The First Ten Minutes of Lunar: Silver Star Story Are What Happiness Feels Like

Lunar: Silver Star Story, the PlayStation remake of Lunar: The Silver Star, really is incredible. The game is great from start to finish, but the opening ten minutes are what get all of the pieces into place, setting you up for what’s about to be one of the grandest and most charming adventures of the PlayStation era.

In fact, sometimes I rewatch those opening ten minutes on YouTube, just to remind myself how much I love this game. Whenever I do, I can’t help but smile. Somehow, these ten minutes have captured the essence of what happiness feels like and have put it into video-game form.

Part of the appeal is that the game just lets its characters be kids. Alex, the protagonist, visits the shrine of his hero Dragonmaster Dyne every morning, just dreaming of the day when he’ll someday have his own adventure. No one shows up to tell Alex that his dreams are stupid or that he’s wasting his time. Your biggest worry is that you’ll be late for music practice with Luna and she’ll get mad at you.

It’s really, really important that the game starts out this way, because very quickly, these kids are going to be wrestling against something much larger than themselves. They’ll be confronted with true evil, and they’ll be forced to see their childhood heroes as the flawed human beings they are. They will have their childhoods torn away from them, their dreams shattered, their hearts broken.

Having played through the entire game multiple times, I know what’s coming. I always cherish these opening moments, dragging them out as long as I possibly can, talking to every villager and triple-checking every nook and cranny for hidden items (which I know aren’t there because I’ve been through this part of the game so many times).

But really, everything about this opening is perfect. The music is so whimsical but still somehow drenched with emotion. Nall’s ridiculous high-pitch, squeaky voice is endearing. The colors are so bright and cheerful. It’s pure bliss.

I think a lot of RPGs have attempted to do something similar with their opening moments. I can think of at least two off the top of my head (Dragon Quest XI and Tales of Graces f). However, I don’t think any of them will ever do it as well as Lunar: Silver Star Story already did.

I think this really might be the perfect video-game beginning.