Eternal Chain (エターナルチェイン) is a cancelled RPG that was in development in 1998 / 1999 by Victor Interactive Software, a gaming studio created in 1996 when its parent company Victor Entertainment wanted to focus on music publishing business and the remaining developers merged with Pack-In-Video. Victor Interactive is mostly known for the production of the Harvest Moon series, but in late ‘90 they developed and released a few other Playstation games, as “Boundary Gate: Daughter of Kingdom”, “The Airs” and “My Home Dream”: unfortunately Eternal Chain was never completed for unknown reasons.
Character design for the game was conceived by popular artist Range Murata (mostly known for his work on such anime as Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6.) and a few promotional phone cards were even released in Japan. Eternal Chain was shown (in playable form?) at Tokyo Game Show 1998 and 1999: you can see a short video of the game below, showing off some turn-based combat. The plot of Eternal Chain was summarized by RPG Gamer:
“16,000 years ago humans lived on Mars. After using up the resources of Mars, the humans started moving to Earth. At that time another lifeform, Gods, inhabited the Earth. After the humans settled on Earth, they eventually split into 2 groups, those who liked the Gods, and those who disliked Gods. It was only a matter of time before battles between Gods and the two groups of humans began.”
A few articles, screenshots and Murata’s comments about Eternal Chain were published in different japanese gaming magazines:
- “Megami Magazine” (メガミマガジン, Animedia September issue separate volume special edition) Vol.1
- “Game Walker” Vol.54
- “HYPER PlayStation” 98 / December issue
- Weekly “Famitsu” [ASCII Corporation] No.513.98.11 / 20 No. -99.1 / No. 22
- “PlayStation magazine” 98 / No.21
- “Famitsu PS” [ASCII Corporation] Nos. 98 / 10.23
- Weekly “The PlayStation” [SOFT BANK] Vol.122.12
If you are able to find scans for these magazines, please let us know!
The theme song for Eternal Chain titled “Before the Celebration Festival” (祝祭の前) was composed by Akino Arai and published in 2002 by Victor Entertainment in a CD titled “RGB”. As we can read on vgmdb:
- 09 PlayStation canceled game Eternal Chain (エターナルチェイン) theme song
- Composed by: Akino Arai
- Arranged by: Akino Arai & Hisaaki Hogari
- Vocal by: Akino Arai
- Background Vocal: Akino Arai
- Piano: Akino Arai
- Strings: Hijiri Kuwano Strings
- Synthesizer Manipulating: Shunsuke Sakamoto
- Programming & Manipulating: Hisaaki Hogari
- Lyrics by: Akino Arai
In 2003 Victor Interactive Software was acquired by Marvelous Entertainment and officially became Marvelous Interactive.
Thanks to Youlute and Vox for the contribution!
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