Color me excited. What originated in 2004 as a mini-game for members of the Eidolon’s Inn Sega homebrew community, has transformed into what is now a sprawling RPG due for release on October 29th of this year. The game, entitled Pier Solar and the Great Architects, will see a simultaneous region-free release on both the Sega Genesis and Sega CD formats.
Most impressive. But what’s even more impressive is that this game is 100% original work. Not a hack, or a remake, or a translated Japanese exclusive, this game is the real deal. Thank the group over at WM Development for that.
The game is set to be akin to RPG’s that showed up late in the 16 bit era such as ChronoTrigger and Phantasy Star IV and will boast an impressive 64 Meg Genesis cart. On October 29th 2007, the team at WMD released a demo for Pier Solar (then still under it’s code name of Tavern RPG), and it’s remarkable, to say the least. Beautiful backgrounds, expressive sprites, and top notch character design are all evident in the trailer. Take a look for yourself:
Another thing that I was quite impressed with was the music; both in the trailer and at the flash version of the games website. As any RPG fan knows, music is a hugely important part in establishing a games over all tone and themes. Top notch music is also very important due to the fact that you will be stuck listening to it for anywhere from 20 to 40 hours, if not more (I reference my 140 hour Final Fantasy Tactics file).
From the few plot details I can unearth it seems that your inhabit a party of three would-be heroes who set out on a journey to help cure a member of your party’s sick father. From there the quest widens to include an evil force that threatens to destroy the world as you know it. Basically it sounds like it has the scope and storyline that keeps all of us console RPG fans glued our screens and to our controllers.
The game’s official site, which can be found at http://www.piersolar.com has a pretty frequently updated news section that documents the progress of the game as the release date draws near. From there you can also sign up to their forum and in doing so automatically get added to there mailing list. There is a lot of info on that forum and if you are at all interested in finding out more info I strongly suggest you sign up and take a look around.
At the time of this writing there is no pre-order available, but the WMD team promises that pre-orders will be available soon and that those who pre-order will be able to receive bonus materials with there copy. Such bonus features are not made explicitly clear, but some ideas thrown around include special edition packaging and the inclusion of a soundtrack.
Excited? Want to check it out? Luckily WMD has plans to release a demo this month in the form of a Rom image that will be able to play in your favorite Sega Genesis emulator. I will post a review on that as soon as it becomes available and I give it a once over.
More Info:
http://www.piersolar.com – The game’s official site
Eidolon’s Inn – The site of the Sega homebrew community
Screenshots (from http://piersolar.co.uk/)
Video Games are Rad 
the music in the trailer was extremely predictable and according to the screen shots, the script is nauseatingly poor in quality. but it’s still quite an accomplishment, i guess