Port everything to the Switch has been a joke since system launch.
A good majority of the library is made up of re-released WiiU games, and PS4 games,
and popular steam games, and less popular indie games, and Doom.
But I didn’t think they were literally going to port everything – that is until Onion
Games announced their impending Switch release of Moon – a never before translated PSOne
anti-RPG.
(Yeah that’s a thing, apparently.)
I shared my incredulous WTF reaction to the news on Twitter but most everyone had no idea
what I was talking about.
You know, if it weren’t for moments like these I might actually forget what a huge
nerd I am.
Anyway, it was clear to me that an explanation was needed.
Because holy shit, Moon is coming to Switch!
So Moon was… different.
Very, very, different.
I personally haven’t played it because it’s also very much in Japanese.
But Moon is infamous for being this super weird RPG parody- thing.
Moon sucks the player (really! right through a tv and everything) into an RPG world and
reveals the trope-y hero to be this self-absorbed nuisance.
He’s loud, he breaks into houses, he terrorizes dogs, and he’s all around a bad dude.
But while the game gives zero reverence to the hero it adore its NPC inhabitants.
These are living breathing characters with their own individual stories, desires, routines,
and well- lives.
Moon is very, very, story heavy.
And yes, I said routines.
Because, when it was made Moon was ambitious.
Most RPGs back in the day gave world inhabitants a line or two of dialogue; they were window
dressing to the bigger adventure.
In Moon, NPCs are the main attraction.
They have better things to do then stand around waiting to point the player party to the nearest
quest objective.
So there’s an in game clock and townies go about their daily business, as repetitive
as it may be.
This from a PSOne game in 1997.
For context you have to remember NPCs adhering to an in-game clock would be a major advertising
feature for Morrowind, on the Xbox, five years later.
Unlike Morrowind however there is no combat; the hero battles, but you don’t control
him.
Instead you, as the boy sucked into this bizarro game world, go around collecting the lost
souls of the poor creatures the asshole-hero murdered and reunite them with their dead
bodies.
And that’s pretty much the game, you lay dead monsters to rest and solve NPC problems.
Your purpose is to spread love, not destruction.
So love like your life depends on it.
Because it does; each task completed earns you love points, and if your love meter depletes
its Game Over.
If this sounds like a non-face-sucking Chu-lip, there’s a good reason.
Chu-lip was a PlayStation 2 game that incidentally shared developmental credits with Moon.
In fact that was another thing Moon was renowned for.
It was the first game from Love-de-Lic, a niche studio founded by former Square staff.
Moon wasn’t just an offbeat RPG parody game.
It was an offbeat RPG parody game made by the people who worked on some of the most
iconic titles in the genre.
Imagine cutting your teeth on developing the likes of Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG
only to quit your job to make a game that lampoons the snuff out of your old employer?
That’s Moon.
The biggest FU to the classic JRPG genre conventions and the people who made them, and it’s coming
to Switch.