Emerald Dragon Official Fan M/Book. (Image heavy)

Remembering the games of yesteryear.

Emerald Dragon Official Fan M/Book. (Image heavy)

Postby R-90-2 » Tue Aug 20, '19, 8:38 pm

Warning: Image heavy, with big image.

No, that's not a typo.

So, on this forum, I may have had a few things to say about the retro JPRG Emerald Dragon. However, somewhat recently I found a unique opportunity regarding it. This isn't a thread about how rare or expensive one is- it's about how I actually found one.

So, this arrived in the mail today:

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The Emerald Dragon Official Fan Mook. Well, it looks more like a book to me, but I'm going to take it at its word.

To clarify, these kinds of fan mooks are not made by fans, but rather for fans. This particular mook came out in 1995, a few months after the release of the Super Famicom version of Emerald Dragon, which is the one I played for this thread. The mook was put out by Media Works, which is the company that published the console ports of the game. The bizarre thing about this copy is that it was already inside the United States when I found it- it was being sold from Powell's Books in Portland so I managed to snag it for like, 12 bucks including shipping, which isn't bad for an out-of-print fan mook for a JRPG so obscure that it doesn't even have its own TVtropes page. The back of the dust jacket has a tear, but that's okay.

The closest equivalent for us would probably be the Phantasy Star Compendium, except this thing is actually bigger- the PS Compendium was 72 pages, and this thing is 96.

So- the front matter of this mook is basically the art section, a lot of the production art of each of the five major characters. plus a few other things.

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The beginning of the art segment. Some joker early on decided to create an alternate outfit (right) that showed significantly more skin than her final hero outfit used in the actual games (left).

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I think it's proper that Tamryn shows up a lot in Atrushan's section, and vice versa. The left-side art was created for the Sharp X68000 version.

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There's actually quite a bit of space for Tamryn's weird but loving dragon-filled childhood with Atrushan in here, and I know there's more production art out there that didn't even make it into this mook.

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Okay, they may have been more up-front about who the real main character was than I had originally thought. Who knew? Certainly not me!

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Beyond that, a rather lengthy interview with Akihiro Kimura, the game's character designer. He also continues to promote the game despite the fact that there's really no hope for a revival at this point. For his day job, he now works at Studio Tulip as a background artist, working on shows like Scum's Wish and Aho Girl.

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Also a segment on the non-game Emerald Dragon media, like the succeeding Manga.

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Meet my Manos! Anyway, the fact that there was even a radio series is something I find boggling, but the mook has a thing about that, too. Atrushan was voiced by Toshihiko Seki (almost got the wrong Seki there), who has played pretty much every kind of character who can be played.

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And, how we got here. This is the beginning of the section of the mook about the various iterations of the game and their systems, and basically how this game started on the PC-8801 to how it got on the Super Famicom.

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It's not really a fan mook if you don't have a section for the fans. It includes photos of cosplay and other live stuff...

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As well as one reserved for the various fanart and doujins the developers had encountered or had been sent along the way.

Now, from what I know, this isn't even the hardest bit of Emerald Dragon flotsam to find- that dubious honor is reserved for the CD recordings of the radio series, which I'm not going to hunt down because I do not speak Japanese and I'm also not a crazy person. However, what I did manage to find was a very fine mook indeed.
Do not say: How is it that former times were better than these? For it is not out of wisdom that you ask about this. Ecclesiastes 7:10
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Re: Emerald Dragon Official Fan M/Book. (Image heavy)

Postby myau56 » Wed Aug 21, '19, 12:46 pm

Great Emerald Dragon official fan book ! Congratulations, dear R-90-2 ! :clap: :clap:
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Re: Emerald Dragon Official Fan M/Book. (Image heavy)

Postby Silver_Surfer1 » Wed Aug 21, '19, 7:33 pm

Wow, that is a terrific find! Those pictures are awesome! Thanks for sharing it with us.
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:rose: Happy 26th Anniversary Fringes Of Algo~Founded April 01, 1997 :rose:

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