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claire-starsword · 9 months

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Shining Force 2 Pre-release Coverage

Post on the first game here

Let’s continue our deep dive on old magazines. Again most of my info here are from the Beep! Megadrive magazine, but I did manage to find some footage from old Sega videos as well.

For context again, the game released in Japan on October 1993.

June 1993

Unlike the first game, which showed very few regions during pre release, this one is eager to show a bunch of new places, probably because it can’t generate hype about a unique battle system anymore. Bowie and a parade of peculiar placeholders take a good tour around the continent.

Save for the wall decoration and possibly the colors, it’s hard to judge on print, New Granseal’s castle is pretty much the final version. Same for Arc Valley's escher-like dungeon, as the magazine puts it.

Volcanon’s shrine is also here, and the magazine claims to have seen “a huge monster” on the top of the shrine, so Volcanon is likely already there as well. They wonder if it could be a boss but I think it’s just baseless speculation since it’s clearly not a battle scene, and little story was revealed at this point.

The monument looks wack, the shop signs are huge, and doors are different, but otherwise Hassan looks very close to the final version.

Bedoe is dark, that particular torch is also not in the final version, although there are torches in the town. Would be a pain in the ass to navigate, but might be just a test of the dark effect.

HQ already has the same vibe, but lots of different details, like different tables, cups and flowers vases on them, no stone walls, etc.

But enough of that, let’s stop pretending the Placeholder Force isn’t the wackiest and most amusing thing in these screenshots. What do we have there.

Bowie seems mostly complete, which makes sense as I’ll show in a second that his design was already announced. There are still a couple differences though, his clothes are blue instead of white and his cape has a golden line. His design might have been quickly revised at some point?

There’s a bunny girl NPC. Because of course the first thing these devs hopped to make was a bunny girl NPC. I’m actually more shocked that they did not keep her. Also I’m saying NPC with some certainty because as you can see comparing with Bowie, playable characters tend to have one less pixel between the eyes. So I don’t think she’s a scrapped character or anything.

Mae is here! Because of course it makes sense to use a character from the previous game as placeholder. As opposed to, you know, drawing a whole bunny girl. Her lower body was recolored to orange/yellow for some reason though.

There’s a wyvern sprite that does make it to the final game as an enemy. Curiously that shot of New Granseal shows more wyverns flying around as well. It makes no sense to use flying placeholders for the soldiers that should be there, so I wonder if there were supposed to be birds flying in the scenario or something, it would be neat.

There’s a cute little girl NPC with twintails who sadly didn’t make it. I don’t have anything to say about this.

Finally, true nerds like me fans of this blog will have certainly recognized the warrior sprite as an unused sprite from the first game:

From the side however, it was clearly edited, the helmet losing detail, getting shorter horns, and the whole guy getting shorter as well. My theory is that this guy was on the process of becoming this:

and maybe later Jaha, as this NPC is already very similar to him, and his design was already announced as well. In fact, that’s what we’ll talk about next. Besides these screenshots, there are four characters introduced in this article.

This kid is the protagonist!?

He is the protagonist who will represent you and travel through the world of Shining Force II. It seems he lives in the castle town of Granseal, but has no adventuring experience yet. From here on the both of you will have an exciting journey together!

The princess of Granseal!?

The princess of the country of Granseal, where the protagonist lives. She seems to be the main female character for Shining Force II. Her long hair and beautiful dress are nice. How will she get involved with the protagonist? We look forward to see it.

Jaha

“We’re the side characters!?“

Wielding a huge axe, he’s a bad influence for the protagonist, and a hobbit warrior. Just like the protagonist, he’s still in training and has no adventuring experience. Really bad at studying in school.

Slade

The greatest thief in Granseal. He shares the stolen treasures with poor people. Clearly a kind of Nezumi Kozo.

As the link above says, Nezumi Kozo (rat brat) is the nickname of a japanese thief who later became a kind of Robin Hood-esque folk hero as it was assumed he helped the poor as well with his crimes, and also apparently never hurt a victim. There’s an obvious inspiration here.

