Collection essentials #329: Shining Force III Premium Disc (Saturn)

We’re STILL not done with Shining Force III!

Shining Force III was such a big and ambitious project that Camelot felt the need to produce a bonus disc of extras. This disc was not sold in stores. Any fans who had purchased all three games in the trilogy could send proof of purchase to Camelot, and in return Camelot would send them a free copy of this Premium Disc. 

Some of the bonus features contained on this disc are fairly predictable. There’s an art gallery where you can browse various artwork for the game. There’s a sound and music test feature where you can listen to anything the (Japanese versions of the) games have to offer. There’s a video gallery where you can see stuff like TV commercials, 3D cutscenes from the games, and a developer interview. One thing that’s perhaps a little different than what you’d expect is a 3D character model viewer. This lets you choose literally any character or enemy from the games that has a 3D model for battle sequence, and you can view any version of them and have them perform any action they are capable of taking. It’s pretty neat. Another atypical feature is the Scenario 3 save file creator. This lets you craft a custom save file to start Scenario 3 with, and you’ll be asked a series of questions to determine what “happened” in the first two games without having to play them all the way through yourself. That’s probably not a feature I’d ever want to use because I’d rather just play all three of the games like normal, but it’s neat that it’s there.

So far what I’m describing doesn’t sound much like a game, but there is actual gameplay here. The final mode is a special battle mode that lets you load save data from any of the games. Preferably you’ll want to do this with a near-complete Scenario 3 file, both because your characters need to be really strong to get very far, but also because that’s really the way to enjoy the novelty of this mode; what’s cool about loading a Scenario 3 save file is that you can customize your army of 12 with any combination of characters from the three games, something that was not possible in Scenario 3 even when the other two armies join you (the armies must remain segregated). There are a series of special battles to complete which feature a variety of powerful bosses, including past villains from older Shining Force games. All this sounds really amazing, and it is certainly cool, but unfortunately it’s not quite as great as it maybe could have been. This is because the battles themselves just aren’t terribly interesting. In order to win you have to simply grind a long time in Scenario 3 until your characters are super powerful, and then actually winning isn’t too difficult. The bosses have oodles of health, so even if you’re more than strong enough to defeat them, it simply takes a long time to take them down in a series of rather repetitive turns. It’s a fun thing to do once, but not something you’ll be excited to revisit very much.

My own copy of the Premium Disc is one that I was fortunate enough to send away for myself. In the mid-2000s, Camelot was still giving them away even though it had been several years at that point. I emailed them to confirm that they had Premium Discs in stock and how to send away for one of them properly, letting them know that I had the English release of Scenario 1. They told me that I could do it by sending them the barcode from the back of the box of my English copy, which is why you’ll notice in the photo for my English Shining Force III in my previous post that the barcode is missing. Scenario 2 and Scenario 3 instruction manuals come with small triangular cut-outs in the manual that you can use for this. After sending them and waiting for quite a while, I got my Premium Disc! And it came in a cool Camelot-branded large envelope with a letter from them, shown in the photo.

As a big fan of Shining Force III, it’s no wonder that the Premium Disc is an essential, especially when I have the personal experience of getting it straight from Camelot and getting the cool envelope with my name on it. I hope, if these games get ported or remade someday, that these features are made available again too. Make it happen, guys!