New Lunar Genesis DS details drop

A new installment in Sega CD's hit Lunar role-playing game series is coming to the Nintendo DS. According to the latest issue of Famitsu, Marvelous Interactive will release Lunar Genesis on the double-screened handheld on August 25 in Japan. The game is being distributed in North America by Ubisoft sometime between July and September.

Lunar Genesis will play as a new 2D RPG rather than a port of the previous two installments released on the Sega CD in 1992 and 1994. The game takes place 1,000 years before Lunar Silver Star, with a new adventure following Gien Campbell, a 15-year-old delivery boy who works in a port town. Party members in the game include Lucia Collins, a 14-year-old magic-using girl who is like a sister to Gien, and Gabiriel Ryan, a half-beast girl who is good at claw-fighting and has the ability to absorb and use enemy attacks.

Gien's story starts off when he one day receives a request to make a delivery to the town of Heelritz, a place also known as the town of half-beasts. Excited about his visit to the legendary city, Gien makes his way there despite of a lot of hardships. However, what he sees when he gets to Heelritz is far from the utopia that he had imagined.

Lunar Genesis takes advantage of the DS's hardware, letting players move around the map by touching the point where they want to go. The battles use both the top and the bottom screens to show the enemies on the ground and in the air. One interesting feature is that players can order their characters to run away from battles with the DS's microphone. Whether players can also order other battle commands via voice is currently unknown.

Development of Lunar Genesis is currently 90 percent complete.