Lufia World: Covering Lufia, Final Fantasy, Zelda, and the Best of Video Gaming



Lufia: The Comic

Welcome to Lufia World
Welcome to Lufia World, a gaming site dedicated to bringing you in-depth coverage on the Lufia RPG series, and on several other classic video games. The Lufia games are all fantastic, with captivating storylines, deep characters, and well-developed dungeons. Four games long, the series will offer players some of the best moments in video gaming. And when you think it's all over, the famous Ancient Cave will provide you with extra challenges for a long time to come!

Enjoy the site. Join the community. Welcome to Lufia World.

   The Lufia World Forum


News and Updates
For site updates, announcements, and Lufia news.

  Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Lufia II Concert 2020 - Comment!
21:01 PST | Posted by SinReVi

A Lufia II concert has been announced for Japan. It will be organised by Music Engine, who were also behind the Lufia II concert from 2016!
The performance will be at the 22nd of february 2020 (that's in the weekend before Lufia II's 25th anniversary) in the Mitaka City Arts Center in Tokyo. Tickets are already for sale here.

  Monday, June 25, 2018

25th Anniversary - Comment!
18:13 PST | Posted by SinReVi

It's the 25th of June so that means today is the 25th anniversary of the Lufia series! Hurray!
Coincidentally, today also happens to be the birthday of music composer Yasunori Shiono! Happy birthday!

  Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Lufia I and II soundtrack releases next month - 1 Comment
16:14 PST | Posted by SinReVi

A new OST has been announced! It contains 3 CDs of Lufia I and II music and will be released next month 25th October for 3700 yen (about 28 Euro/33 US Dollar).
You can preorder it at CDJapan. This release is a great opportunity if you always wanted to own Lufia I and II music on CD but missed out on the OSTs released in 1995 and 2006.

  Thursday, December 29, 2016

Lufia II Concert from last November - 2 Comments
20:31 PST | Posted by SinReVi

A Lufia II only concert was performed by Music Engine in Japan on the 12th of November of this year, in the Mitaka City Arts Center Concert Hall.
This was Music Engine's first concert, and it consisted of around 40 songs, which were composed by Yasunori Shiono and arranged by Koichi Kawai.
After the concert was over, Yasunori Shiono held a signing session.


(most information from here)


Program:
M1 Judgment day, Main Theme
M2 Estpolis 1 Opening Motif, Theme of Town, the Earth
M3 Theme of Cave, Theme of Labyrinth, Battle #1
M4 Theme of Castle, Hidecka (Dekar)
M5 Theme of Tower, Theme of Shrine, Trembling
M6 Despair, Battle #2
M7 Ending Motif, The Sorrow of Parting
M8 Wedding Ceremony, Rice Shower

M9 The Mystery Lady,Mysterious Tone, Theme of Port Town
M10 Theme of Village, Lexis Shaia Lab, Jimmy and Tommy (Berty and Bart)
M11 Deep Blue, The Whole Silent World, Theme of Tower
M12 Theme of Mons, Over the Sky
M13 The Turret Forgotten, The Land Nobody Knew, The Fortress of Doom
M14 The Last Duel, Final Battle
M15 Four Master, battle #3
M16 The Mystery Lady, For the Savior, Ending, Priphea Flowers

Encore
Battle #3 (Soundtrack Arrange Version)

Before the concert, there was a speech by several people involved with Lufia II; Yasunori Shiono, Yukio Nakajima and Masahide Miyata.
First Masahide Miyata (the Director and Scenario Director of the games) told a story behind the creation of the Lufia series. He gathered about 4-5 people and wanted to create a RPG, so they developed a prototype using PC98 and he tried selling it to several companies. This was before powerpoint existed so they presented it to companies using a PC98 and a CRT monitor.
Taito bought it, but when development of the game was officially approved, the Super Nintendo was starting to get popular, so that's how Lufia I ended up on Super Nintendo instead of the PC98.
(but apparently the first prototype (including music) for PC98 isn't around anymore)

