Skies of Arcadia

n/a

Skies of Arcadia
System(s): Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Overworks
Genre: 3D Rail shooter

Skies of Arcadia, released in Japan as Eternal Arcadi, is a console role-playing game developed by Overworks for the Dreamcast and published by Sega in 2000. Skies of Arcadia Legends, an enhanced remake, was released for the GameCube in 2002. Legends was also in development for the PlayStation 2. however, it was cancelled shortly before the GameCube release. The game's story focuses around Vyse, a young pirate in a Jules Verne-inspired fantasy world, and his friends as they attempt to stop the Valuan Empire from reviving ancient weapons with the potential to destroy the world.

Gameplay

Dungeons Most of gameplay in Skies of Arcadia takes place in dungeons. Controlling the male protagonist, Vyse, from a third-person view, players must traverse and defeat these dungeons in order to advance the storyline. Dungeons comprise of a network of pathways with treasure chests, puzzles, and ubiquitous monsters. Completing the dungeons is usually a matter of exploring each of the possible pathways presented to the player until the correct one is found. Treasure chests are commonplace and contain some of the most powerful items in the game. Throughout the dungeon gameplay the player meets compulsory random encounters. If the entire player party is defeated, progress is reset to the beginning of the dungeon. In the Dreamcast version, it was possible to slightly foresee these random encounters by noticing a loud spin-up of the console's GD-ROM drive. This gave the player time to open the start menu and prepare for the battle.

Travel between the numerous dungeons is accomplished by piloting an airship through the overworld, a three dimensional sky with massive floating rocks forming islands and continents. Some islands are completely uninhabited, while others are filled with sprawling towns and cities. All dungeons are located on these islands and continents. There are two exceptions to this, where a dungeon is traversed whilst piloting the airship. This form of dungeon contains floating spherical objects instead of treasure chests, and vortex-like tunnels in place of corridors and doors in one case, and a single series of tunnels in the other.

Overworld Overworld travel takes place entirely on the player's airship. The world is at first divided by impassable "sky rifts" which bar the player's passage. Throughout overworld travel, unavoidable random encounters occur as in the dungeons. These battles take place on the deck of the airship and are otherwise identical to their dungeon-based counterparts. Later in the game, however, an advanced mechanism is discovered for the player's ship which allows it to rise above the upper cloud layer and sink below the lower cloud layer of Arcadia, presenting two ways to avoid these encounters, and also provides the player the means to pass through sky rifts. In addition, ship-to-ship combat can occur whilst traveling through the overworld; however, the majority of these are unavoidable boss fights which advance the storyline. Random ship-to-ship battles can occur, but they are rare and avoidable.

Discoveries The player can also find Discoveries hidden throughout the world while flying their airship. Information about discoveries can be sold at Sailor's Guilds located in cities throughout the game; the value of a discovery is determined by how well-hidden it is and how much time has elapsed since it was possible to find. When finding a new land, a discovery is recorded automatically, as these Discoveries are part of the storyline.

Battle system Combat occurs frequently, especially during the overworld travel. It is not until late in the game that it becomes possible to avoid combat during overworld travel. Combat comprises two vastly different settings: those encountered in ship to ship combat, and character to monster combat. Ship to ship combat occurs relatively rarely compared to the common character-combat. This encounter rate was reduced for the GameCube re-release.

Character combat Character combat occurs between one to four player characters and one to eight monsters or NPCs. Combat comprises seven main options: Run, Items (which can be used to change the characters' equipment as well), Guard, Attack, S.Move (Super Move), Magic and Focus. An eighth option, Crew Special, becomes available later in the game by meeting certain criteria (which replaces the Run command). After an action has been chosen for each character, the round will commence.

Ship combat Ship combat is used when battling other ships and the extremely powerful gigas that are summoned throughout the game. Ship combat follows the same framework as character combat, however there are a few distinct differences. Each round in ship combat is divided into either three or four turns depending on how many characters are currently in the party. During each round, neither team has more than a single turn advantage over the opposition. Ship battles use a colour-coded grid system to show each turn in the following two rounds, and the amount of fire the ship will come under during each turn.

The same actions used in character combat are used here, albeit with small differences. The 'Attack' option now has the player pick between four different cannons that have been equipped to the ship. Cannons come in three different types - powerful main cannons, multi-firing secondary cannons, and delayed-effect torpedoes - and each one can only be used once per round. This same stipulation carries over to the S. Move command, which now uses a large, front-mounted cannon. In addition to the standard actions, the ship's crew can be called upon by one of the characters in the party. Whilst each of these can only be used once in each ship battle, the diversity and power of the crew's abilities can be very useful.

