Comments on: Pier Solar: A Brilliant Indie-developed Console RPG

By: chris

chris — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 18:32:35 +0000

Indeed – that’s a bit of a piss-off for 99.8% of the population who don’t happen to own *both* a Genesis and a Sega CD. That being said: the developers of Pier Solar are releasing their second print run of the game. I think I’m going to buy into this one.

By: drgrease

drgrease — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:57:34 +0000

well if that dont beat all. someone is finally doing old school rpgs right and its on a dead system with no emulation support. well gotta praise them for sayin’ no to money.

By: Michal

Michal — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:08:03 +0000

So what could be the reason for a VC release as an unlikely event? Is it a legal issue that would keep them from doing so? Admittedly I don’t know the details of how Nintendo operates the VC system, but I don’t really see why that should be such a problem. Perhaps there are licensing fees or something which have to be paid and it’s more of a financial issue? Hmm…

By: Michael Abbott

Michael Abbott — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:54:33 +0000

Hi Chris. Thought you might find this little tidbit interesting. I was discussing RPGs on older consoles with some of my students today, and one of them asked me if I had heard about Pier Solar. I said I had just become aware of it through a blog I subscribe to (yours, of course). He said, “I read about it on The Artful Gamer, and you should really take a look at that site because it would be right up your alley.” And so it is!.

I can’t imagine the game won’t be released in some other format eventually. This is obviously a labor of love, as you say, and to limit the potential audience to only those who have functional Genesis/Mega-Drive hardware seems kind of crazy to me. If the released game is nearly as good as the demo promises, it would be a WiiWare no-brainer, I think. I hope. Fingers crossed.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:47:53 +0000

I posted a message over at the Pier Solar forum, and I’m hoping that the developers will tell us if they plan to pack-in a ROM image of the game so people without the Genesis/Mega-Drive hardware can play Pier Solar on their computers (or modded consoles, etc). I also enquired as to whether they had considered the Wii VC as a possibility (GREAT idea!), but I suspect that there are going to be some legal constraints there.
(Update: Got a reply from one of the developers. Refer to the post.)

By: Scott Juster

Scott Juster — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:33:37 +0000

Very intriguing, thanks for the post

Sadly, I am without the requisite hardware…

Hopefully Nintendo will take Michal’s suggestion and give it some VC/Wii Ware love. I’m not holding my breath though.

By: Pier Solar : clusterflock

Pier Solar : clusterflock — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:02:27 +0000

[...] Chris of the Artful Gamer has a pretty good breakdown of why this is exciting: First, the entire game has been developed for the Sega Genesis/CD using a fan-developed SDK – [...]

By: Michal

Michal — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:37:37 +0000

Thank you for this news. I had no idea ^_^. What would be particularly interesting is if these guys got the game on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. Then anybody with a Wii could play it also!