Yasunori Shiono mentioned composing music for Lufia I was hard, as it was his first Super Nintendo game. He had worked on PC games before, but apparently creating music works differently for Super Nintendo games because of the system, which has to do something with the use of sound samples and libraries.
Masahide Miyata thanked everyone for coming to the concert, even though Lufia II is a 20 year old game.
Yukio Nakajima also had a story about the development days of Lufia II, he told about how Yasunori Shiono received specifation notes for the songs from Masahide Miyata, but the descriptions were so short Yasunori Shiono replied with "These aren't specification notes, it's a song list!"
For example, for the ending music Masahide Miyata only wrote "tear-jerking" as the description.

An interesting fact is that Lufia II's music was completed before Masahide Miyata had finished writing the entire scenario, so he actually listened to Yasunori Shiono's music while writing, also mentioning he likes the battle themes.
Apparently he even used his headphones to listen to Lufia II music on loop all day!
He says when he was writing the final parts of the scenario, he was writing hard because he was boosted by the music.





  Wednesday, September 7, 2016

15th Anniversary - 4 Comments
16:45 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Lufia The Legend Returns has its 15th anniversary today!
If you have a 3DS and want to (re)play the first portable entry of the Lufia series, don't forget it's available in the e-shop for just 5 euro/6 dollar.
Frue destruction!

  Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Lufia The Ruins of Lore to Japanese WiiU Virtual Console - 2 Comments
15:58 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Next week Lufia The Ruins of Lore will be released in Japan on the Virtual Console on WiiU on the 17th of August.
Let's hope more Lufia games will make it to Virtual Console!

  Sunday, July 10, 2016

Lufia II Concert - 4 Comments
12:36 PST | Posted by SinReVi

A Lufia II concert has been announced for Japan! It will be performed on the 12th of November in the Mitaka City Arts Center Concert Hall.
It's organised by Music Engine and they will play about 40 songs, which include the Main Theme, The Earth, Priphea, all the battle themes and For the Savior. The songs are composed by Yasunori Shiono and arranged by Kota Kawai.
For more information visit Music Engine's site.

  Thursday, February 4, 2016

Lufia III documents for sale - 5 Comments
09:56 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Long time Lufia fans may remember Lufia III Ruins Chaser, the canceled sequel that was supposed to appear on Playstation in the late nineties. The game would have taken place 300 years after Lufia I.
Lufia III documents have recently shown up online on Yahoo Auction (a Japanese auction site)
A total of 320 A4 sized pages, with exception of some illustrations which are B4 sized instead.

With bidding starting at 500000 yen (about 4200 US Dollar/3800 Euro) it's not exactly cheap though.
The buyout price is 2000000 yen (about 17000 US dollar/15200 Euro).

The documents include:
-Scenario related (plot, dungeon maps) 109 pages
- Battle Screen Layout Design 43 pages
- Field Map Design Layout 8 pages
- World Map Design Layout 5 pages
- Camp Design Layout 30 pages
- Speech bubble designs 9 pages
- Movie illustrations (storyboard?) 27 pages
- Capsule Monsters rough designs 13 pages
- Party characters battle pattern(?), monsters 40 pages
- Image Board 22 pages
- Image board (B4 Size) 14 pages
-Floppy disk with scenario data is missing ?


  Saturday, November 7, 2015

Forum and Site Software Maintenance - 4 Comments
09:17 PST | Posted by Chris

I undertook some essential maintenance on the underlying software of our website and forum today. These updates are now complete, and everything should be back online. Please do let me know however (in the comments thread for this news post) if you come across any error messages or bugs that did not exist before today!

  Sunday, August 23, 2015

If Lufia I was an anime serie... - 12 Comments
14:49 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Have you ever wondered what Lufia I's opening and ending videos would sound like if it was an anime serie?
Yasunori Shiono has just uploaded a video of 2 songs he composed. The first one is an opening theme for if Lufia I was an anime, the second song is an ending theme.
I'm not sure about the details but apparently the songs were shown at the Estpolis/Neverland Off of last June and I think the Youtube description says while Yasunori Shiono composed the music, his wife wrote and sang the lyrics. (Estpolis/Neverland Off is a meeting of Lufia and Neverland fans held in Japan)


If you know Japanese, translations of the lyrics are welcome in the comments.

