Lunar: Silver Star Harmony Landing on PSP in December

The recently announced Lunar: Silver Star Harmony finally has a release date. The PSP remake of the classic RPG title will sneak end before the end of 2009 with a December launch. Lunar: Silver Star Harmony is a remake of the Sega CD 1992 title, Lunar: The Silver Star. The original title was noted for its use of the CD format. As a result, the game is enhanced with crisp audio and animated cut scenes. While the story in the game was already great, the improvements from the CD format made it special.

Unfortunately, Lunar: The Silver Star was on the Sega CD, a CD-ROM drive attachment to the Sega Genesis that barely sold. Because of that, Lunar: The Silver Star ended up being ported and remade on multiple systems.

The first remake, and the most popular iteration to date, is Lunar: Silver Star Story. The title was released for the Sega Saturn in 1996 for Japan only. It would later be ported to the Playstation in 1998. Fortunately, publisher Working Designs decided to localize the game and released it in North America under the name Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. The localization is often cited by critics as one of the Playstation title's strongest points.

Lunar Legend was released four years later after Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. However, the Game Boy Advance remake lacked the necessary voice-acting, crisp music, cut scenes and translation (the game was published by Ubisoft instead of Working Designs) that made Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete a classic.

The second handheld remake is looking much better than the Game Boy Advance version. This is thanks to the advance power of the PSP. In fact, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony may be the best version yet as it features enhance widescreen graphics, re-mastered music and new gameplay additions. Furthermore, the excellent story from Lunar: The Silver Star will be expanded as well (Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete features slightly different events).

Working Designs won't be localizing Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, however, as the publishing company went out of business in 2005 due to financial troubles. Xseed Games will be picking up the slack of localizing the game for North America. Gaijinworks, which is made up of former Working Designs members, offered to help Xseed Games. However, their request was declined.

Xseed Games plan to release Lunar: Silver Star Harmony exclusively for the PSP this December. While no extra bonuses have been announced for the game, it is likely to happen. Nevertheless, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony should give a new generation of gamers a taste of a timeless RPG.