Der Langrisser

If you're anything like me (an admittedly remote possibility) then you've probably been
obsessed for years with a Sega Genesis game called Warsong. Okay, I only know of three people on the planet who've ever even played Warsong, but at least two of us are obsessed. One of them, however, is my brother who alerted me recently to the fact that the game's Japanese sequel -- der Langrisser -- has finally been released in English translation as a game to be played on your computer's SNES emulator.

Good luck!

Comments

Matt, you must know that there's no possibility that someone with an RPG obsession will ever be more famous than Natalie Portman. Give it up now.

Posted by jhupp | August 21, 2007 10:52 AM

You know, putting that picture up here is not very considerate to those of us who read this blog at work. Almost as bad, from a boss-happens-to-be-looking standpoint, as the cheesecake photo of Natalie Portman you inexplicably failed to post.

I'm just sayin'.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | August 21, 2007 11:28 AM

If it's the tactical aspect that you enjoy more than the RPG element, you might like the Advance Wars series on the GBA, too. Also, Wikipedia claims that Warsong is similar to Fire Emblem.

Posted by Tom | August 21, 2007 11:43 AM

Rad. I am (unabashedly) all over this.

Posted by Will | August 21, 2007 11:56 AM

Judging from the wiki description of Warsong, you should really (assuming you want to lose all productivity for a week or more) check out the Battle for Wesnoth.

Posted by Tom Scudder | August 21, 2007 12:06 PM

Of course if Matt had a real PDA instead of an iPhone he could play this on his phone too! But I'm sure that iPhone one touch and one touch only interface will make for great quiz games....

As to similar games, Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, FF Tactics Advance, and the just released Luminous Arc all exist on a Nintendo handheld that you should own.

Posted by Rob | August 21, 2007 12:08 PM

mmm. 8 bits. mmmm.

Posted by cleek | August 21, 2007 12:30 PM

Two Langrisser games, in one box, were released for the PlayStation in the USA. Thanks to the wonders of BC, you can play it on your PS2 or PS3. It was a Working Designs release, though, which means it might be ridiculously expensive to buy today.

Posted by Joshua | August 21, 2007 12:42 PM

Oops! I am totally wrong here. They released a box of Growlanser, which is apparently totally different.

Posted by Joshua | August 21, 2007 12:44 PM

With any luck, the original game will come out on the Wii's Virtual Console at some point.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | August 21, 2007 12:58 PM

Cleek, it's 16-bit.

Posted by benny | August 21, 2007 1:34 PM

Cleek, it's 16-bit.

i was actually commenting on the graphics, not the CPU. but i was wrong about that, too - the Sega Genesis has 9-bits of color data per pixel. 512 colors, baby!

Posted by cleek | August 21, 2007 1:42 PM

I'd loved that game... haven't even thought about it for a dozen years.

Posted by DJ | August 21, 2007 2:27 PM

I can't believe you neglected to tie this into copyright policy: as far as I can tell, this translation is unauthorized and therefore illegal. If only we'd had saner rules about derivative works, you might not have had to wait a decade!

Posted by x. trapnel | August 21, 2007 5:24 PM

I actually had to do a double take when I was scrolling down and passed that picture. I wasn't sure if I was still on the blog I had been on a few seconds ago.

I actually am the fourth person in the world who was obsessed with Warsong as a kid and followed along with the constant setbacks as various fans tried to get Der Langrisser translated. I grabbed it when they finally got it out a couple months back.

Never expected to come across it on one of my political blogs, though. Creepy.

Posted by jbryan | August 21, 2007 5:27 PM

I always thought I know my native langiuage quite well but wtf is "Der Langrisser"? It has to be a male person, being able to "riss" for quite a long time, but still "risser" doesn't ring a bell. I suspect the japanese game creator wanted to have a german word for the game just to give it a barbarian appearance, and then confused a 'p' with an 'r'. "Der Langpisser" at least makes some sense, but I really don't think its a good name for a fantasy game...
:D

Posted by Gray | August 21, 2007 5:51 PM

Actually, Gray, Germany was the foremost technological and intellegical power when Japan first joined the great-nations game, and they exerted a pretty heavy influence on Japan before the Americans did. And so European-styled fantasy of Japanese origin tends to draw pretty heavily on German sources. It's the same reason the Final Fantasy games had "dragoons" in the first place.

Posted by Senescent | August 21, 2007 6:54 PM

Is it just me or is the translation almost unreadable.

Posted by parmenides | August 21, 2007 11:49 PM

In high school my friends and I skipped school for several days to obsessively play Warsong at one of our houses. We called it Gank Song (c.f. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ganking) because of our perception that it cheated relentlessly.

Posted by NOLF | August 22, 2007 3:55 PM