Hi all, and belated New Year Greetings!

Just a little update to show that this place isn’t dead 😉

I’m still working on the new site CMS and hope to have it ready in time for the site’s anniversary on May 5th, but with real life commitments I can’t make any promises. At least you know it’s moving along, if slowly.

In other news, Shining Force: Feather comes out in Japan in exactly one month and it’s looking really quite exciting. I shall be getting my pre-order in ASAP and no doubt a lot of you will want to do the same! I can recommend Play-Asia.com for your orders and indeed if you order SF: Feather through them a small percentage will be paid in commission to SFC. Huzzah! Supporting your fave series & site, what could be better? 🙂

Finally, for those of you who hadn’t yet heard, a Brazillian chap going by the name of Renatobs at the forums has been developing his own remake of Shining Force II for the DS and from the videos & images posted it’s looking amazing! I’ll be receiving a demo version from him soon to offer a bit of a preview here so keep your eyes peeled. Unfortunately his DS was stolen recently and in order to properly continue development he needs to buy a new one. Anyone interested in helping him fund the new DS should visit his topic here for more information.

That’s all for now folks – back to the grindstone!

Keep on Shining 😀

First up, my apologies for the lack of updates. Not much news to report and the last month of my life has been mad-busy. Feeling rather stressed and looking forward to getting a bit of time to myself for updates soon… I hope!

Anyway, since a few items still haven’t sold, I’m starting to Ebay them, the first being here. Take a looksie if you want a nice piece of Shining Force III memorabilia!

No, I’m not quitting on SFC 😉 Don’t you worry about that, I’ll be around doing this for a good while yet.

But, in order to stick to this decision I’ve made, I’ve got to make it publically… then you can all help me hold to it 😉 *lol*

As you probably know, over the years I’ve spent a lot of time and money gathering Shining goodies to add to my collection, scan, share with fans, give as prizes etc. A month or so ago I sent off payment to my good friend Rei for a bunch of items from Japan, totalling around UK£300 (US$600). There are more on the way, and another bill of course… Now, this is of course no gripe at Rei, in fact I owe him huge thanks for all his help over the years in getting me this stuff, and asking very little in return – favours only, never extra money. Thanks so much, my good friend 😀

Having moved from the flat to our house earlier in the year, our budget took a major dive, with the mortgage doubling, along with extra taxes, higher bills and so on. We’ve also had to do a lot to the house, and still have more to go. I’ll never save up for a new kitchen if I keep going with Shining stuff at this rate… it’s actually quite a tough call as to which I’d prefer 😉

However, the nearer the release of Shining Force NEO draws, the more I find my heart sinks as I realise there’ll be more things to collect. It’s been bad enough with all the Shining Tears stuff I’ll never afford and so many I’ll never even find (signed stuff, one-offs etc). I looked on Yahoo! Japan the other day and found a set of promotional fliers/posters for SF NEO, and for the first time I honestly thought ‘I really don’t want to have to get these…’ – everything I’ve seen and heard about the game sickens me that much. I don’t want posters of those damn eyebrows everywhere! I know, it may yet turn out to be a fantastic game, unlikely though it is… but I think I need to draw the line at Shining Tears, as far as collecting goes. I’ll still pick up the new games, and books to scan if I can afford them, a few bits and pieces as contest prizes… but the collecting has to stop somewhere. Odds and sods from earlier games may crop up, and I’ll try to get them if they’re within the budget. But, I can’t afford to go nuts on all this stuff anymore, much as the obsessive, stubborn part of me would like to. Hell, I’ve not been able to afford it for a long time, but still I got the stuff, hence the new kitchen fund is down to 0 again 😉 Huge lack of control on my part there, but anyone who knows me knows how obsessive I am about this stuff. I feel very fortunate that I can count on SFCers to help with the hosting costs each year, Zod knows I can’t afford it myself anymore.

Man, it’s tough having to put this decision in writing… part of me doesn’t want to stick to it, even though I hate the look of the new game.