Production Credits

Executive Producer: Noriyoshi Oba
Producer: Rieko Kodama Director: Atsusi Seimiya, Shuntaro Tanaka
Chief Planner: Tomohiro Nimura
Planner: Takuya Ogawa, Takanobu Yoshino
Chief Designer: Toshiyuki Mukaiyama
Graphic Designer: Hirotaka Kanazawa
Chief Programmer: Tetsuichiro Hirose
Programmer: Kouichi Nomura
Map Design Director: Koji Maekawa
Map Design: Karashima, Hiroshi Soma, Takuya Ogawa
Map Scripting: Ryosuke Waki, Masaaki Shimoma, Takaaki Tokunaga
City Maps: Masako Okuda, Makiko Kubo, Atsuko Moroe, Kayo Hoshina, Masaaki Ohki, Masayoshi Iwase
Dungeon Maps: Keiichi Kawase, Kensuke Kita, Shinpei Tanaka, Hitoshi Fukazawa, Takashi Ohtsuji, Kensei Ogiwara, Hirohiko Samekawa, Hitoshi Honma, Nobumichi Sugawara, Yuji Yanase
Sky Map: Hirotaka Kanazawa, Saeko Matsuura, Kazuhiro Yamashita
Window Design: Mie Furuhashi
Map Illustration: Hiroshi Nishio
Map System: Tsutomu Matsuo, Kenji Hiruta, Tatsuhiro Oshii
Window Programming: Kazuo Wakihara, Katsuhiko Yano
VMU Programming: Kenji Ohsawa
Scenario Design: Shuntaro Tanaka
Scenario Coordinator: Yuko Suzuki
Scenario Director: Toru Shimizu, Kanji Wakabayashi
Scenario Scripting: Tetsuya Ohtsubo, Hideki Sakadume, Tatsuo Saito, Ryotaro Fukunaga, Hiroshi Odajima, Hideaki Kitamura, Naoyuki Miyoshi, Tsutomu Mizuno, Kiyoshi Iwaoka, Takanobu Yoshino
Character Models: Shinichi Higashi, Chika Kojitani, Yuka Miyazawa, Shizuyo Kanda, Tetsuya Oguri, Asako Yamasaki
Character Motions: Kazuo Komuro, Motohiro Fukui, Shigeki Taniguchi, Yoshiaki Ogura, Hironari Hashimoto, Masaya Takahashi, Yoshihiro Kaneko, Takahiro Honma, Kenichi Harada, Takashi Ohta, Shinobu Ohmura, Kazuhiro Miyazawa, Tsunemasa Endo, Takayuki Naito, Takahito Otome
Villager Motions: Shiro Kanemori, Kenichi Izawa
Scenario Effects: Daisuke Oikawa, Minobu Fujii, Satoshi Ono
Battle System Director: Daisuke Fujii
Battle Stage Planner: Azusa Kimura
Enemy Specs: Wataru Murakami
Enemy Models: Toshiyuki Takamatsu, Paku Sugiura, Satoshi Yokokawa, Tadashi Ohmine, Kiyonori Ohsawa, Sigeru Sato, Kazuyuki Watanabe, Nobuto Iwao
Enemy Motions: Kentaro Nonaka, Hisashi Toyama
Battle Stage Designer: Kazuo Komura
System Programmers: Yoshiaki Endo, Kouichi Nomura, Kentaro Yamamoto
Effects: Toshihiro Ito, Yasutaka Tanaka, Takamitsu Watanabe, Makoto Tanaka, Etusi Nisiura
Ship Battle Director: Yorio Kuramoto
Battle Scripting: Takashi Wachi, Motoyuki Takeda, Kazuhisa Ohmi, Yasunari Sekine, Tsutomu Hotsuki
Ship Models & Motions: Tsuyoshi Mayumi, Kenichi Minamizawa, Hirotaka Kawai, Masahiro Ito, Isao Wada, Motoko Toyama
Special Effects: Satoru Arai, Tsuyoshi Inaba
Battle system Programmers: Shigeharu Yoshikawa, Osamu Sato, Junichi Ishiba
Sound Director: Tatsuya Kosaki
BGM & Sound Effects: Yutaka Minobe, Tatsuyuki Maeda
Sound Effects: Seirou Okamoto, Mariko Nanba, Takashi Endoh, Hideki Abe, Tomoya Ohtani, Keiichi Sugiyama
Story Consultant: Junya Fujimoto
Illustrations: Itsuki Hoshi
Orchestra Coordination" Kiyoshi Tonozaki, Torakichi Takagi
Music Performed By The Skies of Arcadia Symphony Orchestra Manual & Package Designer: Kaoru Ichigozaki, Makoto Nishino
Planning Consultants: Akira Nishino, Takaharu Terada, Katsuhito Goto, Keisuke Nakamura
Design Support: Toru Yoshida, Tsukasa Mori, Takehiko Akabane, Haruo Nakano, Satsuki Nagano
Advisor: Tomoyuki Ito
Voice Actors: Christopher Sullivan, Victoria McCreary, Julissa L. Aguirre, Joseph Hughes, Robb McCulloch, Jay Styne, Fay Lumley, Jerry Lawrence, Steve Cloyes, Charles Martinet, Andrea Satin, Bill Broughton, Ian Reddoch, Dennis Lancaster

Sega Europe, Ltd.

Director of Product Development: Naohiko Hoshino
Executive Producer: Kats Sato
Assistant Producer: Akiko Koutstaal
Test Manager: Jason Cumberbatch
Language Translator: Caroline Ruiz, Enrique Gonzalez Fajardo
European Head of Product Marketing: Jim Pride
European Product Marketing Executive: Mathew Quaeck
Package Designer: Tom Bingle
Manual Support: Sarah Ward
Lead Tester: Nick Bennett Associate Lead Tester: Daniel Slater
Special Thanks: Akira Nishikawa, Hideki Yokaichiya, Yutaka Kawasaki, Yukako Suzuki, Ken Natsuhara, Masanori Daigo, Noriyuki Deguchi, Hideki Matsuzaki, Takahiro Kobae