The wait is finally over folks – Shining Tears has now been available in Japan for around 9 hours, and it seems those Akihabara prizes are being dished out already, judging by the auctions!
I’ve already seen three sets of the limited edition memory card stickers on auction, thankfully starting at the sensible price of 50 yen (about US$0.50), though who knows how high they’ll go?! Likewise some of the prize phonecards are now up on Yahoo! Japan, one starting as low as just US$10.00, others with starting prices of up to US$300.00 – I do hope that’s not an accurate early indication of the value of the item, or I doubt many of us will ever add these to our collections >.<;; In other Shining Tears prize-related news, Sega Japan updated their Shining Tears site again today to show the final hand-drawn pictures to be used for the top three prizes in Akihabara. Have a look at them here, they’re very nice – Ryuna, Elwing and Blanc Neige. I think I see some new forum avatars there 😉
A couple of new items seem to have cropped up on the auctions too, some kind of early guide book (perhaps a magazine freebie?) and something which looks to be about the size of a DVD case, featuring a picture of Ryuna… the translation lists it only as an ‘underlay’… not sure what it is, but I’ll do my best to find out!
Unfortunately, my copy of the game hasn’t arrived yet, and my PS2 hasn’t come back from chipping yet either… so it looks like I’ll be waiting a while before I get to try the game. Meanwhile, for those of you who already have it, feel free to discuss your first impressions here or in the SFC Shining Tears forum – though please mark your spoilers – I cannot stress how awful it is for those who haven’t played the game yet to have the plot etc ruined for them by inconsiderate early gamers. Be considerate of those who are waiting for the US release. Likewise, those who are waiting, please be careful of topics which may contain spoilers.
No news yet about the game’s reception in Japan, but I don’t doubt it’s doing well 🙂 Unfortunately, early news suggests that the game suffers from some slow loading times – to the tune of up to 15 seconds. More on this when possible, thanks to Michal of the TV Game Commercials website for pointing me to this info!
Finally, I’ve managed to get some contact details for Sega USA@s Press department, and am hoping to arrange for further information regarding the US release of the game. No word back from Sega Japan as yet regarding donation of Shining Tears goodies as prizes, sadly 🙁 However, I have contacted Lik-Sang to see whether they are able to get hold of any of these goodies for us fans 🙂
Meanwhile, if you’ve ever had an inkling that you’d like to contribute to the site, now would be a good time to do so – if I can raise enough funds, perhaps I can get hold of some of those phonecards etc for contest prizes, the expensive way. Or, if anyone wants to get me an early Christmas present… 😉
Now, off to get the Christmas Contest together, and then continue work on my Tatakai game mod!