An Obscure Japan-Exclusive Won The February Nintendo Direct
Yes, the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass is pretty exciting, and yes, I’m hyped for Mario Strikers: Battle League and Nintendo Switch Sports. But if you ask me, the big winner of this week’s Nintendo Direct is the remake of Live A Live, a Japan-exclusive RPG released in 1994 for the Super Famicom. No, I’m not joking.
If you’ve never heard of Live A Live, don’t worry, you’re not alone. It was never localized outside of Japan and was considered a failure for only selling 270,000 copies - a tenth of what Final Fantasy 6 would go on to sell in Japan alone. Live A Live was considered graphically inferior to other popular games at the time and some aspects of its story were criticized for lacking substance. It never received a sequel and has rarely been acknowledged by Square in the decades since it was released.
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And yet, Live A Live is a lot more influential than you might think. It achieved cult status in Japan, prompting Square to re-release the game on the Wii U Virtual Console and 3DS Virtual Console in 2015 and 2016, respectively. A fan translation eventually made its way to the West, attracting a small but passionate fanbase which includes Undertale creator Toby Fox, who named Megalovania after the boss song Megalomania. Live A Live was also the directorial debut of Takashi Tokita who went on to direct Chrono Trigger the following year, as well as Parasite Eve and several games in the Final Fantasy series. The score was composed by Yoko Shimomura, who wrote the music for Street Fighter 2 and went on to score Super Mario RPG, Legend of Mana, and the Kingdom Hearts series. The game routinely shows up on lists of the best Super Famicom RPGs, and the
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