  Saturday, August 22, 2015

Lufia news from earlier this year - 1 Comment
06:09 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Lufia The Legend Returns on Virtual Console
First a reminder that Lufia The Legend Returns was released on the 3DS Virtual Console in Europe late 2014 and in North America early 2015. So if you haven't bought it yet, what are you waiting for?
The game is not on the Japanese Virtual Console and there are no known plans to release it.

No Lufia II for Virtual Console?
Unfortunately, Lufia II has less luck with getting re-released on Virtual Console. In Natsume's Spring Q&A; (published in April) they have mentioned "At this point, it’s unlikely we’ll see any other Natsume SNES games coming to the Virtual Console, as Nintendo’s interest has moved onto other classic systems."
This would include Lufia II as well. On Twitter Natsume has also mentioned "Nintendo has already taken all the SNES games they want from us." in a reply to a fan hoping Lufia II would still appear on VC. Natsume also says they have no say about Lufia I getting re-released on Virtual Console, you'd have to ask Square-Enix about that (and the same goes for fans asking for new Lufia games, as Square-Enix owns the IP)
It's unknown if Lufia II will appear on the European VC (it was originally published by Nintendo themselves over there) or on the Japanese VC.

New fanmade Lufia II sound track CD
A fanmade Lufia sound track was released by Dangerous Mezashi Cat during Comiket of December 2014.
The name of the CD is "Void Island Campaign" and you can check the Japanese site over here. They also have a demo track! If you're wondering about the title, "Void Island" is the Japanese name of Doom Island.

As I own this CD myself, here are some pictures!

Front


Back


The CD


A closer look at the track list



Bevebu bmyself]? Lufia II TAS record!

The TAS (tool-assisted-speedrun) record for Lufia II has been broken multiple times in the past few months, leading to weird glitches and funny scenes.
The current record is in hands of Genisto, who finished the game in just 57 seconds.

Estpolis Off 2015
Japanese fans have held a Lufia/Neverland meeting this year as well. The total number of guests was 23. Masahide Miyata, Yasunori Shiono, Yukio Nakajima and Kame Erika attended as special guests.
You can see the (Japanese) report over here.
Another thing mentioned there is that both Yasunori Shiono and Yukio Nakajima have worked on music for the Red Spider game series, which consist of 2 (Japanese) text based games.
(By the way, speaking of Yukio Nakajima, Puzzles & Dragons Z has recently been released for 3DS in North America and Europe. Yukio Nakajima is one of the 2 music composers for that game)

Lord of Magna

Though Neverland Company went bankrupt while developing their new game Lord of Magna, they were able to continue the game with Marvelous! Lord of Magna is a gridless strategy RPG for the 3DS and has been released in October 2014 in Japan and in June of this year in North America and Europe. The game was directed by Masahide Miyata, the director and scenario writer of the Lufia series, and the music was done by Tomoko Morita who was one of the music composers for Lufia The Legend Returns.


  Thursday, August 13, 2015

Lufia World Forum Back Online! - 13 Comments
20:43 PST | Posted by Chris

I'm very happy to announce that our forum is back online, as of today.

It was deactivated a couple of years ago due to a sustained campaign of spam, that not only left the forum unusable, but also exhausted our space quota, and - thanks to the nature of the spam - led to our suspension from the Google Adsense programme (which contributed more-or-less our annual hosting fees at the time). Suspending the forum was regrettable but necessary. Sadly, the size of the job to fix it, combined with the lack of time on my part, meant that it stayed in this state for over two years.

After receiving a number of requests (and also missing the community myself), I spent some time cleaning up the spam, deleting users without any posts, and upgrading the software. New measures are also in place to prevent a repetition of this situation: new users must answer a simple Lufia-related question to register, and wait for my approval before they can post (I'll be quick!). I hope that things will be different this time.

