The PC-88 version of Sorcerian — the fifth installment in Nihon Falcom's classic Dragon Slayer series — is heading to Nintendo Switch on June 13th as part of D4 Enterprise and Project EGG's ongoing "EGGCONSOLE" collection of retro reissues (thanks Gosokkyu!).
In case you're unfamiliar, these are a series of international reissues of classic games that were originally released for Japanese computers and are mostly left untranslated in their Nintendo Switch counterparts (save for a series of English instructions and some external menu items). The release of Sorcerian marks the third Dragon Slayer game to be released on the Nintendo Switch eShop via this new label, following the launches of the PC-88 version of Xanadu: Dragon Slayer back in December 2023 and the MSX2 version of Dragon Slayer IV in April 2024.
Just to give you some background, Sorcerian was originally released on the PC-88 in Japan back in 1987 and saw players creating a highly customizable party of different races, genders, and classes, to embark on quests before revisiting the town to further develop their attributes and skills and take on additional jobs.
It is primarily played from a 2D sidescrolling perspective when exploring dungeons or other hostile areas, with the main character positioned at the front of the party being responsible for issuing commands while the rest of the group are depicted as followers who can help to fight enemies and solve puzzles.
Following its original release on the PC-88, the game was later ported to several platforms, including a bunch of other Japanese home computers, mobile phones, and consoles like the Sega Mega Drive and PC Engine CD. The US-based publisher Sierra also notably released an English-language version of the game in North America for MS-DOS computers in 1990, which is to our knowledge the only time the original title was ever officially localized for the West.
Besides ports, there have also been a few remakes as well, such as the Japanese exclusive Sorcerian: Shichisei Mahou no Shito for Dreamcast (which updated the game to use 3D polygons) and two updated versions of the game for Windows called Sorcerian Forever and Sorcerian Original.
Will you be picking it up when it releases? Let us know in the comments!