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Alright, where's my damn modern Sailor Moon game?

Shinobido Heart

Shinobido Heart

Member
Dec 23, 2017
8,128
When you think of 80's-90's anime, a lot of influential anime comes to mind...

(Some of the animes in this picture aren't from the 80's-90's but don't worry about that.)
f04da2db148419828ee421.jpg


Dragonball and Dragonball Z, Naruto, One Piece, Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Fist of the North Star, Kiki's Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, Ranma 1/2, Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost in the Shell, Berserk, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon and much, much more.

In fact, some of these are timeless. Dragonball showing us that it can keep going even 35 years later. Absolutely bonkers.

With that said, we get a lot of modern Dragonball Z, Naruto, One Piece games, but surprisingly rarely any Sailor Moon games despite how influential it is.

It got quite a few games way back in the 90's but I don't know if very many of them actually came out in the West.

Where is it?! Sailor Moon deserves it!
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I guess you could say Yu Yu Hakusho deserves a really good, modern game as well but let's focus on Sailor Moon for now.
 
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mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
21,201
Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece all have continuations that are still running, though. I'd think a Sailor Moon game would be a tough sell without some updated media to promote (I realize Viz has those eternal editions that I think they're still releasing but beyond that...)

You'd think they could make like a PreCure game, though.
 
Lulu

Lulu

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
26,680
Naruto and OP are barely 90s and still in serialization today. Just saying. But yea, Sailor Moon is great and gen z fucks with it more than most of those other series
 
Zan

Zan

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,435
Recreation of the Sailor V game from the PGSM Manga/Anime. Switch/PC/PS5/XSX.

Just gave you a license to print money.
 
TimeFire

TimeFire

Avenger
Nov 26, 2017
9,625
Brazil
mrmoose said:
Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece all have continuations that are still running, though. I'd think a Sailor Moon game would be a tough sell without some updated media to promote (I realize Viz has those eternal editions that I think they're still releasing but beyond that...)

You'd think they could make like a PreCure game, though.
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Didn't Sailor Moon just finished airing a reboot or something?
I agree OP. We need another Sailor Moon ASW game. The first one is legendary. (Maybe not for the right reasons, but legendary nonetheless)
 
Razmos

Razmos

Unshakeable One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
15,890
I have been dreaming of a Sailor Moon Musou ever since playing Hyrule Warriors for the first time. I need it so bad
 

mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
21,201
TimeFire said:
Didn't Sailor Moon just finished airing a reboot or something?
I agree OP. We need another Sailor Moon ASW game. The first one is legendary. (Maybe not for the right reasons, but legendary nonetheless)
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Sailor Moon Crystal ended in like 2016 or so. And while it adheres closer to the manga, it doesn't seem to be that well liked by fandom. I could be wrong, though.

edited to add: I guess they also released a film, which I don't think was ever localized, a year or so ago.
 
Pirate Bae

Pirate Bae

Edelgard Feet Appreciator
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
6,799
??
"Games about female empowerment and their feminist agenda? Disgusting." -gamer neckbeards, 2021
 
sir_crocodile

sir_crocodile

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,508
I think the only Sailor Moon game I've ever played is that SNES RPG from the 90s, which was quite fun. Would be cool to play another. What genre do you think would fit best OP? Another RPG? Fighter? Musou?
 
TimeFire

TimeFire

Avenger
Nov 26, 2017
9,625
Brazil
mrmoose said:
Sailor Moon Crystal ended in like 2016 or so. And while it adheres closer to the manga, it doesn't seem to be that well liked by fandom. I could be wrong, though.

edited to add: I guess they also released a film, which I don't think was ever localized, a year or so ago.
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oh jesus 2016 was 5 years ago. I thought it finished like last year. Thanks for the correction
 
OP
OP
Shinobido Heart

Shinobido Heart

Member
Dec 23, 2017
8,128
Transistor said:
THIS ADMIN SUPPORTS THIS CAMPAIGN!
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LET'S GO!