No doubt it will be hard to bring back the Lufia World community of old. Maybe it will never happen: a lot can change in two years (and holy moly, I'm nearly in my 30s, having put this site together and barely updated it since my teens!). Still, even if the community does not return, at least we can browse the older threads - our history - and rekindle some memories. Enjoy!

  Saturday, June 6, 2015

Lufia Comic Scanlation - 1 Comment
10:12 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Miloscat has recently translated Lufia Comic into English, you can check it out here!


Lufia Comic was an official comic originally released in Germany and the Netherlands to promote Lufia II around its release.



  Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Lufia DS 5th anniversary - Comment!
19:54 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Today it's been 5 years since the Japanese release of Lufia Curse of the Sinistrals!

  Monday, February 23, 2015

Happy birthday Lufia II! - Comment!
17:58 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Today it has been 20 years since Lufia II was released in Japan! Happy anniversary!

  Sunday, January 11, 2015

Lufia : The Legend Returns coming soon to North America - Comment!
18:43 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Are you a North American Lufia fan? Do you want to play Lufia the Legend Returns on your 3DS?
Good news, the wait is almost over! Natsume has announced that it will arrive in the North American 3DS E-shop this week on January 15th!

Natsume has already released Lufia The Legend Returns in Europe last year.

  Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Lufia The Legend Returns arrives in Europe this week - Comment!
19:26 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Natsume has announced that Lufia The Legend Returns will come to the European 3DS eShop this week!
As for North America, Natsume is still waiting for a date from Nintendo, hoping it's this month.

  Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Lufia/Neverland news in short - Comment!
18:58 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Hurray, the news system works again! Here are some links I collected about Lufia and Neverland Company related things that happened in the past 6 months!

January:

Lufia II trademark status changed to "Registered"

Ryusenkei Encounter released (Japanese only game co-developed by Neverland)

Rune Factory 4 cancelled for Europe

February:

Marvelous announces Forbidden Magna, a game developed by Rune Factory staff. The director for the game is Masahide Miyata who also worked on the Lufia games as director/scenario

Natsume comments on Neverland Company's bankruptcy, Lufia and Rune Factory

Lufia Kickstarter appears (and is canceled the next day)

Lufia Genesis Demo ROM shows up
Apparently Taito wanted the sega version done in a really short time frame. The port was handled by Teknocrest.
http://opa-ages.com/forums/topic/74650-prototype-of-a-playstation-game-i-worked-on-in-1994/page-2#entry1662859
http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Teknocrest
(There isn't much to do in the Lufia Genesis demo and the animation is clunky)

New Demo for Lufia V released

April

Chaos Seed English translation patch released

May

Lufia TLR rated, hints at VC release (it was recently confirmed to appear on the NA 3DS e-shop by Natsume!)

Yasunori Shiono, the main composer of the Lufia games, returns to composing music and releases a video with sample music.

  Saturday, June 14, 2014

Lufia: The Legend Returns Coming to the 3DS Virtual Console - Comment!
07:04 PST | Posted by Chris

Natsume revealed in a Twitter post (on Friday 13th no less) that Lufia: The Legend Returns will be coming to the 3DS Virtual Console, along with another exciting title: Harvest Moon 2 GBC.

Several other Tweeter's asked whether this might later lead to a Virtual Console release of Lufia II; to which Natsume replied: "absolutely still possible"!

  Friday, November 29, 2013

Neverland Company bankrupt - Comment!
10:05 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Neverland Company, which has developed all Lufia games except Ruins of Lore, is going to file for bankruptcy...

  Friday, July 12, 2013

Lufia II proto gone public - Comment!
13:06 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Do you remember the Japanese Lufia II proto?
Good news, because you can now play it yourself since Trevormacro has decided to make the ROM public!
I recommend using this code while playing the proto :7E057CFF. This enables debug mode.

