Golden Sun
Updated: 01/17/01
In Golden Sun the main character -- a boy named Robin, holds the destiny of the world in his hands. It is his and his companions' mission to rescue the world from its doom. This Role Playing Game (RPG) is developed by Camelot, who has assigned its famous producer Hiroyuki Takahashi, responsible for the Shining Force series on the Sega consoles, to make a fantasy RPG on the new Game Boy Advance handheld. Golden Sun is scheduled to be released in May in Japan, but no western date has been announced.
One of the features in the game is the "Energy" ability, which is equivalent to the magic system in many RPGs. Energy is a measure of the character's mental power and can be cast by them during the battles. It can be used in offensive attacks (i.e. Fire and Plasma), in defense (Protect), and even to extract secrets from the enemies (Read). There are other ways to utilize it as well, although they're unknown at this point.
The battle scenes are done in an impressive way. By looking at the screenshots, the battles look 2D, but are in fact drawn using a 3D operation. Whenever an attack occurs, the screen zooms in on the two characters. Futhermore, whenever the battle switches between the two parties, the scene appears to be rotating in 3D. This clever use of the GBA hardware is accomplished because the background scrolls and the characters' sprites and sizes change. This is done so well that I first thought it was in true 3D when I played the game at the recent Spaceworld event.
The version I played at Spaceworld 2000 was only 30% complete, but there were a lot of areas to explore. Some of the puzzles I solved were jumping on platforms, pushing statues for hidden doors as well as placing a stone I had in my inventory on a statue, as one of its eyes was missing. The graphics are very SNES-esque and reminds me of the classic 16-bit games.
Just recently, it was announced that Golden Sun will support four-player play via the GBA Game Link. It is unclear at this point if it will support online multi-player action, but all signs point to it. Golden Sun was very appealing at Spaceworld and will definitely sell a lot of GBAs in Japan, as RPGs are of course very popular over there. Here's hoping it makes it overseas as well, because this is an adventure you don't want to miss.