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sir_crocodile said:
I think the only Sailor Moon game I've ever played is that SNES RPG from the 90s, which was quite fun. Would be cool to play another. What genre do you think would fit best OP? Another RPG? Fighter? Musou?
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Well, I've always considered Sailor Moon one of the Sentai animes. Sentai as in Power Rangers-esque.

Side scrolling Beat'em Ups seem to work really well with these. Someone earlier mentioned a musou game, which would be an interesting and new take on the games that I'd be down for. Something action oriented, that's for fure.
 
ToddBonzalez

ToddBonzalez

The Pyramids? That's nothing compared to RDR2
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
15,530
What's the popularity level of Sailor Moon these days? I remember it being fairly big in the later 90's, but did they ever do any sequel series or manga to keep it going like DBZ?
 
sir_crocodile

sir_crocodile

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,508
Shinobido Heart said:
Well, I've always considered Sailor Moon one of the Sentai animes. Sentai as in Power Rangers-esque.

Side scrolling Beat'em Ups seem to work really well with these. Someone earlier mentioned a musou game, which would be an interesting and new take on the games that I'd be down for. Something definitely action oriented, that's for fure.
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Yes absolutely. Never read the manga, but I watched a massive chunk of the anime and the composition was almost identical to Sentai. A beatemup would be great.
 
akilshohen

akilshohen

Member
Dec 8, 2017
1,308
Semi-Open world and all the main scouts and Tuxedo mask playable over the course of the game. I'm thinking something similar to Arkham City but with a tighter level/mission structure.
 
BluWacky

BluWacky

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
342
What do you actually want from a Sailor Moon game, though? The SNES games tried the most obvious things - story-based JRPG (I remember Another Story actually being halfway decent!) and side scrolling beat-em-up (it wasn't so much) - along with the usual weirdo puzzle spinoffs.

I also think it's difficult to isolate what makes Sailor Moon work in a way that will appeal to everyone. Two things spring to mind:

- yes, the Sailors kick ass - but they don't actually spend that much time fighting in a beat-em-up fashion, most of their work is done by their stock footage attacks which were pretty much all ranged in nature.
- characterisation is key to the success of the property. Sailor Moon is a romantic fantasy for girls that just happens to feature kickass transformations and magical powers; if you try and make it for a more stereotypical gaming audience, you end up with something creepy and stilted like Gust's Blue Reflection, which invites the player to perve on its bland, squeaky, and poorly animated characters (kickass OST, though). The fantasy and the romance are core to the property's success, particularly in the early story arcs, and even much of that was elevated by the original artwork (and even more so by the work of core staff on the 90s anime; Junichi Sato, Kunihiko Ikuhara and Takuya Igarashi are legendary even now in the industry, and their sensibility and eye for art and storytelling are really key). If you relegate it to between level, still frame talking heads, you're just going to get nowhere.

I mean, yes, you could make a 1 v 1 fighter. But that's not what's really enjoyable to me about Sailor Moon.
 
mopinks

mopinks

Member
Oct 27, 2017
30,577
there was a mobile match three puzzle game, the most modern kind of game there is
 
Kenai

Kenai

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,200
Could make it Persona 4 style with a monster of the week/labyrinth structure with a focus on the scouts bonding through their battles in between school life? I'd dig it
 
werezompire

werezompire

Zeboyd Games
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
11,386
It's not Sailor Moon, but we're making a Shakespeare/Theater-themed magical girl JRPG called This Way Madness Lies. Here's some stuff we've release so far:

TWML-Portraits-Sprites.gif


TWML_BattleMockup1.png


Aiming to release by the end of the year.
 
Flon

Flon

Is Here to Kill Chaos
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,120
I want a new Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2 fighting game.
 
Firima

Firima

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Oct 27, 2017
4,477
The people you'd want to be there for development wouldn't be, and that's why you probably shouldn't want it. Takanori Arisawa passed away years ago and I doubt Ikuhara would work on it.
 
