Never any harm to brush up on developers for our requested SEGA Japan games. SEGA attracts a wide range of companies that not only work on new franchises but team up for some of our favorite sequels.
Phantasy Star Online 2 is from the same Sonic Team staff as Online 1 and Universe, but Phantasy Star Nova is from Tri-Ace. The first title by them is Star Ocean, one of Enix’s (and now Square-Enix) most successful Action RPG franchises. The team was formed after a dispute during Tales of Phantasia’s development under a different company: Wolf Team (El Viento, Granada). With Enix, Tri-Ace also developed Valkyrie Profile, an innovative and much sought out 2D RPG. After Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Tri-Ace moved away from Square-Enix and worked with Konami for Frontier Gate and SEGA for Resonance of Fate. Unfortunately, Resonance of Fate was the only post Square-Enix title to be localized at the moment.
Japanese cover for Wild Arms.
Another veteran is Valkyria Chronicles III developer Media.Vision. A Playstation native since the very beginning of the brand, literally. Media.Vision’s first title was Crime Crackers, a launch title for the console. It was a mix of early first-person shooters and RPG elements. Media.Visions’s biggest franchise is Wild Arms. One of the early must-have RPGs on the console and it also won a fanbase for the franchise often being inspired by Wild Western themes, with Wild Arms 4 a notable exception. Later on the developer moved on to other console brands such as creating Sneakers for XBOX and Chaos Rings for iOS. Aside from development they’ve worked on CG and background art for Atlus and SEGA with games such as Trauma Team, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, and Sonic Storybook games. After Valkryia Chronicles III, they’ve continued to make Shining Ark on PSP and used similar battle system concepts.
The original Valkyria Chronicles developer is of course SEGA WOW. This in-house Sega team exists now after a long history of restructuring and re-branding. The SEGA WOW you know of today was a merging of original WOW (House of the Dead III, SEGA GT) and Overworks (Skies of Arcadia, Shinobi PS2, Sakura Wars on Dreamcast). Overworks itself was originally CS R&D2, the original devs behind Saturn Sakura Wars. The original game was one of the Saturn’s biggest titles in Japan for its merging of dating sim and strategy; the franchise was marketable outside the games too thanks to real musical theatre shows and anime adaptations. Red Entertainment co-worked on the franchise. The company has a long history and has worked with all sorts of well known publishers: Hudson with Gates of Thunder and the Tengai Makyou series, Taito with Bujingai, Atlus with Thousand Arms, Nintendo with Fossil Hunters, Idea Factory with Record of Agarest War and SEGA for Tempo, Gungrave and Blood Will Tell.
Nagoshi on his throne.
There are other games people want to see in the West that were internally made. Top respects to the Yakuza franchise from Toshihiro Nagoshi and the Ryu ga Gotoku Studio. Nagoshi used to work in Amusement Vision (Super Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX) within Sega as well as on older titles like Daytona USA and Spikeout. This particular studio worked on Binary Domain, an overlooked third-person shooter. He recently became a company director at the newly bought Atlus.
Like Nagoshi, Project Diva producer Makoto Osaki has just as impressive of a resume. Osaki worked with AM2 for games such as Daytona USA 2, OutRun 2, Virtua Fighter series and the infamously cancelled Propeller Arena. While the PSP games were made by Dingo (now involved with Persona 4: Dancing All Night), the staff involved with the arcade game took helm for F and F 2nd as well as the 3DS franchise branch Project Mirai.
Whew. Anyone still with me? I’ve come across people who get confused or don’t know much about who makes their games. I myself at times get surprised by staff involved and get interested in series for it. Knowing all this, what franchises mentioned have you played?