Producer Hiroyuki Takakashi doesn’t reveal much of the story at this point, only that it will be a different continent than the first game, and also have more events happening one after another unlike SF. He also says that there would be battles different than the army vs. army setting of SF. There are also talks of how certain details of the system and graphics were being reworked, and already talks of being able to choose between promotions, but it’s all very vague.

Later in this month, a demonstration of the game was presented at the Tokyo Toy Show. I couldn’t confirm it as there doesn’t seem to be a recording of it anywhere, but it’s likely a lot of the footage from here on is from that.

July 1993

Article opens up with an interview with the Takahashi brothers, but there’s not much to note. They mention being in the point of writing the game’s ending, and when asked about the presence of robots and such in the previous game, mention that while the Ancients are always a part of the Shining Series since SitD, this game would lean more into the fantasy vibes.

Also, up to this point, they had been working on both SF2 and Gaiden 2 at the same time. Gaiden 3 released in early July so from here on they’re free to focus on SF2. Or maybe not, because there’s already talks of a Gaiden 3 being planned. For better and for worse, these people could not stand still a second.

(To digress a bit, it’s also peculiar because the Final Conflict strategy guide mentions the game was originally planned for the Mega Drive. The Gaiden series was a Game Gear thing, so perhaps there was a whole different game being considered at this point which got shelved to make way for Final Conflict.)

Back to the topic, we get a few more screenshots with the Placeholder Force.

Most places seen like the final version, but this house/village in front of the ancient shrine was removed.

We then get pictures of what is likely a later build with more familiar characters being worked on.

The Caravan debuts, and we also finally get the first battle scenes.

Taros is already here as the most eye-catching part for the 90′s kids. I on the other hand am loving a lot more how the platform neatly informs you it is a test only. The UI also does not show the character’s class, even though it will in the final version.

And Luke is here! Except maybe not. His name onscreen says Nick. Obviously this could be an issue of them using the rename cheat, but that doesn’t happen for any other character in these pre release footages, and would be a bizarre move. It’s possibly a placeholder name derived from Sonic Co., (like Max is likely derived from Climax Entertainment, now you know). The interesting thing is that this sprite and its palettes in the final game don’t quite match Luke nor Skreech’s design, and Luke is also the only character to not get a sprite change upon promotion, so it’s easy to believe that was some delay or complication in finalizing these guys.

We also get a look at the Grans-Parmecia Shrine map, which is very much done as well. The monsters on the top however is frustrating me to no end because they look very familiar but I can’t remember where from. Anyway, definitely didn’t make it to this game at least.

We also get our first look at Sarah and Kazin, except Kazin is so cut off on this screen it’s not worth mentioning him now, there will be plenty of time to talk about Kazin later. Sarah on the other hand is easy to see, and she’s clearly not herself yet. Her outfit is what will become hers and Karna’s vicar outfit in the final version, but she also has a hat, which only the vicar battle sprite will have in the end.

It’s okay, she’s an important character so i’m sure they will sort this out in a timely manner. Anyway! We do see someone else there who is also from the starting gang and with a complete design. Chester’s design is indeed announced at this point, though with little character info. There’s also a small synopsis of the story by now, which is basically “Slade steals a treasure in the shrine and bad stuff begins to happen”. We then get a map of Parmecia.

I don’t think I’ve posted an official map of Parmecia before, so here it is for comparison. They do look pretty much the same already. Volcanon’s shrine is weirdly not marked in the map, but is mentioned in the text. Lemon and Creed’s names are mentioned as well.

August 1993

The article of this month explicitly mentions the Tokyo Toy Show so that’s nice for reference. While I couldn’t confirm it, by comparing the footage I also think this Sega video (the Shining Force part starts at the 6 minute mark) is from the same month, so I’ll be using footage from there as well.

The demo showed an early version of the jail cutscene with Slade. While the dialogue seems to be same as the final version, Sarah does not have her portrait nor her final sprite yet, and the other characters seem to be just following Bowie in line as opposed to having their own places in the cutscene. The old man NPC also has different colors, and there seems to be someone else in the room.

