Announced in Japan on Switch for December 2022 at the earliest at a price of 6,380 yen (45 euros), Cosmic Fantasy Collection will include the first two episodes of this science fiction RPG saga. Yes, only two out of the four chapters released between 1990 and 1994, in other words Edia is already ready to do Valis again by releasing a Cosmic Fantasy Collection 2 in stride.
Comparable to Phantasy Star with its sci-fi/fantasy setting, top-down exploration and first-person turn-based combat, Cosmic Fantasy marked its time by exploiting the CD-ROM medium in order to present animated cinematics and especially dubbing, like Ys from Falcom or Lunar from Game Arts, all with this character design which smells so good of the 90s. Symbol of the desire to target lovers of anime and heroines in the shower, Telenet Japan entrusted the design of the series to Kazuhiro Ochi, who came not from video games but from Japanese animation (Gundam, Lamu, Hokuto no Ken).
Cosmic Fantasy was born on PC-Engine CD-ROM² on March 30, 1990, while Cosmic Fantasy 2 appeared on April 5, 1991 and has the great distinction of being the only opus localized in English thanks to the good care of Working Designs, which released the game in America on June 9, 1992 on TurboGrafx-CD. The saga expanded with a Cosmic Fantasy 3 (1992) and a Cosmic Fantasy 4 (1994) divided into two parts (Totsunyû-hen and Gekitô-hen). If all were released on PC-Engine, note that Sega’s Mega-CD was entitled to a remake of the first two titles under the name Cosmic Fantasy Stories in 1992.
Edia has put an official website online and is seeking to finance part of the production by recovering at least 3 million yen (21,000 euros) in a crowdfunding campaign. In the meantime, the GTV Japan channel is offering an excellent 40-minute retrospective on this franchise, which has also had its adaptation in paper manga and OAV.