Ferrio

Ferrio

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,076
That era has passed unfortunately. I'd kill for a Sailor Moon fighting game in the vein of DBFZ. I mean Arc Systems has already made one Sailor Moon fighting game, they can do it again!
 
hikarutilmitt

hikarutilmitt

Member
Dec 16, 2017
11,429
I still say we need a Jump Force style game that focuses more on Nakayoshi stuff, since they'd end up with Sailor Moon, lots of CLAMP stuff, the PreCure manga and some more recent stuff like Bacteria (Cells) at Work. There're a ton of properties that could make it work in a similar format, though probably more focused on teamwork and friendship instead of a ton of girls' series beating each other up for no reason.

mrmoose said:
Sailor Moon Crystal ended in like 2016 or so. And while it adheres closer to the manga, it doesn't seem to be that well liked by fandom. I could be wrong, though.

edited to add: I guess they also released a film, which I don't think was ever localized, a year or so ago.
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It's my semi-hot take that a lot of the fandom (a lot of US fandom, at least) hated Crystal because it was closer to the manga and not to the 90s show that most of the fandom likes. It's only relatively recently that we got a full release of the manga in the US so it came out years and years after the dubbed and censored version of the 90s show.

I actually prefer it because there was a lot of the 90s show I didn't care for that ended up making me hate it further down the line once I had more exposure to the manga. There were a whole lot of personality changes that were just kind of shitty.
 
DoctorPlayer MD

DoctorPlayer MD

Member
Feb 4, 2021
2,189
Brazil
If the quality is on par with Sailor Moon Crystal we're better off with no game, just saying.

They released the 2 Eternal movies this year if I recall, and I haven't seen anyone commenting about it so I guess it's not very popular anymore.
 
OP
OP
Shinobido Heart

Shinobido Heart

Member
Dec 23, 2017
8,128
Firima said:
The people you'd want to be there for development wouldn't be, and that's why you probably shouldn't want it. Takanori Arisawa passed away years ago and I doubt Ikuhara would work on it.
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Oh I see, I had no idea.

A quick google search says he was the composer/arranger best known for composing music for Sailor Moon and Digimon. It seems he passed away in 2005. :(
 
Beedig

Beedig

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Feb 10, 2018
1,268
mrmoose said:
Sailor Moon Crystal ended in like 2016 or so. And while it adheres closer to the manga, it doesn't seem to be that well liked by fandom. I could be wrong, though.

edited to add: I guess they also released a film, which I don't think was ever localized, a year or so ago.
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The movie just came out in the beginning of January of this year.
 
Firima

Firima

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,477
Shinobido Heart said:
Oh I see, I had no idea.

A quick google search says he was the composer/arranger best known for composing music for Sailor Moon and Digimon. It seems he passed away in 2005. :(
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Arisawa had a very western classic composition style that he employed to great effect in Sailor Moon,enhancing an already dreamlike and somewhat anachronistic universe. There was no one like him, sadly and a lot of Sailor Moon's historical identity came from the music, which was notably a cut above in the early 1990s.
 
LordHuffnPuff

LordHuffnPuff

Doctor Videogames at Allfather Productions
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
2,321
webernet
I think about this pretty frequently, and always wondering what the heck a modern Sailor Moon game would be. It's not like Dragonball or Naruto or whatever which lends itself to constant combat - so much of what is good about Sailor Moon is the personal relationships, school scenes, Usagi being anxious about her weight or being a crybaby or crushing on a guy or throwing a tantrum, normal middle school stuff, which often doesn't translate well to video games that rake in the big bucks the way a licensor would want. You could make a JRPG like Sailor Moon: Another Story, or a fighting game of course; these have been done before with mixed success. I feel like the "best" way to do a Sailor Moon game would almost be in the style of Persona, where you spend most of your time out of combat in school interacting with friends, but even that has pacing issues if you try and make it beholden to the plot of Sailor Moon and not just an original non-canon or gaiden story, in which case, you might as well be using your own IP and not paying the license fee for Sailor Moon in the first place (looking at you, Blue Reflection...)