If you watch further in the footage you’ll see everyone keeps following Bowie, even hilariously clipping through walls at points. I’ve joked about it before but turns out I was right, they did put some good effort into coding the followers’ movement, because they might have intended to use it more, if not through the whole game.

Lemon’s sprite was not done at the time, and the event of the Galam army’s departure was likely simplified since the final version involves not only Lemon, but the king as well, who seems to have no placeholder here.

The Caravan scene is also shown, although using the dwarf village theme, and having Jaha instead of Peter. Given that it’s just one character as opposed to the big team you would have at this point, it’s possible he’s just standing in for Peter and not actually intended to be in the scene. The next one raises further questions though.

The Kraken scene is also shown, and the whole starting team is here. Slade’s text is very much in same vein as Oddler’s in the final version, warning everyone of the Kraken’s appearance, but it’s still different text, as Oddler speaks more politely, so this version was written for Slade himself, no placeholding.

It deeply hurts my heart to consider Slade was supposed to have a bigger role and got scrapped, though I feel I know why this happened. This series really likes to take its gameplay deaths seriously for some reason, and it would probably be too costly to constantly check which characters are alive and have alternate versions of a cutscene to adjust for that. That’s why the first game mostly has just Nova talking (though characters still show up for the ending at least). The Gaiden games go around this a bit more by reviving everyone at the start of every chapter and on endings, and also using characters who just joined the force in the cutscenes as they can’t have died already.

This game made Peter and Lemon, two immortal characters who carry most of the conversations from the moment they join alongside Astral. It also seems to delay some characters joining as playable characters for this reason. For example, Kazin is not playable through the path to Hawel’s house even though he’s following you, because he has to be alive for the cutscene there. Pretty much every instance of a character following you instead of joining the force seems to be because of this.

There are a few instances that show they might have considered other approaches though. There are numerous instances at the start of the game where characters revive automatically, since there’s a lot of dialogue with them. After the first battle, before the jail scene, upon leaving Grans Island, and during the one year timeskip. Of course, they all resurrect during the time Princess Elis is asleep in the ending as well. There’s also as far as I remember a single instance where you must have a particular character alive to progress, if Elric is dead he won’t open the passage to Creed’s mansion.

Of course, they might have felt that characters would have to be constantly revived for do more scenes with that, and it would ruin their game design, and it’s not intuitive to know that you must revive a particular someone to proceed, so they might just have scrapped this kind of plot. Still sucks given that it’s kind of a self imposed limitation, plenty of games just treat defeat in battle as different to death and let the characters take part in the story as needed. But alas, back on topic.

Plenty of other battle maps are shown, albeit with different enemies and different stats. A very minor detail is that the golem sprite has red eyes. In the final version they have green eyes except for Claude.

Sorcerer spells are in, although they don’t seem to be fully implemented yet, in the footage Kazin uses them through the attack command as opposed to an actual spell. Perhaps because of that it is also single target.

Speaking of Kazin, I did say we have to talk about him, now’s the time.

His sprite seems to be much like the final one, but blue. It is possible there are small differences though, because his staff, not in the final version, seems to use at least three colors besides black and white, when all final weapons in the game use only two. This is because the game loads the character and weapon colors into a single 16 color palette, so to have more colors in one you sacrifice colors of the other. Weapons in the first game did have three colors so this might be a leftover.

Small details for big nerds though, as I said the design is pretty much complete, including details like the bag and the feathers he carries around, which are less generic than I’d expect for a placeholder. Perhaps he already had a tentative design floating around.

More than that, the map sprite seen in all these pictures did make it to the final game. As his sorcerer sprite.

It looks nothing like the sorcerer design, so it’s easy to accept it was designed for something else. Let’s compare with the final mage sprite.

Hair changed to be spiky, but everything else is basically the same, including the green staff which matches his final artwork. It’s likely he had some concept art already around, though it wasn’t officially revealed so perhaps there was some intention of changing it. But it’s noticeable that he shows up in plenty of footage while nothing is seen of Sarah, who is not finalized either. He was at least further in the development.

