Twenty-Five Years On, Golden Sun Fans Are Still Begging For More

Twenty-five years ago, Camelot Software Planning did something a bit ridiculous: it put a sprawling JRPG onto the Game Boy Advance, made it so big that it had to be split into two individual games, and did so while making it one of the best-looking RPGs sitting on portable consoles at the time. Golden Sun arrived in 2001 with painterly sprites and showy animations that evenly matched its level of quality across both gameplay and writing. For a certain type of kid (hi, hello), it was the first handheld game that felt properly epic — Pokemon was great, but this was something else.

The hook was Djinn: little elemental critters collected throughout the game and slotted into your party members to reshape their classes, then flung out in battle to power up a big, screen-filling summon, all while affecting your spell lists and stats. These spell lists were also vital to solving overworld puzzles, letting you freeze puddles, move pillars, reach items out of reach and so on. It was just incredibly clever, and it sticks in so many minds as one of the best RPGs of the time.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age followed barely a year later, picking up moments after the first game’s cliffhanger ending (I said it was one game split into two cartridges, this was not an exaggeration). It was probably the better of the two, giving you more to play with and a satisfying narrative conclusion. Then came an eight-year gap of silence before Golden Sun: Dark Dawn on the DS. It aged the cast up, handed the reins over to a new generation, and bowed out on a cliffhanger that has still yet to be solved. Camelot seems to have shut the door and gone golfing.

Why Sports Over RPGs?

• Via: nintendo.pe

• The reasons aren’t a mystery, really; Dark Dawn sold under a million copies and reviewed a few notches below its predecessors. It was solid, but not earning the numbers necessary to greenlight a continuation. Camelot has spent the years since making Mario sports games, which inevitably shift millions and presumably keep the lights on better than a potentially mid-tier RPG about elemental hamsters would. Much to my chagrin.

  Still, hope flickers eternal. Back in 2012, Camelot president Hiroyuki Takahashi told Nintendo Gamer that a fourth game would basically come down to demand. If enough people asked for one, he suggested, it might naturally happen. The fandom took that as marching orders and has never really stood down since: just look at the Golden Sun subreddit before and after each and every Nintendo Direct.

Right now, they have a scrap of rumour to gnaw on: talk that the team is deep into an unannounced project. It’s almost certainly more golf, but fans have decided, with the unshakeable faith of people who have waited too long to give up hope now, that it might not be.

The devotion is solid. Isaac, Golden Sun’s earnest young hero, has turned up in Super Smash Bros. twice as an Assist Trophy, and he appears regularly in ‘most requested hero’ lists. We want to play as him, not just throw him out there like a Pokemon. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, is Isaac.

Technically, we did get something. Golden Sun and The Lost Age arrived in Nintendo Switch Online's GBA library in January 2024, with both soundtracks joining the Nintendo Music app not long after. Which is lovely, but also rather beside the point. Those games sit behind a subscription; stop paying, and they evaporate from your Switch as though they were never there. You're renting a memory. Dark Dawn has never been re-released at all, still marooned on DS cartridges in a year when "do you actually own your games?" has become the argument the whole industry is having. For a series whose entire charm was carrying a little world around in your pocket, that stings a bit.

And nothing has managed to fill the space left behind. The RPG genre is thriving, but none have scratched the specific Golden Sun-shaped itch: Djinn-juggling and sun-warmed GBA sincerity that can’t be faked. You’ll see elements borrowed in plenty of games, largely in the indie scene, but nothing has come to match the thrill of lighthouse-based boss battles or the joy of realising you can backtrack throughout the entire game to literally read the minds of your favourite characters.

When do we stop expecting a revival? The rational answer is ‘about a decade ago’. The sales just weren’t there, and Camelot has moved on. Golden Sun is less of a dormant franchise and more dead without a Revive spell to cast. Expecting Golden Sun 4 in 2026 is daft. And I say this all in the hopes that I am wrong and Nintendo will announce a surprise sequel in its next Direct just to spite me. Because underrated classics earn that particular loyalty, and this one has it by the bucketload. Twenty-five years on, people still replay these games and lose it a little bit every time Camelot makes an announcement.

Fingers crossed, fellow adepts, fingers crossed.

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