Links:
- Original, unmodified ROM
- Fixed ROM
- Bugfix IPS patch

Also, Trevormacro gave permission to make the proto soundtrack public, so click here to download all proto music as MP3 files =)

  Tuesday, June 25, 2013

20th Anniversary - Comment!
14:54 PST | Posted by SinReVi

It's the 20th anniversary of our beloved Lufia series!
I'd also like to link to this interesting article written by Anthony Gurr (that name should be familiar if you've finished Lufia I =P)
It seems at first, Taito was not planning a North American release of Lufia & The Fortress of Doom at all!

  Wednesday, May 1, 2013

More about the Estpolis II proto - Comment!
11:18 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Here is some more interesting information about what Lufia II was like during development.


-Selan's staff looks different.


-This is a picture of the Japanese manual and Selan has the same staff as in the proto, which suggests that the change was made very late in development.


-Lexis wears different clothes during battle.


-Speaking of Lexis, according to this screenshot Kirmo Laboratory used to be called Lexis Laboratory 2!


- Kirmo does exist in the proto, but he looks different.


- Jaffy looks different as well.


- Did you know that the small underwater caves were actually going to be dungeons?
Unlike the other dungeons in the proto, these underwater dungeons look really unfinished.


- Here's a video which shows that you had to go through a dungeon in order to visit the Dual Blade Shrine.
The caves to Preamarl, Dual Blade Shrine, Gratze and the Barnan Shrine were going to be dungeons. In the final game all that's left of them are small caves. The cave where you find Zeppy doesn't exist yet in the proto.

- The Ancient Cave exists on the map but entering the cave only results in a black screen. When visiting all locations through cheat codes, the Ancient Cave didn't show up either.


-Here's another removed location. This is the small shrine on Doom Island.
This location is stored right between the data of the Doom Island map and Daos' Shrine.
The map for the outside of Doom Island only shows black, and in the final version you can't walk outside without cheats and you can't visit the small shrine like you could in Lufia I.
I'm not sure what the old man says, but from what I can understand Maxim asks who the old man is, and he says something about watching the world. He also mentions the future and Daos.
Maxim also asks the old man "Are you... are you also a god?" but I'm not sure what the old man answers.


-The Three Towers look very different in the proto, both visually and lay-out wise.


- The final area also looks different in the proto.

-Trevormacro made a picture of the entire worldmap, which you can view here . And this is a comparison picture. (The images are kinda large, so I linked to them)


-This is what all the battle backgrounds look like in the proto.


- And this is what all the tracks sound like in the proto.


Neverland Company on Facebook - Comment!
07:58 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Neverland Company, the developer of the Lufia series, has recently created a page on Facebook.
Right now it seems most messages are about their 20th anniversary (which was on April 14) and their recent move to a new location.
PS: Can you spot the Lufia poster in this photo? =P

  Monday, March 25, 2013

Lufia V Promo video - Comment!
09:38 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Check out the latest promo video of Dekar the Great's fangame, Lufia V: For the Savior!


  Friday, December 28, 2012

Forums Disabled Temporarily - Comment!
18:00 PST | Posted by Chris

Dear all,

If you checked into the boards recently, you will have seen a huge amount of spam. Spam bots were registering new accounts every couple of minutes, and making several posts (often pornographic) even more frequently, making the board completely unusable.

As a first step, I have disabled the board to stop new spam from appearing. However, it could be a while before we are in a position to re-enable it. First, there is an enormous clean up operation - thousands of posts and user accounts will have to be pruned, and our host is not capable of allowing the system to do this for more than a handful of accounts at once. Secondly, various upgrades and customisations will be required to prevent this from happening again in the future.

I am sad that Lufia World will be entering 2013 without a usable message board, but please understand the severity of what has happened. I will do what I can to re-open the board as soon as possible, likely in February 2013.

Thanks and apologies,
Chris

  Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Lufia V Demo 2.2 out now! - Comment!
12:26 PST | Posted by SinReVi

A new demo of Dekar the Great's fangame, Lufia V for the Savior, has been released recently!
You can find the download link here.

