RPGamer is running a poll to find out what our favourite tactical RPG series is – Shining Force is currently in 3rd place, though not far off 2nd… so why not head over and give it another vote? 🙂 Wouldn’t it be nice to beat the “Forbidden” Series?

Translation Team leader legalize freedom has made a post on the Shining Force III: Translation Project website calling for volunteers with good Japanese-English translation skills.

I shan’t repost the full details here, instead I’ll point you to the post itself so you can read about it there.

Thanks for reading, hope someone out there has the experience necessary to help! 😀

As the USA release of Shining Tears draws near, Amazon.com have at last made the game available for preorder!

This means that all you eager gamers can now order the game in advance and in doing so contribute a small donation to SFC at no cost to yourselves, through sale commissions 😀

The game is listed at US$39.99, and although it seems Sega USA haven’t bothered to resolve the loading times issue, I feel the game is still worth this price tag – certainly moreso than Neo is shaping up to be!

Official Shining Tears Guidebook

Why not order the Official Shining Tears Guidebook from Amazon too, while you’re at it? 🙂 At just US$14.99, it’s a bargain!

Click here to preorder Shining Tears at Amazon.com
Click here to preorder the Official Shining Tears Guidebook

Thanks for supporting SFC, and the Shining series!

On a side note, UK users can order the ST Guidebook at Amazon UK, but not the game as yet (that being said, even Sega Europe’s site doesn’t list ST on the forthcoming releases… what’s up with that?!).

Some of you may already know about this, and indeed may be familiar with the article having helped SFCer Ashley check through it. For those of you who haven’t seen or heard about it, and even for those who have, the article is now available at NTSC-uk.com, here.

Titled, “Shining Back – Reflections on Shining Force”, the article is a well-written, enjoyable read about the history of the Shining series and a nice collection of screenshots from throughout the series accompany it. Very nice job, Ashley 😀

Well, what are you waiting for? Go read it! 😉

As many of you will already be aware, for the last couple of years my other half – known at SFC as Warlord IkitClaw – has been developing a Shining style game engine. The engine is called Tatakai and has been designed with customisability in mind, allowing anyone to easily build their on Shining Force style games. Who needs Shining Force NEO?! 😉

Today, a new version of Tatakai has been released to its team of testers, having undergone a whole host of updates since the previous release in June of last year. Vigorous testing has gone on at our end in advance of the test release, to iron out the worst of the bugs (not that there have actually been many) and to prepare a test campaign for play in Tatakai.

IkitClaw is working on a Tatakai campaign of his own, but due to the time required to create graphics, sounds and all the other necessary resources he has decided not to hold up the release for it. Instead he is bundling my campaign with the test version, and working on his campaign in his spare time (Tatakai development itself is of course taking priority).

The engine is coming along in leaps and bounds and really is at a stage that could be considered complete aside from bug testing – however, we like to go that extra mile and so there are a bunch of new features planned for the next release too!

If you’ve got a bit of free time on your hands to play through a Tatakai campaign a few times to check for bugs (e.g. by trying out odd combinations of events in-game, trying to perform actions which ought not to be possible), and can be sure you’ll keep in touch about any problems you find, suggestions, compliments etc then why not head along to the Tatakai website to find out more about the system and how to sign up to be a tester?

Just a very quick update to say that a chap named Yamikarasu at GameFAQs has put together a rather handy mini guide for Shining Tears, perfect for those of us with limited knowledge of Japanese. Nice work dude!

Check it out here.

While browsing Sega Japan’s site today, I found a section with some online games – including some Flash puzzles. They’re more fun than they sound, and quite challenging too, if you opt for the larger ones.

The puzzles can be found here, and include a large selection of Shining puzzles, from Shining Soul through to Shining Teas. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you should find them.

Enjoy!

Yes folks, after its sudden disappearance many moons ago, Jumesyn – the web’s top Shining Force III site – is back online!

Now hosted at Jumesyn.com courtesy of Smoovenet (SFC’s host), Jumesyn has had a few small updates since it vanished, and no doubt will have more 🙂 Must say I found the note and animation on the home page highly amusing!

So peeps, no more browsing through Archive.org in the hope that the pages of Jumesyn you need are hiding there, the real thing is back – great work Shinsachiel! Time for me to go add the site into the links directory again 😀

On a side note, today I will be getting those bits of script online, come rain or shine! Also some new fanart, FAQs & collectables to add, not to mention announcing the winner of the recent contest & launching a new one! At last a day to myself, let’s hope it goes as planned 😉

Yes folks, that’s right – just weeks after completing work on his new Shining Force III site, Shining fan Wolfgang’s been working hard on yet another project, which is now ready! I knew this was something he’d wanted to work on, but when he’d get the chance do it, I didn’t know… what a surprise then, when in my inbox this morning I found an email from him with a link to his brand new (and fantastic as usual!) Shining the Holy Ark website! Well, what are you waiting for? Go check it out! *lol*

Great work Wolfgang, we all appreciate it!

Camelot Software Planning have included a link to SFC (and several other Shining sites) from their news page. Take a look here:

www.camelot.co.jp/news/backnumber/news2002/news_11c.html

A big thank you to Yas Taguchi for doing this 🙂

On Saturday, I was interviewed by Devlyn, of The Shining Source. The interview is now online for all to see 🙂

While you’re there, why not take a look at some of the Shining Fangames that are in development?