The History of Tengai Makyou II: Manji Maru
Tengai Makyou II: Manji Maru, also rendered Far East of Eden II (PC Engine Super CD-ROM², Japan only, March 26, 1992), was developed by Red Company and published by Hudson Soft. In the land of Jipang, Manjimaru Sengoku of the Fire clan takes up his father's fight against the Roots clan, joined by the kabuki performer Kabuki Danjūrō, the fire breathing giant Tarō Gokuraku, and Kinu. It was directed by Shōji Masuda, designed and written by Masuda with Oji Hiroi, programmed by Hiromasa Iwasaki, with music by Joe Hisaishi and Yasuhiko Fukuda. Every version of this game, original and remakes alike, was released only in Japan.
THE MAKING
Possibly the first AAA game, on CDThe team numbered over 100 people, led by Oji Hiroi. Lead programmer Iwasaki revealed in 2015 that the budget was about 500 million yen, roughly $4 million at the time, possibly more once salaries are counted: reported at release as the most expensive video game developed up to that point, and described in the reference record as possibly the first AAA production on CD-ROM. Hiroi had wanted a grand multi level story with over 50 endings and said on the record that existing technology could not realize it, so he wrote a story that flows smoothly and naturally instead (Tier 1: the 1992 developer interviews, via Shmuplations).
The scale shipped anyway: over 20,000 screens of overworld maps, 300 enemy types, 48 bosses, more than 90 minutes of animated cutscenes, three hours of voiced speech, 24 CD music tracks, and over 80 chiptune tracks. Hisaishi, the composer of Castle in the Sky and later Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, scoring a PC Engine RPG in 1992 is itself a measure of the production's intent.
THE DESIGN
Jipang: Japan, exaggerated on purposeThe setting is a fictional Japan seen through a comic lens, built from exaggerated tradition: a kabuki star as a party member and ladies' man, a thousand year old giant, a half demon girl who asks for sealing chains before she will travel with you. Under the comedy the structure is the era's grand RPG form at maximum scale, the Dragon Quest frame filled with CD era presentation: the first console RPG series on CD, carried here to its commercial and critical peak.
THE EDITIONS
Remade three times, exported zero timesTHE RECEPTION
The highest rating its magazine ever gaveThe Western footnote completes the picture: Victor Ireland of Working Designs, the publisher that localized this shelf's Lunar and Cosmic Fantasy games, ranked Tengai Makyou II number one on his personal list of the greatest games of all time in 1997, and no version of it was ever published outside Japan for him or anyone else to sell. American trade coverage previewed it as Ziria: Far East of Eden 2 (TurboPlay, 1992), and the plans documented by series historians died with the collapsing American TurboGrafx market.
THE LEGACY
The class exemplar of the Japan gapMost Japan only games are minor. This one is a platform's best seller, its magazine's highest rated game, a national readers' poll top twelve title, and the most expensive production of its moment, and it has never been officially translated, with no complete fan translation either. The gap between its Japanese standing and its Western absence is the widest this Library has documented, and it is the subject of the flagship question page linked below.