Golden Sun - Development

Development

Camelot Software Planning spent between twelve and eighteen months developing Golden Sun, which is considered a long time for a handheld video game; the finished product was described as a testament to the positive results a long development cycle can bring to a game. In August 2000, Camelot showed an early but playable version at the Nintendo Spaceworld Expo in Japan. North American previewers received the game a few weeks before the release, and IGN noted that the experience of developing Shining Force for Sega helped Camelot develop a gripping RPG for the handheld.

Camelot originally planned to create a single title instead of a series, and in the extremely early stages of their project they had created a game design document for the one Golden Sun game to be on the Nintendo 64 console. When it became apparent the N64 was to be superseded by the Nintendo GameCube, Camelot shifted their focus to making a game on the handheld Game Boy Advance. Golden Sun was still intended to be a single game, but due to the hardware limitations of putting the game on a single Game Boy Advance cartridge and the developers' own desire for what they wanted to do with the game, it was expanded to become two successive games, Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Scenario writer Hiroyuki Takahashi and director Shugo Takahashi had previously designed Shining Force III, where the story involved playing through the perspectives of both the "good" and "bad" characters. Thinking that it was an effective way of conveying the full story of a fictional game world, they incorporated elements of this storytelling methodology into the two-game setup of the Golden Sun series, having the player control the "good guys" in Golden Sun and some of the antagonists in The Lost Age.