The color thing is also interesting. Kazin does get to be blue as sorcerer, and also as wizard... in the map, and the game’s cover, a rare case of official illustration of a promotion. In battle however his sprite is brown. That palette, though? Is the last one set for the wizard sprite, even though he should be the first wizard. And the first palette for it? That’s right, blue. In the final version it is used for Chaz, who does have the exact same clothes but is the last wizard in the game. It would not surprise me if there was a swap at some point. And of course it makes sense to not use two blue palettes for the same sprite. The question is, why design the characters with the same colors then? I would love to get an answer.

September 1993

Signs of progress, every picture is this article is from a different build, since character classes now show up in the UI.

Sarah still does not have her map sprite.

Her battle sprite and finished design do finally show up in the next pages though, so they might have just not got to it at the time, even if it feels silly to me as map sprites are simpler, perhaps exactly because of that they weren’t top priority. Either way, it just feels wild to me when compared to how Chester and Jaha and even Kazin seem to have been done.

As for the actual point of the picture, that’s Bowie casting Freeze level 4. Normally I’d chalk this up to debugging shenanigans, as the first game and Gaiden I as well give the heroes extra spells in debug mode, but, that generally also comes with jacked stats including 99 MP. Bowie here is at max unpromoted level but his stats look normal.

For further consideration here’s another screenshot of him at level 4 knowing Egress and Blaze level 1. Everyone’s stats look normal so this looks like his actual intended progression. Also while drafting this post and having it blasted to oblivion because tumblr can’t save properly apparently, I realized this explains a bit of the wackiness when it comes to magic progression in this game. Did you know that the Kraken is weak to ice? Have fun trying to exploit that weakness. In the final game, you go a big stretch of the game without access to Freeze. If you promote Kazin to wizard and don’t pick Tyrin at Creed’s, you’re basically locked out of ice spells for most of the game, until you finally find Chaz. That always struck me as very weird, and I’m realizing now it might be because they might have stuck with magical Bowie here for a good time, and didn’t rebalance things when changing it.

Sarah debuts with a proper sprite for once.

Blue Kazin however remains undeterred. You might also notice his staff is switching colors weirdly during animation. I’ve had this problem on my first hacking attempts of the game due to not setting up proper Mega Drive colors, and it’s amusing me to no end that it happened to the actual devs as well. Though I don’t know that much on how animations are done so the problem might have a different origin as well. Anyway, fun.

We also get to see Kazin’s full spell list, and while mostly the same, he has the Attack spell instead of Desoul, much like Tao was the only wizard to have it in the first game. In the final version, only Frayja learns this spell, making this the only classic Shining Force game where it is a priest spell instead of a mage one, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that Kazin was meant to have it.

It’s also worth noting that in the final game, Kazin is the only character who learns Desoul. Either the spell wasn’t in (the article mentions every other wizard and priest spell except for it), or someone else was meant to learn it, or they hadn’t even planned that far ahead.

We get our first character bios in a long time.

Protagonist - Bowie

A boy who lives in the castle town of Granseal. He used to be a mischievous boy, but nowadays is well behaved (?) and studying hard as Astral’s pupil. He’s friends with Jaha and Chester, and they play together almost every day.

The thief Slade

The self proclaimed great thief of justice. But he’s not much of a bad guy, and shares his stolen treasures with poor people. He seems to main culprit behind the story’s beginning!?

Warrior Jaha

Bowie’s friend, and a hobbit who hates studying the most out of all of Astral’s pupils. Really strong in battle.

The knight Chester

Bowie’s friend, and another pupil of Astral’s, but while he’s a gallant centaur, his one flaw is that he’s not very assertive. He often comes up as just a yes-man to Bowie. Don’t you have friends like that too? Treat him well.

Priest Sarah

An elf girl and also Astral’s pupil. She’s helpful and likes taking care of others, being kind of a big sister to Bowie and the others. Pulling out that sisterly authority at times, she might be kind of annoying?

