News: Aspect - stealth developer

March 18, 2007, 11:39 AM

by brandon, via Aspect -
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meteosdisney.jpg simon showed me his new copy of Meteos: Disney Magic, and pointed out that it was developed not by Q but by Platinum Egg and Aspect, which also has an english site. I investigated further because I thought I'd heard of Aspect before...

Platinum Egg has only one other game I can find evidence of, which is Puzzle De Harvest Moon, but Aspect is a bit more interesting, as I'd surmised.

Much like Tose, Aspect develops titles for other developers (though is a much younger company, founded in 1991). According to the company history, Aspect started out developing games for the Game Gear. Mobygames sheds a little light on the situation, though Aspect's links to some games, like Sonic 2 and Fatal Fury Special are a bit hard to dermine. I presume, if they did in fact work on these titles, they did the SMS and Game Gear versions, respectively. Interesting titles from this list include Sonic Blast, Sonic Chaos (Game Gear), Sonic Triple Trouble (Game Gear), and Virtua Fighter Animation, though that particular title was done either in conjunction with, or for the ever-bizarre Sega Tec Toy. Aspect also released one original IP for the Saturn, which they call Gaia Breeder, and Gamefaqs calls Gaia Blade - not sure what the disparity is there. This is why I had heard of them, incidentally.

vfanimation.jpgApparently, as of 2002, the company had released 100 games. The japanese site mentions that the company has developed super famicom games, but I can't find any titles, unfortunately - and they're still developing arcade titles, it appears. It's worth noting that like Tose, they don't always develop full games - sometimes just graphics, sometimes just sound.

So a large percentage of the company's portfolio will remain a mystery, but there are already some interesting indications in there. Let's finish up with a quote from Aspect's president, kazuyuki oikawa: We hope to provide wonderful value to customers and users by “earnestly considering and seriously creating entertainment which is fun, pleasant and makes people happy,” and we employ the slogan of “Seriously, Entertainment.” In the future, we will take the challenge to improve the value, creation and recognition of our company in various fields. We will meet your expectations.