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Lunar: Four Heroes Story April Fools
Joke
Welcome to LunarNET's 2003 April Fools joke.
For our joke this particular year, we announced a new LUNAR
game, titled "LUNAR: Four Hero Story" based on
the adventures of Dyne, Ghaleon, Lemia, and Mel. We released
a fake Japanese magazine scan, and some promo wallpaper,
but there was quite a bit of stuff that was never used.
This special feature reveals some of the other material
we used. Below you can see the two versions of the "magazine
scan". The one on the left is the one we released,
and the one on the right is the untouched version, before
being made to look like a scan. As you can see, we distorted
the "scan" version quite a bit, and tilted it
a little. We also added a small black gradient to make it
look like it was the crease in the magazine fold. All of
the Japanese text involved was Kizyr's doing. The design
itself was my own (GhaleonOne) doing.
Fake "Magazine Scan"
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The Original Document
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 Besides
the fake scan, we also put out two sizes of wallpaper. This
is where Renn Inoue came in handy. Renn is probably the
LUNAR fandoms best fanartist, (at least in my opinion) so
having him along to help was great! And hey, think about
it. Even though this is a joke, and there is no real LUNAR:
Four Hero Story, at least you got some really nice new wallpaper
right? ^_^ To the right is the original untouched artwork
from Renn. (I resized the image slightly to create the wallpaper)
One last note about the wallpaper: It was originally going
to be promo artwork, but I didn't have the time to create
a game logo that would look professional enough on the artwork.
So we just released wallpaper instead. If you're still looking
for the wallpaper, feel free to check the wallpaper section
of the site, where this artwork is available for download
in wallpaper sizes.
Next we have the various screenshots located
at the bottom of this paragraph. The two on the left were
done by Renn. Those two are the Mel/Dyne battle screens.
One of which was used in the magazine scan. The third and
fourth ones are title screens that I designed. You can easily
see why they weren't used, as the quality wasn't all that
great. This was also before we had a name for the game (hence
the title Lunar Adventure) The fifth picture from the left
is the card screen for Mel's battle sprite that Renn also
designed. This is simply a Lunar Legend card grab, where
we turned the color of the card red, pasted in Mel, and
had Kizyr fix the text so that it read correctly. The final
two are the battle pictures that are ultra-small in the
magazine scan. Once you click on the englarged versions,
you'll see why. They are nothing more than EBC screenshots
(one of which was horizontally flipped), with the main characters
and Ruby replaced by Dyne, Ghaleon, Lemia and Ghaleon's
fairy sidekick. And then some HP/MP status text at the bottom.
Oh, and Renn also designed all the sprites. (minus the fairy,
which was cut out of another EBC screenshot)
Next up is some other random stuff we mostly
didn't get around to using. The sketches are "concept"
style artwork from Alunissage. And the sprites (3 Lemia
and 1 Dyne) are Renn's design. So are the two example screenshots
of the magic spells he designed. The logo is my work, which
would have gone on the artwork Renn designed. Unfortunately
the logo is crap, and looked like crap on the artwork, so
I nixed that in favor of the wallpaper idea.
Finally we come to the various
links to forums and such that talked about this joke.
We honestly were shocked at the amount of forums that
got to talking about this, and I'm sure a few new ones
will be added to this list in the next day or two, as
we continue to find more each day. Some completely fell
for it hook, line and sinker. Others totally believed
it was just a joke. And still others (most of them) remained
skeptical. All in all, it was a great joke, and we recieved
a lot of praise for the final product.
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