Uncharted Waters: New Horizons

Overview

In 1994, most SNES games gave players a protagonist, a world to save, and a linear path through it. Uncharted Waters: New Horizons gave players six protagonists, the whole world, and no fixed path at all.

Koei’s naval simulation — their adaptation of the PC-era historical strategy game Dai Koukai Jidai II — dropped players into a stylized 15th-century world where the Americas had not yet been charted, trade routes were still contested, and an adventurous ship captain with enough capital and skill could establish a legacy that stretched from Lisbon to the Spice Islands.

The Six Stories

The game’s structure is its most distinctive feature. Each of the six protagonists begins in a different European port with a different set of ambitions:

João Franco wants to build the most profitable trading empire the world has seen. Catalina de Erantzo, a privateering adventurer, seeks lost relics and legendary destinations. Ernst von Bohr is a cartographer obsessed with mapping the unknown coastlines that other sailors whisper about. Pietro Conti chases glory through discovery and combat. Ali Vezas leverages Ottoman trade networks for advantages unavailable to European traders. Ulrich von Brücken’s objectives tend toward conquest rather than commerce.

The same ports, the same trade goods, and the same world map serve all six storylines — but the way each character interacts with that world differs enough to create genuinely distinct experiences. A João playthrough is a trading optimization puzzle. A Catalina playthrough is treasure hunting interrupted by naval battles. An Ernst playthrough is systematic map completion across increasingly distant seas.

The World

The world of Uncharted Waters: New Horizons spans Europe, Africa, Asia, and (as exploration advances) the Americas. Ports offer goods specific to their regions — spices in Southeast Asia, grain in Northern Europe, gold in West Africa — and the price differentials between regions create trading opportunities. Buying cheaply in one port, sailing to a distant market, and selling at premium creates the capital to upgrade ships, hire crew, and access more distant routes.

Naval combat — against pirates, rival nation ships, or historical enemies specific to each protagonist’s story — interrupts trading and exploration periodically. Fleet management, cannon positioning, and wind awareness contribute to combat outcomes that have real economic consequences: losing cargo to pirates hurts considerably.

Yoko Kanno’s Early Work

The soundtrack was composed by Yoko Kanno, who would become one of Japan’s most celebrated composers for anime, film, and television. Uncharted Waters: New Horizons was among her early video game credits. The maritime arrangements and exploration themes she created — working within the SNES’s hardware capabilities — have an energy and character that reflect the craft she later applied to Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Encountering the Uncharted Waters: New Horizons soundtrack as early Yoko Kanno work adds a layer of interest beyond the game itself — hearing an early version of a compositional voice that would later define multiple generations of anime music.

A Genre Outlier

Uncharted Waters: New Horizons occupies unusual space in the SNES library. Trading simulations were not common on dedicated gaming consoles — the genre belonged primarily to PC gaming, where keyboard interfaces made economic management more natural. Koei’s adaptation managed the interface challenge sufficiently that the game’s depth became accessible without becoming frustrating. Players who found it either through Koei’s reputation (they produced Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga’s Ambition, also on SNES) or through discovery have consistently found it rewarding enough to merit the learning curve.

For players interested in the Age of Sail, naval commerce, or simply a genre of SNES game that rarely existed, New Horizons remains one of the most distinctive games on the platform.