It's full of stars
The 浮遊城 is probably the location whose general atmosphere has been changed the most between the original version and the various remakes. I think it’s interesting because the game remains pretty evasive as to where exactly this castle is located. Clearly it’s somewhere “in the sky”, but how high exactly? As was discussed last week, you could interpret the Lufeinian dialogue to mean that it’s all the way in space.
If you look at the Pixel Remaster however, it’s pretty clear that it seems to be somewhere in the atmosphere, or at least low enough that the clouds are visible, slowly drifting underneath. The castle itself seems to be made of stone with pillars and cupolas visible all over the place. The ground is made of what seems to be uneven cobblestone:
Apart from the robots you can encounter there (both NPCs and enemies), the rest of the technology appears arcane, with strange, alien slabs visible in multiple locations, some of which you can interact with:
The music is also eerie but generally fairly nondescript:
https://youtu.be/zrKq0X1q0FI
Now here’s what it looks like in the original:
The vibe is, in my opinion, completely different. The walls seem to be metalic, the ground is an even grid, the various machines resemble computers or other electronic devices. I even wonder if these objects around them are not supposed to be desk chairs? And absolutely no sign of stone column or cupolas, it’s all very streamlined and minimalistic.
When you interact with the computer-looking devices, it evens tell you that you’re logging-in:
On top of that you can see that there are no clouds in the backgrounds. It looks black in my screenshots because of the heavy downscaling, but in reality it’s just a bunch of blue dots:
Are those… stars? The 青き星の海 mentioned in Lufein?
The music is also very different:
https://youtu.be/LblXQFDEj28?list=RDLblXQFDEj28
To me it sounds a lot more industrial than the PR version, you have those beep boop noises that evoke computers.
I think it’s pretty clear that this flying fortress is meant to be a spacecraft in orbit, but it looks like Square decided to backtrack and stick to a fantasy setting in the various remakes.
By the way, you may have noticed that the boss area is riddled with stars of David in the original version:
You will not be surprised to learn that this was purged in the English NES release: