Who Made the Shining Series?

For a complete list of games, seeː Shining and Related Games

See alsoː Nothing Is Canon

PDF showing the staff who created the games of the Shining series in the 1990s.

Sega's Shining series began with the release of Climax's Shining and the Darkness for the Mega Drive in 1991. During the 1990s, games in the Shining series were created by the developers at a sequence of collaborating studios starting with Climax, Sega's subsidiary Sonic, and later Camelot. Staff was often outsourced or hired on a freelance basis, and many of the games were codeveloped by several studios with frequent support from Rit's, Winds, R.I.S., and Seraphic. Sonic and Camelot's final game in the series was Shining Force III, whose three scenarios were released for the Saturn between 1997 and 1998.

In the 2000s, Sega employed its then-subsidiary Nextech to revive the series with Shining Soul, released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002. A variety of studios continued to develop Shining games, including Sega's internal studios Amusement Vision and AM2, as well as third-party studios such as Neverland, Studio Saizensen, Media.Vision, and Flight-Plan. The series' most recent entry is Studio Saizensen's Blade Arcus Rebellion from Shining, released for the Switch and PlayStation 4 in 2019 in Japan.

Studio History

Climax and Sonic

Sega hired Climax to develop the first game in the series, Shining and the Darkness. Climax was an independent studio that had been established in 1990 by former Enix employees. This included Chunsoft's Kan Naito, the chief programmer of Dragon Quest III and IV, and Hiroyuki Takahashi, the assistant producer of Dragon Quest IV and executive producer for Enix's role in the English release of Dragon Warrior II. Climax programmer Yasuhiro Taguchi and artist Yoshitaka Tamaki had also done work for Enix.

After the publication of Shining and the Darkness for the Mega Drive in 1991, Sega then funded Hiroyuki Takahashi's formation of Sonic as a subsidiary to assist Climax with the development of Shining Force.^[1]^[2]

Masahiko Yoshimura composed the music for Shining and the Darkness and Shining Force.

Many of the same staff who had worked on Shining Force at Climax, including Naito and Tamaki, then began development on Land Stalker, a game that was at first intended to be a Shining sequel. During Land Stalker's development, Sonic created Shining Force Gaiden and Gaiden II for the Game Gear without Climax. Although the history is not entirely clear, at some point it was determined that Land Stalker would no longer carry the Shining brand, and Climax would never develop another Shining game.

Thus, Sonic would develop Shining Force II: The Ancient Seal for the Mega Drive without collaboration with Climax. It was then that Sonic chose to take the series in a different narrative direction as most of their staff was new and inexperienced with the series.^[3] Sonic's Shining Force Gaidenː Final Conflict was an end to the continuity the series had had prior to Shining Force II, although it did attempt to connect some of the characters from Shining Force II to previous games.

On the story of Shining Force II, producer Hiroyuki Takahashi stated in a 1993 interviewː

When it came time to write the scenario, there were actually 4 different story ideas we had. Ultimately we settled on the one that’s in the game now, but one of the other ideas would have intertwined the plots and stories of Shining Force 1 and Shining in the Darkness. It was a very dramatic story, and in the beginning we were actually going to use that one. I guess one reason we changed course was because a portion of the development staff switched to a different project…

Also, there were some on the team who felt like it would be better not to connect the two games, to have a standalone story instead. After thinking about it, I thought they might be right, and eventually we ended up dropping that story. Even now there’s still a part of me that wonders what the game might have turned out like, had we kept going with it. But ultimately I do think it was for the best.

Motoaki Takenouchi composed the music for the series starting with Shining Force Gaiden and was also the composer for Land Stalker.

Hiroshi Kajiyama became the series illustrator starting with Shining Force Gaiden, though SUEZEN temporarily took over for Shining Force II.

