The Path to Golden Sun 3

The path to GS3 was long for sure...
Man, seven years...
It was a long wait, but we all believed, didn't we?
There were tons of rumours and interviews, and everything.
And all that has been chronicled on this page.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/objects/015/015822.html

The infamous "Camelot RPG" on IGN. First, it was listed as a Gamecube title, but when the Wii came out and the Gamecube rendered obsolete, IGN changed it to be a Wii title instead. It seems IGN actually has no idea if it exists or not and probably just put it on the site when they heard some convincing rumours. However, this doesn't mean that Camelot's Wii RPG won't become a reality. Could this one day be Golden Sun 3? Only time will tell.

In the articles listed on the page, we have one from February 17, 2005, which mentions a quote from Hiroyuki Takahashi himself:

"We love RPGs a lot and we profoundly adore the universe we created with the Golden Sun series on GBA," he replied when he was asked if Camelot was making a Golden Sun sequel for consoles. "At the moment, though, it is impossible for us to share information on this subject with you and so our answer is neither yes nor no." Takahashi added that Camelot does have projects underway and that he expects it "will be able to show some new things at E3."

That was all we had for about two years. In that time, Camelot concentrated on releasing Mario sports games, as well as a collaboration with Capcom, "We Love Golf", in December of 2007 in Japan.

Finally, we managed to hear some more positive news from Camelot after those two years of silence.

On 9th October 2007 (jeez, that's closer to three years!), Game Informer published an interview with Camelot.

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200710/N07.1009.1738.03309.htm?Page=3

Game Informer was nice enough to bring up Golden Sun briefly, while interviewing Camelot on their sports games.

GI: I hate to totally break away from all the sports’ games, but there’s another game Camelot is known for, and that’s Golden Sun. What’s the status of Golden Sun, and is that series finished or is that something you’d like to bring to consoles?

Hiroyuki Takahashi: First of all, I love that game and I love the world of Golden Sun. We think we have to make another one. We have to do it! Not just that we have to do it, but we want to do it. Nintendo has asked us to please make it. But at the same time we haven’t gotten around to making it. We’re not really sure why. (laughs)

Shugo Takahashi: As Camelot, we think of ourselves as being a company that makes RPGs. In an RPG you role-play as another character. In the sports games, you’re role playing as yourself. I want to let the fans know that in the center of our way of thinking the games that we’re making now are close to RPGs. The looks and the concepts might be totally different but the essence of the game contains the RPG. One of the reasons that we haven’t made golden sun is because there are so many fans of the game and we don’t want to do something half-assed. We want to give it the time it deserves.

GI: If you did make another Golden Sun would it appear on a portable or would you make it fully realized on a home console?

Hiroyuki Takahashi: As a thought off the top of my head, if I could make something that would combine the handheld and the console – with the past and the future – if I could combine both of those that would be great. But that’s just a thought. (laughs)

After that, on November 23rd 2007, an interesting page of rumours was posted on Go Nintendo. Yeah, rumours, from a magazine known as RPG Magazine, issue number 5.

http://gonintendo.com/?p=30026

Among the rumours listed, it claims: Camelot is bringing back the Golden Sun series by making a Wii installment. Fighting would be mostly focused on the Nunchuk.

Not really sure if this is entirely true. Camelot may be making a Wii instalment of Golden Sun (at least, we hope) but the nunchuk fighting seems doubtful.

With "We Love Golf" having been completed and knowing that Camelot and Nintendo both want Golden Sun 3, we can only hope that 2008 is the year that they begin working on the much anticipated sequel. On the other hand, Camelot may just make more "We Love (sport)" games with Capcom. Who really knows what they are planning for the year ahead of us? I just hope they finally start work on another Golden Sun game.

Camelot has not been completely uncommunicative in 2008. (These guys are getting better at talking, aren't they? It's just as well...)

The 1Up website published an interview with Camelot about "We Love Golf!" on March 31st, 2008.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3167178&p=44

Of course, Golden Sun came up. Anyone who interviews these guys without bringing up GS are heathens, by the way.

1UP: I'm going to veer off into a quick few non-We Love Golf-related questions now. How come we never saw a Golden Sun console game as opposed to just the two that were on GBA? And does Nintendo own that IP or do you guys own that IP? I'm just wondering who controls that series' destiny.

ST: It's co-owned. Well, I guess...Golden Sun, when we decided to make that, that was right at the time when the Game Boy was really gaining speed and really taking over the handheld area completely. So it was kind of always a Game Boy game. And since it's co-owned by Nintendo, we always planned to have it there. We actually did make a game design document for a Nintendo 64 Golden Sun. We had planned for the 64 game, but I if Nintendo had delayed the release of the GameCube until a year later, we probably would have made a Golden Sun 64.

1UP: So is there any future for it? I'm sure the game design would still be just fine; you would just have to upgrade what you'd expect to do graphically. Is there a possibility that this may still see the light of day?

HT (Camelot): Well, of course, that could be tied to how well We Love Golf sells. We definitely haven't made an RPG in a long time, so there's a lot of people on our staff who would like to work on an RPG.

1UP: So, you're basically saying there's a possible three-way collaboration between Capcom, Camelot, and Nintendo: We Love Golden Sun? [Laughter all around]

ST: It would be pretty cinematic stuff.

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