TSS and EB on the Wii

[White Shadow]

I considered posting this in another thread, but decided to make a new one instead because it'd have been kind of a tangent.

It occurred to me a few months ago that there might be market interest in getting TSS and EB out on the Wii via the Virtual Console. That said, I don't know if the demand would justify the cost of acquiring the rights, buying the Working Designs intellectual property (translation, voice acting, etc.) from whoever bought it during the company's liquidation and developing a Mega CD emulator for the Wii (since it doesn't have one yet). I'm kind of passively investigating it as a pet project at the moment.

Would anyone be interested in seeing TSS and EB on the Wii?

[Alunissage]

I know this basic topic has come up here before (about the VC, not a fan trying to do it themselves), but didn't find the thread(s). Personally, of course, it makes no difference to me, as I have the originals. However, it would make it easier for my sister to play it, since she doesn't have a SCD and borrowed one of my TSS discs to play on her PC (and I only have one copy of EB, so haven't loaned her that game). It also might decrease the number of rationalizations posted by people who think they're justified in downloading it illegally.

The main thing that comes to mind to change is making the TSS music loop smoothly. I think that's probably the least-harmful change, in terms of offending fans. There are also some name inconsistencies (Nall calling the same monster different things in different areas) which most people probably wouldn't notice. TSS has little that sticks out as being buggy or aggravating or whatnot. I mean, conceivably you could also correct typos, but I'd have to check my notes to see if there's anything I've found that seems to need fixing to me.

While there are a host of things I've pondered changing if I ever got the wherewithal to edit/hack EB in particular, I'd be hesitant of putting any of that in the hands of another fan I hardly know. No offense meant, it's just one of those things where there are only two categories, broadly speaking: me, and people I trust less than I do myself to get it right. That's a bit of an oversimplification, of course; the people two or so people who are in neither know who they are (and that I would still want to be involved anyway). Most of those would be greater in scope than simply correcting typos.

It would be interesting to see where the rights ended up, if anywhere, and what Vic's take on it would be. At least some of the rights were sold back to GA when Legend was being localized; that's why it uses the WD names. But I don't know if that pertains only to the text, only to Lunar 1, etc.

[Nobiyuki77]

I think in most cases, when localization rights are owned by a company that goes under, the rights to their work goes back to the company they originally purchased the rights from (in this case, GameArts).

If they can get going on putting a damn Sega/Mega CD emulator on the Virtual Console, putting Lunar on there would be totally doable (I just started playing Ys I and II, a game for the Turbo Graphx CD). It utilizes most of the same things that Lunar does (albiet to a slightly lesser extent). I think it would be awesome though, I'd totally double dip for that.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

I called the Nintendo number and asked about it and they said that Sega CD games are too big for VC.

[Alunissage]

That's interesting. I was digging through old threads here today and found a mention that without the audio tracks all of TSS could fit on a GBA cartridge. So one wonders if dumping the voice tracks and putting the music in a format other than redbook would make it feasible. How does the size compare to that of the SNES, N64, and TG-16 games already on the VC, I wonder?

[DevNall]

That's interesting. I was digging through old threads here today and found a mention that without the audio tracks all of TSS could fit on a GBA cartridge.

This isn't true for most Sega CD games, though.

[segaboy7]

there is really no reason why nintendo couldn't do this. Look at the turbo grafx virtual console games, you can now get turbo cd games, they are aren't listed as turbo cd games but when you start them you see a turbo grafx cd system screen pop up for a second. I just got Wonders from Ys book 1 and 2, and thats how it works for that game. If nintendo could do this, it could open up Lunar to a whole new generation of gamers.

[GhaleonOne]

There's no way EB would fit. Maybe TSS, but EB takes up dang near the entire disc, if I remember right. Think of the amount of animation and music in that game.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

There's no way EB would fit. Maybe TSS, but EB takes up dang near the entire disc, if I remember right. Think of the amount of animation and music in that game.

Maybe they could make it to where you have to put an SD card in before the download starts and it could go directly to that?

[phyco126]

Actually, nothing is too big to slap something into game cart. The problem is manufacturing a cart with enough size but at a low enough cost.

[cj iwakura]

Anything to get more people into the older games.