Sometimes I wonder if Sarah went through some kind of rewrite during development since none of her official descriptions bring up her being the actual mischievous kid who plans to sneak into the castle and is not even apologetic about it, but then I remember that this series is uhhhh, ah, erm, oof, hmmmm, about women, so yeah, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

Sage Astral

Currently retired, he has now taken Bowie and the other kids as pupils. He’s also a notable person who knows the king personally. At the story’s beginning, he berates these troublesome kids while also giving them a chance to go on the adventure.

Sheela

A mysterious and beautiful human girl. She used to train under Astral, but left for some reason. While she doesn’t have much relation with the story, we look forward to see just how will she and Bowie meet. She’s quite sexy!!

King Granseal

King of the country of Granseal at the south of Grans Island. Bowie and the others live in its castle town. Because the queen passed away too soon, he dotes a lot on Princess Elis. Ooh.

Princess Granseal

The princess of Granseal, she’s a happy girl loved by the king and her people. We’re quite curious to know how she’ll be connected to the heroes. Maybe in the end she’ll be a party member!?

OOF

Kiwi

A new character appears!

The green turtle Kiwi is the mascot-like character this time. Of course he can take part in battles, but he’s not very strong. But he seems to hide some special talent!? What exactly is still a secret for now. He’s kind of cute, maybe.

-The previous game had Yogurt, of famous sayings (?) like “do you like my helmet” and “I don’t get it”.

After the magazine, we get more Sega footage (starts around the 4:45 mark).

The intro seems pretty much done, except for a Gizmo attacking the king instead of Geshp. And it’s easy to think “oh it’s a placeholder”, but in the final version the king is really possessed by a Gizmo and Geshp doesn’t show up until much later, so I’m not sure? It’s not a very important change at least.

Sarah finally has her final sprite and portrait, so this is a different build. This does mean I can finally go bully the final graphics of this game a bit more.

Sarah’s final priest sprite is not based on her artwork, and is instead just a recolor of the vicar spritesheet, which as I mentioned, is from the placeholder sprite we’ve seen all this time. You can even notice some leftover grey shading that doesn’t quite fit with the blue. Compare it with Blue Kazin’s robes that I’ve posted earlier, which use only the two shades of blue in the palette.

This sprite was a massive rush job, is what I’m saying. A lot of map sprites in this game feel the same, learning how to edit graphics is both a blessing and a curse because you can’t unsee these things.

This footage shows up a lot of final battle sprites not seen until now, especially promotions, like Wolf Baron Gerhalt, Hero Bowie, and so on. I find it hilarious that it also brings up Kiwi when everywhere else they were trying to be coy about Kiwi’s promotion.

The weird thing though, is that the footage ends with the sorcerer spell display from the old builds. Did they not have footage of the final sorcerer graphics? Likely. Let’s bully the final graphics some more.

No fingers! Misplaced weapon! His ass was not designed in a sane and timely fashion!

So yes it is fully possible that the sorcerer sprite was not done even as the game was already like halfway through the door.

The funniest part? In this later build footage we only get a vague glimpse of Kazin.

I’m sorry the screenshot is horrible since it goes by fast, but that’s Blue Kazin.

Of course, most characters in the scene seem to be promoted, even special promotions like Brass Gunner Elric. At the same time May and Slade remain unpromoted. So is this Blue Kazin already repurposed as the sorcerer sprite? Or is the mage sprite still not done?

We might never know the truth, but the fact is that the pre release coverage ends here, and we didn’t get a single glimpse of his final artwork. In a sense he might have been a bigger mess than Sarah.

I have more to write but tumblr has already messed up this draft four to five times and I’m tired, so I’m splitting this into two posts even though i didn’t want it just to see if the problem is post size.

#shining force #shining force 2 #shining series #sf2 bowie #sf2 jippo slade #sf2 jaha #sf2 huey chester #sf2 kazin #sf2 sarah #this was fun to research but tumblr is making me want to kill something very hard not gonna lie

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