Camelot

Camelot, founded as an independent studio by Shugo Takahashi in 1994^[4], supported Sonic in the development of Shining Wisdom and Shining the Holy Ark for the Saturn. Although Camelot had intended to focus on games for other platforms like Beyond the Beyond and Everybody's Golf for the PlayStation, sometime during the development of Shining Force III, it seems that Camelot became the primary studio credited for the game. Unlike previous games, the copyrights of the three scenarios of Shining Force III are no longer attributed to Sonic, and instead Sega Enterprises is featured prominently on their title screens. This probably coincides with Sega's withdrawal of funding from Sonic, who was no longer listed as a subsidiary on Sega's financial reports by 1997.^[5]^[6] In April 1998, Sega merged its remaining assets in Sonic into its subsidiary Nextech.^[7]

Motoi Sakuraba composed the music in Shining the Holy Ark and Shining Force III. He would stay with Camelot for the music of Golden Sun and the sports games that were the studio's primary focus.

Shin Yamanouchi was the illustrator for Shining the Holy Ark and worked with Hiroshi Kajiyama on Shining Force III, creating most of the game's published key art. Kajiyama drew the illustrations that were used for most of Shining Force III's in-game portraits. Both artists would work together again on Camelot's Golden Sun series, for which Yamanouchi designed the main characters and Kajiyama provided monster designs.

Nextech

After the lack of widespread success of Sonic and Camelot's Saturn releases, Sega would turn to their subsidiary Nextech, who had previously created Ragnacënty, another game that, like Land Stalker, was originally conceived as a Shining game.^[8]

Ragnacënty programmer Yukihiko Tani stated in a 2023 interviewː

Now, I'm going to confide in you, but the original plan was to create an action RPG as part of the Shining series. So following on from Shining in the Darkness and Shining Force. The provisional title was Shining Rogue. Then, after some twists and turns, it was decided to restart the project under the original title of Shin Souseiki Ragnacënty.

Nextech introduced the Shining series to the Game Boy Advance in 2002 with Shining Soul and Shining Soul II, games for which the Shining series' original character designer and illustrator, Yoshitaka Tamaki, would return. Both Shining Soul and Shining Soul II were codeveloped by Grasshopper Manufacture, with Goichi Suda producing the first and being credited with management and scenario creation on the second.

Artist Tony Taka began designing characters for the series when Nextech developed Shining Tears in 2004 and Shining Wind in 2007 for the PlayStation 2.

Amusement Vision

Around the same time period that Nextech was working to reintroduce the Shining series, Sega's internal studio Amusement Vision developed a remake of the first Shining Force titled Shining Forceː Resurrection of the Black Dragon, which was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004. Sega hired original series writer Masaki Wachi for the task, and Yoshitaka Tamaki returned as an artist. The project also involved Climax producer Kan Naito, who had worked on the original game.

Neverland

Sega hired Neverland, the developers of Record of Lodoss War on the Dreamcast, to develop similar games with Shining Force Neo and Shining Force EXA for the PlayStation 2. Yoshitaka Tamaki contributed monster designs to both Neo and EXA, and Masaki Wachi served as supervising editor on Neo and wrote its graphic novel adaptation, Shining Force Neo Vol. 1 and 2.

Yuriko Nishiyama designed the main characters of Shining Force Neo, and pako designed the characters in EXA.

Sega AM2

Sega's internal arcade development studio AM2 created Shining Force Cross and its sequels starting in 2009.

Flight-Plan

Shining Force EXA's character artist pako returned to the series alongside collaborator Noizi Ito to work with Flight-Plan on the development of Shining Force Feather. The strategy role-playing game was released for the Nintendo DS in 2009. The studio closed down shortly thereafter.

Studio Saizensen

Studio Saizensen maintained the continuity of Shining Tears and Wind in Shining Hearts for the PlayStation Portable in 2010. They also developed the fighting game Blade Arcus from Shining, first released in arcades in 2014.

Media.Vision

Wild Arms and Valkyria Chronicles developer Media.Vision picked the continuity that Nextech had started in Tears back up with the Valkyria Chronicles–inspired strategy role-playing games Shining Blade and Shining Ark. Their last game, Shining Force Resonance and its updated rerelease Refrain are set in a parallel universe.

Table of 1990s Staff

The following tables document the history of the staff who worked to make the Shining series. Names are sourced from the staff credits of the given games.