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a bold exciting high-budget modern Sailor Moon game that nails it, but I feel like the property doesn't really lend itself to the sort of games that both get made generally today and also bring in enough cash to justify the expense of production.
 
sir_crocodile

sir_crocodile

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,508
Shinobido Heart said:



There was an arcade beat em up way back, looked like this:

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Then I think there was one for the SNES, I think this one:

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I just looked through my old issues of Super Play wondering why I don't remember it, but it looks like they never reviewed it lol. Just this snippet:

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It looks like there was a second SNES beatemup too (Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon R), but neither was particularly well received. Will have to look into the arcade game.
 
NeonZ

NeonZ

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Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,378
Sailor Moon in Japan became one of those series tied to a specific fanbase/generation, since Pretty Cure, which is completely Toei-owned and can be rebooted every year, took over as the standard image of magical girls.

Even Pretty Cure doesn't have much luck in games since modern Bandai doesn't seem to think the action image actually helps selling to girls. You can see a big difference in commercials for series or movies (handled by Toei) compared to the commercials for merchandising (Bandai) with the later never including action in spite of the tv shows and movies having no issue advertising that. The games are under merchandising and are treated in a similar way.
 

mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
21,201
hikarutilmitt said:
I still say we need a Jump Force style game that focuses more on Nakayoshi stuff, since they'd end up with Sailor Moon, lots of CLAMP stuff, the PreCure manga and some more recent stuff like Bacteria (Cells) at Work. There're a ton of properties that could make it work in a similar format, though probably more focused on teamwork and friendship instead of a ton of girls' series beating each other up for no reason.


It's my semi-hot take that a lot of the fandom (a lot of US fandom, at least) hated Crystal because it was closer to the manga and not to the 90s show that most of the fandom likes. It's only relatively recently that we got a full release of the manga in the US so it came out years and years after the dubbed and censored version of the 90s show.

I actually prefer it because there was a lot of the 90s show I didn't care for that ended up making me hate it further down the line once I had more exposure to the manga. There were a whole lot of personality changes that were just kind of shitty.
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I do think that a Jump Force style game with a lot of older properties would probably be more attractive to me than something that tried to expand the fighting movesets of a bunch of Sailor Moon characters. But I get that's not what the OP wants.

I think the lackluster animation of the first couple seasons hindered Crystal, but I also think the anime fleshed out the characters a lot more because of the filler, and in comparison the manga is more straight to the point as far as plotting. So I can understand why people, in this one instance, like the non-manga anime a little more.

werezompire that game looks great, is there a thread about it or somewhere else where there's more info (like someone else said, platforms?)

edited to add: when I say "Jump Force Style" I want to make it clear that I don't mean that horrid artistic style they went with. Ugh.
 
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Belladonna

Belladonna

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,105
I wouldn't mind a modern Persona like social links building strengthening your character/dungeon crawler kind of thing set in Sailor Moon world. I think it would work well as the 90s anime had a similar half character interaction, half fighting the monster (mostly due to being tied to monster of the week formula).

It's actually scary how well it could. You got your school hijinks, hanging out with friends, part the jobs, planning things at the arcade, dungeon crawling on some days.

Atlus make me a Sailor Moon good please.
 
Empyrean Cocytus

Empyrean Cocytus

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
18,724
Upstate NY
werezompire said:
It's not Sailor Moon, but we're making a Shakespeare/Theater-themed magical girl JRPG called This Way Madness Lies. Here's some stuff we've release so far:

TWML-Portraits-Sprites.gif


TWML_BattleMockup1.png


Aiming to release by the end of the year.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

WHY HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF THIS?

Anyway, part of the problem is that Sailor Moon is tougher to work with in the realms of a video game. Fighting isn't a huge part of it, it's mostly built around story and characters. Usually the monster gets hit with 1-2 attacks and it's over.

Though I did love the SuFami beat-em-up and fighting games. And I have a soft spot for Another Story.
 
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kyorii

kyorii

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,984
Splatlandia
There's been various precure games that's mostly licensed junk. Meanwhile, dragon ball is alive and well as DBSuper is a modern hit. With One piece, it also still on going. On the other hand, Crystal wasn't well received comparatively. Its been pretty divisive with the fan base, even though its faithful to the original. Also, lower quality animation.
 
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