And here's a video of the intro =)

  Saturday, October 13, 2012

Sinistrals sprites found in proto version of Estpolis II - 7 Comments
08:36 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Anyone who has played Lufia II will remember the Sinistrals like this:



But did you know that they used to look like this during development?


  Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Estpolis proto version - part two - Comment!
14:18 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Do you remember the two proto cartridges from a while ago? Well, here's some new information!
The NA proto version turned out to be the same as the final game. However the Japanese proto has many differences!
The Japanese proto was damaged during an attempted rom dump, but now it has a new owner, trevormacro, and he has a dump that's playable thanks to some help!


This is a screenshot of a note that shows up after the ending. It appears to be some kind of message by Masahide Miyata, who is the director and scenario composer of this game.
I don't really understand what he says besides something like "this is all", but it shows that this proto is from at least the 18th of July, 1994.

Since the game is a proto, that means the game is still unfinished. All the boss battles after the Ruby Cave are just placeholder battles with Goblins. The IP bar doesn't work yet and many treasure chests have different items inside.


This picture shows that they haven't put the Phantom Tree sprite in the game yet =P


Apparently the Sinistrals don't have proper sprites yet, instead we have Iris (she has blue hair in the proto) with different clothes, Jyad, Rochy and Lemmy =P


This animation shows the difference between Iris' proto and final sprite.


This town didn't make it into the final version. The town doesn't have an overworld sprite so it might already be in the progress of being erased of the game.



The proto has many different puzzles and areas and it also uses different tilesets. For all of the comparison images, check this link. For actual gameplay videos, check out trevormacro's youtube channel .



Many monsters have different sprites in battle.


Speaking of battles, there are victory dances at the end of the fight. Trevormacro hasn't have Lexis or Artea in his team yet.

Next is the music of the proto.
Almost all of the music tracks have some kind of difference in the use of instruments or in the background melodies.
Therefore I'll just show a few that have bigger differences.


This is Rumbling, the opening theme.


To the Future sounds different, starting from 3:12.


This is the love theme. This track might be an earlier WIP of the ending theme.


Door to the Journey has an intro in the proto. The Excerion also has an intro in the proto (you can also hear it on the OST or in Lufia Curse of the Sinistrals.)

Then there are also three tracks that did not make it into the final game at all!


This is Grief, it didn't make into the game but it does appear on the soundtrack CD, so you might already have heard this one. This version of Grief is actually used ingame in Lufia Curse of the Sinistrals, along with the Lufia I version.


This is Field Motif, a sad version of the world map theme.


And this is "Song 0C". Unlike the other two unused songs, this one isn't an arrangement of an existing song.
Therefore I just named it "Song 0C" since 0C just happened to be the value of the song.

  Friday, September 14, 2012

Demo 2.2 Coming Soon! - 2 Comments
09:26 PST | Posted by SinReVi

Here's a message quoting a post of Dekar the Great on our forum:

" I've decided that I will be releasing one final version of the demo.
The demo will fix many, if not all main concerns/bugs that were present in the Demo 2.1.
It will feature very little new content, but will address many cosmetic changes, such as shadows and walls (I've been redoing a lot of dungeons/areas to make them more appealing.)
Most changes you probably won't notice unless you look closely.

Again, there really isn't THAT much new content. Just many fixes and graphical updates.

For example:
-there are now torches etc in dungeons along with crevices in walls to make dungeons look more authentic
-skill items can no longer be used during most events or when opening chests
-monsters no longer move if you use the arrow keys while opening a chest
-Taisume and Escasia have undergone a few graphical changes
-more shadow chipart added (mostly for the tower chipset)
-many text errors fixed,br> -slight improvements to some events
-removal of control of "grey man" in intro (he simply runs through himself, hard to explain, you'd have to see it)
-etc.

It will be mostly stuff like that.
Anyways, I am releasing this for new players to get the best experience they can get and for old players that perhaps want to play the demo again.
It will be done in a month or so, as I'm focusing primarily on finishing Ostiaka.
"

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