REMIXING MOON

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE SWITCH PORT

Dropping the subtitle and capitalisation,

‘moon’ finally made its way to western shores on Nintendo Switch published by Kimura’s own Onion Games.

According to an interview with Vice, the port was a result of a few miracles that came at the right time, not least the approval from both former members of Love‑de‑lic and a producer from Kadokawa (which acquired publisher ASCII in 2004), and the rediscovery of the original code on a hard drive thought to have been lost.

moon is essentially a perfect port of the original game, its charm wonderfully translated by games journalist Tim Rogers, who previously collaborated with Onion Games with the localisation of Dandy Dungeon. Kimura says, “Our aim was to retain the original game’s nuances, so players could experience something as close to the original as possible.” The only change being that all the Moondisc (MD) tracks, which were monaural on Playstation due to CD storage constraints, are now all available in stereo.

As a faithful port, however, modern audiences are in for a tough time with the obtuse design of late Nineties JRPGS, where hints and quest markers were nonexistent. First‑timers unaware of the Action Meter will no doubt be confused when they pass out and get bumped straight back to the title screen. True to its time, moon’s mechanics make more sense once you read the instruction manual, which fortunately has also been translated and made available online to download. Even then, some later memory‑based puzzles will truly test your patience. It’s a shame that there wasn’t a way to make these sections more accessible, but there is one advantage to having the game on Switch – by exploiting the system’s video‑capture function, you’ll at least be able to check back on some of these devious puzzles in your own time.