One of 2022's biggest surprise video game releases was the remake of Square Enix's previously Japan-exclusive Super Nintendo RPG Live A Live. The remake of Live A Live, which released for Nintendo Switch in July, utilizes the HD-2D presentation made popular by Octopath Traveler to recreate the cult classic from scratch, with newly recomposed music, and voice acting for the first time ever. In a newly released interview with the original game's director, Takashi Tokita, he reveals that the reason the remake came to be stemmed from Nintendo asking Square Enix for a Virtual Console port of the original Live A Live.
Speaking in an interview on Square Enix's Japanese YouTube channel (as translated by ResetEra user Jubern), Tokita revealed that the idea to remake Live A Live first came from Nintendo requesting the game to be re-released on the Wii U Virtual Console for its 20th anniversary, which it later was released on June 17, 2015. According to Tokita, the remake would never have happened if Nintendo had not unearthed the title from Square Enix by requesting the Virtual Console port. According to Tokita, there are many people at Nintendo who are fans of the original Live A Live, which might explain why the company decided to publish the remake outside of Japan.
The interview with Tokita contains many other tidbits about Live A Live and its remake's development processes, especially since Tokita also served as a producer and writer for the remake. He claims that the main structure for the game is inspired by Dragon Quest 4, and that the original Dragon Quest is the game that inspired him to become a game developer. After developing Live A Live, Tokita went on to co-direct Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve.
Live A Live was originally released by Square for the Super Famicom in 1994 and follows seven distinct protagonists in different periods in time such as the wild west, imperial China, and the far future. The game uses a tiled turn-based strategy style of combat and each protagonist features a different set of skills based on their respective fighting styles. The game was incredibly influential when it first released and launched the career of composer Yoko Shimomura, who would later go on to compose for games such as Final Fantasy 15, Kingdom Hearts, and Street Fighter 2.
Live A Live was originally intended to be released outside of Japan with a translation by Final Fantasy 6 translator Ted Woolsey, however, he later claimed in an interview that Square canceled this localization due to the game's low graphical quality compared to the Final Fantasy series. This makes the Nintendo Switch release the first official English version of Live A Live.
Live A Live is available now, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.
Source: ResetEra
