated details offer more details about the plot and how it played, offering a deeper look into what could have been a stellar 16-bit title. Read the full article for more details.

[LinkueiBR]

Never heard about this lost game and looks really interesting!
Loved this type of article.

One request: An article with interview about the recently mentioned 3 lost STAR WARS titles that producer John C. Brandstetter (STAR WARS ARCADE for 32x) for the SEGA Mega Drive including the long lost Super Star Wars that was moved to the SEGA CD and even included a SVP for the cart late in the project before be cancelled:
https://twitter.com/ItsJohnnyTurbo/s...25731713355776

[Zebbe]

What a shame this project was cancelled, but it's not surprising. The scope seems far too big for a 6 mbit game. It also sounds like there are 40-100 cities? The plot was really interesting to read about and the involvement of the illustrators must have given the graphics an immersive style.

[Ecco]

The game concepts do seem impossibly huge in scope. Like I can't imagine the game being so large and complex as it was being envisioned, originally.

But maybe it's just hard to imagine because it was so unique in its concept. Characters' emotional states, and impossibly huge world, etc. Maybe if it continued it would have become a really groundbreaking new style of RPG.

I wonder if there are any prototypes of this game, out there. That would be really interesting...

[Gryson]

Here's an interesting anecdote about Moon Dancer from the 4th Game Business Archive talk, which featured Beep! editor Youji Kawaguchi. This is a translation of this tweet from the talk.

"Beep! had brought the design for the game to Sega. However, absolutely no progress was being made on development, so the editor of Beep! [Youji Kawaguchi] went to Sega after work to help write the scenario and such. At that time, the director of the game was sleeping. That director was the same director that had worked on Osomatsu-kun."

If you're not familiar with it, Osomatsu-kun is a notoriously bad early MD title. The implication of that anecdote is that work on Moon Dancer was not proceeding due to the director (name unknown). So in addition to being overly ambitious, it's likely that there were staff issues.