Looking back on 2018, it’s been a monumental year for Panzer Dragoon.
In January we were treated with Resurrection: Panzer Dragoon Saga 20th Anniversary Arrangement, an all new take on Panzer Dragoon Saga’s music from Saori Kobayashi. This was followed by digital releases of the soundtracks for the four mainline Panzer Dragoon games. I recently added entries for all of the new soundtrack releases to our encyclopaedia.
In April Panzer Dragoon Orta became playable on Xbox One. Not only did it look great, but suddenly half of the Panzer Dragoon series became playable on modern consoles. It’s also worth noticing that the emulation improvements also fixed a major long-standing problem with the Xbox 360 version, effectively making the game fully playable on all three Xbox generations.
Then, to celebrate the North American 20th Anniversary of Panzer Dragoon Saga in April, we were treated to a massive, in-depth article interviewing former Team Andromeda members. This is definitely worth a read if you missed it.
In October a new Panzer Dragoon-like game was released on iPhone called Galerider. While not directly connected with the Panzer Dragoon series, it featured a lot of similarities and was a nice surprise in a gaming landscape mostly devoid of Panzer Dragoon-esque titles.
Finally, earlier this month Forever Entertainment dropped a bombshell by announcing remakes of Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon Zwei, with the first remake due in 2019. It remains to be seen how these remakes will turn out, but it’s certainly going to make 2019 an interesting year, perhaps even more so than the current year.
It seemed for a while that Panzer Dragoon was going to go quietly into the night, but rest assured the dragon has emerged once again and is ready for the next episodes of the Panzer Dragoon saga.