The Suikoden I & II HD Remaster was first announced in 2022, and after three long years of waiting, it is finally available on store shelves. This is the first modern re-release for any of the games in the franchise, and fans are absolutely giddy at the chance to play it again.
Aidan Moher (the author of the RPG-centric Fight, Magic, Items) decided to piggyback on the launch date with an announcement (via Astrolabe) that he’ll be teaming up with Boss Fight Books to publish a history of the creation of Suikoden 1 & 2 in book form:
After doing a deep dive into the history of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the rise of Japanese RPGs in the west with Fight, Magic, Items, I was left with several stories that felt unfulfilled—games and series that had more to say than I was able to fit into that book. Chief among those was Suikoden, which has seen a recent and surprising revival after the success of its creators’s kickstarted spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle. […] I couldn’t imagine telling one story without the other, and the end result is a rich, reported and personal look at the first two games, the people who made them, and the impact they’ve had on their genre and beyond.
From the early days when a green Yoshitaka Murayama accidentally agreed to make an RPG (a genre he didn’t play) about The Water Margin, to Miki Higashino’s revolutionary soundtrack and Junko Kawano’s timeless designs, to a lengthy interview with Suikoden II’s localization team, and the road to the 2025 remasters, Suikoden 1 & 2 runs the gamut.
Suikoden 1 & 2 will be published in 2026 as part of Boss Fight’s upcoming (and as yet unannounced) Season 8. More details about the rest of the books in that lineup will be announced at a later date.