At the Pixel Arcadia event, ahead of GamesCom, a remaster of Terranigma has been announced. This has caused a huge stir on social media which many people find completely baffling. Why so much buzz over a Super Nintendo game that only came out in Japan and Europe? It doesn’t seem that important. But that’s part of the key. And we’re going to break down why.
A game that barely made it beyond Japan and Europe
Terranigma is a video game developed by Quintet and published in 1995 for the Super Nintendo in Japan and Europe. Quintet is a very distinctive studio that developed classics now well known like ActRaiser and Illusion of Gaia, but also cult classics like Robotrek and Planet Laika, making it an truly distinctive studio even in its own time.
The game’s main selling point, at least in Japan, was Kamui Fujiwara’s character designs, a manga artist known for his work on Kerberos Panzer Cop, Teito Monogatari, and Dragon Quest Saga: Emblem of Roto. Outside Japan, its greatest appeal was its exuberant graphics, excellent gameplay design, and exquisite music, courtesy of Miyoko Takaoka and Masanori Hikichi. All of it came together to make an excellent Action RPG that is still remembered today as one of the best games on the Super Nintendo.
There are two reasons for that. The first is that it’s one of the console’s last games. The Super Nintendo was in its final years and developers were able to push it to its limits. The second is that not everyone got to play it: besides having a relatively small print run, it never even came out in the US, something that turned it into a cult title.
Why didn’t it come out in the US? The reason is very simple. Although it was developed by Quintet, its distribution was handled by Enix. Enix, which shortly afterward would merge with Square to form Square Enix, had a subsidiary in the US through which it planned to distribute the game in the US. But toward the end of 1995 it shut down this subsidiary due to financial problems, so the game was never released there. Why did it make it to Europe? Because Quintet had a distribution contract with Nintendo from the very beginning, so releasing it there wasn’t an issue.
A cult game hidden from the world
Over the years Terranigma has become a cult game because it’s so good, because it’s an outstanding game that stands among the best in the Super Nintendo library, but also because of its rarity. Not only are there few copies of the game in Europe, it also never came out in the US. An unusual case for games at the time that, if they came out in the West, were usually released in the US and not in Europe, not the other way around. That has only added to its mystique.
There’s also another problem the game has had: the disappearance of its creator. Although there has been talk of bringing it back, its designer and director, Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, has been missing for many years, his whereabouts unknown. And given that he is the holder of the game’s rights, this has prevented any kind of reissue, remake, or remaster.
While we don’t know how this new remaster has been possible, it seems this latter point has been resolved. But the mystique still exists. The game remains excellent. That’s why there’s so much uproar. Terranigma remains a game for which those of us who played it at the time still feel immense affection, and for which those who consider it something they’ve never been able to own have enormous respect. So it’s only natural that it’s getting such a passionate response. Although we’ll still have to wait for its relaunch to see whether it still inspires all this passion.
