Products You May Like
Nintendo Direct brings us a gift, and one in the form of exciting news about history’s most squirrel stuffed RPGs. Can you really claim 108 characters when five of them are flying squirrels with different colour capes? Never mind all that. Suikoden 1 & 2 HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars has a new release date: March 6, 2025.
I’ll get into details in a minute, but since it came up in Slack chat earlier, I’d first like to share with you the differences between the 1995 JRPG’s EU PS1 one cover art:
And that of the US release:
Truly, astonishing stuff.
The remaster was originally set to release last year after being announced by Konami at the 2022 Tokyo Game Show, but never materialised. Today, we finally got a new date locked down via Nintendo Direct. Here’s the latest trailer:
The game’s Steam page highlights the following details:
・All background illustrations have been upgraded to HD
・Updated effects breathe new life into the pixel art animation
・New environmental sounds effects to immerse yourself in this fantasy world
・Battle SFX are also now HD and add a new level of realism
・Newly added auto-save
・Battle Fast Forward
・Conversation Log
There’s a bit more detail on a few of these items in the Ninty trailer. Battles can now be bumped to 2x or 4x speed, and there’s also single-button autobattle option – although I swear this was in the menu in the original anyway. Another detail the Steam page doesn’t mention: getting these both in a single package hopefully means the games carrying your save over will be nicely painless. It wasn’t too impactful, but there are a few secrets you can unlock in the second game if you’ve fully completed the first.
As Brendy will tell you from the time I tried to cram a Suikoden bit in his best JRPGs list despite them not being out on PC yet, these games are incredibly special to me. Everything I’ve seen so far seems positive. I don’t actually know what an ‘emu-lator’ is, but this seems like a far easier way to play them on modern hardware than enlisting the help of an emu.
If you need something to keep you going until next March, there’s always spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. “A turn-based JRPG that accommodates those familiar with Suikoden or those who don’t know what a Suikoden is,” wrote Edders in his review. “Embrace the old-school quirks and there’s a wonderful journey to be had here.”
Eiyuden director and Suikoden co-creator Yoshitaka Murayama sadly passed away earlier this year, though I do find it heartening that he got to see just how much Suikoden meant to people when Eiyuden smashed its Kickstarter goals.