It’s Time for a New Sailor Moon Video Game

Few anime have gained as much widespread, worldwide popularity as Sailor Moon. In fact, the musical live show Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon – The Super Live just began its North American tour. Thanks to the preview taking place close to home, I was able to attend this in-person musical celebration of the Sailor Moon series. Being there reminded me just how much love fans still have for the franchise all these years later, as the merch line wrapped around the building with barely an empty seat in the house. Clearly, the Sailor Moon fandom is alive and well. But we want more than a limited-run live show.

Sitting there watching the Sailor Scouts perform live, I got to thinking. With all the early 2000s nostalgia and returns to beloved anime franchises, why haven’t we had a new Sailor Moon video game? I’ve been replaying the early Yu-Gi-Oh! games lately thanks to the Early Days Collection, and Sailor Moon was right there alongside the Duel Monsters for formative early morning cartoon entertainment. Yet here we are with too many mobile Pokemon games to keep track of, a brand-new Digimon Story game in the works, and for Sailor Moon fans? Not a hint or whisper.

Growing up, I loved the Sailor Moon anime, but it never even occurred to me to look for a video game version. I likely wouldn’t have found one, as very few of the Sailor Moon video games ever saw a US release. There have been several games released in Japan over the years, particularly during the height of the show’s popularity in the 90s. Not many ever saw worldwide releases, aside from 1995’s Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon arcade game. The US got one shot with the 1997 PC game The 3D Adventures of Sailor Moon, released in partnership with DIC Entertainment, the company responsible for the English dub. And, of course, there was the English-language version of the mobile puzzle game Sailor Moon Drops, which shut down in 2019. Since then, we haven’t had a new Sailor Moon video game in the United States, and fans like me can’t help but wonder why.

Part of the reason is, of course, the fact that fewer Sailor Moon games have been made since the mid to late 90s in general. Though Sailor Moon Drops was around until 2019, it’s been nearly 25 years since the last console game. Even so, the Millennial nostalgia is real, and many anime from the same era have had new games released or announced in recent years. We’ve got Pokemon Legends Z-A on the horizon, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero just last year, and the aforementioned Digimon Story: Time Stranger on the way. Heck, there’s even a Cardcaptor Sakura mobile game you can still download and play.

With the new Sailor Moon Crystal anime and Sailor Moon Cosmos movies arriving on Netflix in the last few years, fans have had plenty of reasons to revisit the franchise. And as they’ve done so, many like myself have wondered how else they can engage with the Sailor Scouts. Clearly, I’m not alone in wanting a game that lets me live my childhood dream of being Sailor Jupiter.

Over the years, many Reddit threads and YouTube videos have popped up with fans wondering why we haven’t heard anything about a new Sailor Moon video game. At the very least, many want to know why the older games haven’t been remastered for a broader release with the franchise’s continued popularity here in the US and worldwide. After all, video games play a part in the Sailor Moon anime, with Usagi and friends frequently visiting the arcade. And those old assumptions that there’s no female market for video games have surely been proven wrong by now.

Bandai Namco, which still owns the rights to the franchise, has previously made some vague remarks about why we haven’t seen a new game in recent years. In a 2017 interview with IGN, Senior Manager Tak Miyazoe reportedly said that it comes down to two main factors. First, wanting to “develop a compelling game that treats the Sailor Moon franchise the right way.” And secondly, and probably the most important point for Bandai is, “we’d want to know that fans would support the game.”

As much as fans want to believe all companies have the franchise’s integrity at heart, concern over lack of potential profit is almost certainly the driver here. After all, Bandai Namco shut down the Sailor Moon Drops mobile game in 2019, likely due to said lack of profit. Though the game was well-loved by its fans, Sailor Moon Drops was more a Candy Crush-style puzzle game than the true Sailor Moon adventure game many fans want. So, while Bandai might take its lack of success as a warning not to try again, I disagree. Sailor Moon is beloved to a generation of anime fans who would almost certainly jump at the chance to play a real, thoughtful Sailor Moon video game adventure. I know I would.

With the Nintendo Switch 2 incoming and the market for nostalgia-driven gaming high, now is the time for a new Sailor Moon video game. And not just a thin mobile game, but a true, robust RPG-style video game that lets us live our dreams of becoming part of the Sailor Scout team.