There are a lot of things I know I’ll never get: the Yog figure, SFII Calendar, Signed PD, Tony hand-drawn illustrations, Gaiden II T-Shirt, and more. They’re just too rare. However, since I’m enjoying Shining Tears so much, I’d like to at least get a bit closer to completing my set of Shining Tears items… which means getting hold of a set of the phonecards. I’ve found one – at US$450! >.<;; US$100 I could probably get away with, due to a bit of extra work I had before Xmas... but that leaves me somewhat short. So, here's the cheeky bit... anyone want to help ol' Moogs top off her collection and put a big ol' smile on her face? If I can get some contributions in and manage to get the set before someone else snaps it up, I'd have a few spare items to offer to random contributors - a couple of A4 plastic files fearuring Elwing, a couple of promo DVDs and some limited edition memory card stickers. If I get donations, but not enough to buy the set, or someone beats me to it, the money would go towards the next hosting bill (which I'll have to put out another beg for anyway nearer the time, I'm sure). Yes, I know, I'm a cheeky cow. Anyhoo, anyone who's got some spare cash (any millionaires here?) can check out the Support page for more info on sending funds 😉 Figured I’ve got nothing to lose by asking 😆

Well, not sure if I’ll post anything else before the end of the year, so if not, here’s wishing you all a very happy new year. Don’t drink too much, keep safe. See you in 2005! I hope it’s better than last year…

Will try to get some decent updates done in January, once Lee’s back at work!

…and I mean mini!

The game arrived today, and the ad campaign is already over >.<;; Nonetheless I can say from the little I've played today, it's pretty enjoyable. More complex than I expected, moreso than Shining Force. The graphics are very sweet, and the sound quite nice, but the battle system is where it excels. I particularly like that the characters are all given their commands and then perform most of them at the end of the turn, meaning that at any time up until that point, one can cancel their moves and re-do them before making a final decision to end the turn and perform the attacks. At less than thirty dollars, there's no doubt I'd give this game a try. I'm sure it'll appeal to a lot of Shining Force fans, as long as they're patient enough to get to grips with a few extras/variations in the battle style. After around an hour of playing I think I've got the hang of it, and now the training's over it's time to save some more interesting souls than bats and zombies 🙂 Check out La Pucelle: Tactics, here.

When I was first offered the opportunity to receive a review copy of ‘Nightmare of Druaga‘

As some of you may be aware, I was recently approached by a company wanting to promote their new PS2 RPG at SFC. In exchange I’ll get a review copy of the game.

The way I see it, any relationship with a games company is worth nurturing, and could prove beneficial in the future. It could also reflect well on SFC that other companies are taking the site seriously.

The company involved has agreed to my including the banner in a sticky topic here, and in a news article at SFC. The review of the game itself can also be placed in the SFC news, so as not to interfere with the Shining content.

Rest assured that SFC will not be selling out and going all-RPG, this site will always be dedicated to the Shining series. Here and there another game may be mentioned as being of interest, but never intrusively or to the point of taking over from Shining content.

Expect a review here at SFC within the next month.

I really must have been in a rush yesterday, getting the site online… I forgot to add some Special Thanks to the redesign news!

Well, better late than never 🙂

I’d like to take a moment to thank my dearly beloved Lee for his patience during the redesign and for his help with the SFC database and other suggestions.

I’d also like to thank SFC forum member Falz (now known as Flossy?!) not only for getting the member photos page inline with the new design, but also for his assistance with mySQL, PHP, CSS and a few other nuisance pieces of code. I couldn’t have solved some of the problems without you Falzy!

Thanks also to all SFC visitors for bearing with me during the delay getting the site up, and for being so positive about the redesign (for the most part ;)). It seems a few people using the Firefox browser are having problems with the display of the main site – I’m looking into this, however my copy of Firefox loads it all just fine >.<;; I'm also looking at tweaking the main page, following a few accusations of clutterage ;)

With Lee still in hospital, and my time still fairly limited, I’ve not had a chance to find out exactly how the booth Aspartate and Q.GAME ran at their local convention – but having checked their site today, I see they’ve posted a number of photographs of the day. Looks to me as though the booth was a big hit! Plenty of people crowded around, playing games and looking through the exhibition of books etc. I even see the Yog plushie Asp won in an SFC Contest last year is on display 😀

Check out the photos here! (I’ve Babelfished the page, so the comments are in quasi-English ;))

On an unrelated note, no news yet on getting a preview of the SF Remake… but, it’s been a weekend so fair enough 😉 (I’ve lost track of the days somewhat, spending most of them at Lee’s side in hospital – today we should find out when he can have the surgery he needs).

BTW, I have a few amendments and links to add to some of the old translation sections, and will do these ASAP. Gotta start getting ready now for another hospital visit. The doctors should have some information for us today on exactly what surgery Lee will be having, and a rough idea of when 🙂 Hopefully he’ll be home within a few weeks 🙂