{"id":103401,"date":"2019-11-09T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-09T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2019\/11\/feature_saga_series_director_on_romancing_saga_3_the_super_famicom_jrpg_heading_westwards_after_24_years"},"modified":"2019-11-09T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-09T18:00:00","slug":"feature-saga-series-director-on-romancing-saga-3-the-super-famicom-jrpg-heading-westwards-after-24-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/11\/09\/feature-saga-series-director-on-romancing-saga-3-the-super-famicom-jrpg-heading-westwards-after-24-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: SaGa Series Director On Romancing SaGa 3, The Super Famicom JRPG Heading Westwards After 24 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With the release of the Romancing SaGa 3<\/a><\/strong> remaster on Switch on 11th November, the game is finally<\/em> getting a western localisation 24 years to the day after the game first launched on Super Famicom. With a choice of eight characters, a deep battle system and an expansive adventure defined by player choice, it’s a classic JRPG that unfortunately remained in Japan – until now.<\/p>\n

The remaster on Switch gives the pixel art of the SFC original a lick of HD paint, adds new scenarios and a dungeon and gives many of us in the west our first opportunity to get to grips with an innovative game which was arguably well ahead of its time.<\/p>\n

We were lucky enough to have original Final Fantasy<\/a><\/strong> designer and SaGa series director Akitoshi Kawazu and series producer Masanori Ichikawa answer our questions about the original SaGa games on Game Boy, the reasons why the Super Famicom ‘Romancing’ branch wasn’t localised for the west and how the series has influenced the non-linear, open-ended games of today.<\/p>\n

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Nintendo Life: The original SaGa games (known as Final Fantasy Legend<\/a> in the west) on GameBoy were very popular \u2013 all three ranked on our reader-voted Top 50 Game Boy games<\/a> list \u2013 and proved that the handheld system could handle \u2018proper\u2019 RPGs. Looking back on that time, what do you think was the most challenging aspect of developing those games on that modest hardware?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kawazu – We made the original Final Fantasy<\/a><\/strong> on the Famicom \/ NES, which was able to render visuals in colour, which allowed us to really show a lot of variety in the game\u2019s locations and graphics. However, the Game Boy only had monochromatic graphics, so we were unable to show things using colour, which I would say was the biggest challenge, as we still wanted to present a vivid and interesting fantasy world for players.<\/p>\n

The latter two games in the Game Boy trilogy received Japan-only remakes on Nintendo DS. With remakes all the rage these days, would a radical Final Fantasy VII Remake<\/a>-style overhaul on today\u2019s hardware be something you\u2019d be interested in seeing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kawazu – I think it would be really good if we could remake a game from the SaGa series in a modern style like this. However, since there\u2019s not infinite time in life to do everything possible, I would prefer to spend it focusing on a new title created entirely in that modern style, rather than remaking something from the past.<\/p>\n