This is a brief hiostory of the Lunar Games as I know it. THe page will take a minute to load, so give it time.
The First game on the list, LUNAR: The Silver Star was released for the Sega CD system around 1993 (US). It was a high watermark of CD gaming at that time, featuring voice actors, animated cutscenes and a complicated quest. However, since no one seemed to own a Sega CD, the game pretty much tanked, despite rave reviews. However, among those who did own the system, a legend was born. A legend that would grow to amazing height.
The story revolved around a reasonably basic RPG concept. Boy goes off on adventure, leads to much bigger adventure, and then rescues girl, defeats villian, achieves boyhood dream, and saves the world. The game also featured great sound, but the CD had more than a few annoying bugs.
In 1995, Working Designs released a second Lunar game to the Sega CD owning public, called LUNAR: Eternal Blue. While retaining the same sound and battle system and such of the original, it improved upon the bugs, and also gave the graphics a much cleaner, anime style look. L:EB was very well recieved and is considered by a good number of people I've seen as being the better of the two.
The story takes place 1,000 years (or so) after the original. The original villian, Ghaleon, has been resurrected by the evil Zophar, and this time it's up to Hiro and his friends to save the day. The humor in EB seems to be a good deal over the top as well. Ruby, the red dragon, in particular seems to have an aptitude for interesting comments.
The third incarnation in the series was released 5/28/99, is the main subject of this page, at least at this point, and is basically the same as the first. L:SSS and L:TSS are pretty much the same story, but notable improvements have been made. For one, the game is now 2 CDs instead of one, and is being released for a much better (and more popular) system: The Sony Playstation. It features a new script, redrawn graphics (thank god) and a more complicated quest. Not only that, but it features "deluxe" packaging, featuring two extra CDs, a map, an artbook and a foil stamped box.
The story, once again, follows the tale of Alex, a boy who longs to be a Dragonmaster, Luna, his girlfriend with a dark secret, and Ghaleon, once one of the legendary 4 heroes, now twisted to the side of evil. There have been some story cahnges. For example, Luna and Ramsus stay in your party longer in this incarnation, as well as a few other small (and not so small) details.
The fourth Lunar game scheduled for release on US shores has a yet uncertian fate. LUNAR: Eternal Blue Remix, or LUNAR 2: Eternal Blue, is set to be released for Playstation in Winter '99. If WD sticks to it's record however, it could be Summer 2000 before we actually get it.
What I do know about it is that it will feature an impressive 90 minutes of spoken dialouge. On top of that, it will have about 50 minutes of anime cutscenes (FMVs), which is a nice amount for any game. Not only, that, but it will be THREE cd's long, making it the longest Lunar yet. Because it has tripled the original CD content, that leads one to believe that players will find many changes from the original, but who can say? One question in my mind is will it feature the same "deluxe" packaging that we all enjoy with L:SSS? It says it will feature "Special collector's packaging", but that's rather ambiguous. We will have to wait and see about this one.
