Lunar 30th – Gaming recommendations and outlook – Carpe Ludum – Eidolon's Inn

After the release of Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete, Working Designs CEO Victor Ireland mentioned that a proper sequel, Lunar 3, was already in the works, but would be difficult to realise in the current situation. He was probably alluding to the simmering lawsuit between Studio Alex and Game Arts following the development problems with Magical School. After the flop of Magical School and the success of Grandia, Game Arts focused more and more on the latter, and the Lunar series was eventually sidelined. Hopes for a Lunar 3 were briefly rekindled in 2021, when Lunar fan Sean Lowe started a crowd-sourced campaign. Unfortunately, it only managed to gather around four thousand of the ten thousand signatures hoped for, and Game Arts announced that it would ‘not be reviving the franchise at this time (early 2022)’. This suggests that due to the long hibernation, the Lunar fan community may not be large enough to motivate Game Arts to make another attempt at a Lunar 3.

The main reasons for the disappearance of the Lunar series into the nirvana of video game history are clear: too many remakes, too little new material – and when there is any, it is of poor quality (Genesis/Dragon Song), and on top of that, the legal dispute between the studios.

Even 2025’s Lunar Remastered Collection is yet another remake… Fingers crossed anyway that it is commercially that successful as to lay groundwork for Lunar 3!

However, this does not detract from the high quality of the best titles in the series. If you’ve never played Lunar before, we recommend starting with the original LTSS on Sega Mega CD. Clocking in at just under 15 hours, it is manageable in scope, fun to play and an absolute classic of the genre to catch up on en passant. After that, we recommend the Sega Mega CD original LEB. If the 16-bit generation is a little too old-fashioned for you, you can focus on the remakes of both titles. The best remake of the first part is Lunar: Silver Star Harmony on PlayStation Portable or Vita, but Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete on the corresponding platforms (PlayStation, Apple iOS) is also highly recommended. For Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete, the only alternative to the Sega Mega CD original is the PlayStation version, which has been greatly enhanced in terms of graphics and music, but is almost identical in terms of content and length (40 hours). In 2025, it can luckily also be played as part of Lunar Remastered Collection.

Hopefully, the original development dream team – Tomi-san, Shigema-san, Kubooka-san and Iwadare-san – will be able to reunite and start work on a worthy successor to LTSS and LEB. Fans of the series have already proven that they can easily wait 20 years between Shenmue II and III. So a 30-year gap between Lunar 2 and Lunar 3 is not out of the question, is it? Hope dies last!