Phantasy Star Zero [or, what's up with 2008 (c)SEGA?]

[takashi]

Every since Christmas, a single game has been keeping me busy, and its name is Phantasy Star Zero for Nintendo DS. Let's just say it's a good game, and one of the best Phantasy Star Online games so far.

Except for one thing. The name "Sonic Team" is never mentioned. In fact, there isn't a single mention of who developed this game - the title says 2008 (c) SEGA and even boot screen delivers a "Produced by SEGA". This seems to me like a classic example of a "ninja developer"... unless I'm mistaken and Sega got a habit of not crediting in-house development anymore.

Truth is, if this is not a Sega game, I'd love to know who are the authors. This sort of craftmanship is not to be ignored. Maybe I should disassemble the ROM and look around?

[layazero]

Wikipedia lists simply "Sega" as the developer with this as its source: http://phantasystar.sega.jp/pszero/

The Sonic Team wiki page doesn't credit the game to them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Team but the did credit the psp version to them.

This can't be trusted 100%, but it looks like Sonic Team did not develop this, but some other Sega employees did...

[Persona-sama]

I heard that a lot of the core staff were the same people who worked on the original PSO, including the scenario writer and director, but I didn't know it wasn't developed by Sonic Team themselves. Then again, with Sega being reintegrated together, it probably doesn't mean much that the Sonic Team logo didn't show up on the game.

If anything, maybe by not having the logo the game was spared from being mediocre. :/
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[exodus]

I know that Rieko Kodama was working on 7th Dragon, but I guess she could've been sharing her time...
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[hebereke]

its not on sonicteam.com, whereas the psp game is, so i'd say it's not their doing. maybe one or two of the original pso staff were drafted in from sonic team, but most probably it was led by some other nameless internal sega team, with a lot of the grunt work being farmed out to tose or something. that'd be my guess anyway.

[takashi]

man, ROM design isn't what it used to be. clean code, no extraneous plaintext or debug leftovers, just down to business - code and data. Bah.

Sonic Unleashed still has the Sonic Team logo - so they're keeping the brand. Actually, you can check their web site and PS0 is not even mentioned.

Kenishi Tanase is Lead Programmer for PS0 and he's on the credits for PSU as Character Programmer and as a programmer Jet Set Radio. Hm. I guess this was a one-off team in Sega. Director is Masayuki Kawabata, and this says he was previously in management. Well, I'll see how this goes.

[Keitronic]

The Sonic Team name has just been a brand for games produced by Sega Studios USA and Global Entertainment R&D since 2004. Most likely, people got shuffled around and the game was handed to a different team.

It was a lot easier to figure out who did what when these studios all still had their own names. Gave the whole thing more personality, too, to be honest.
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A saga of secrets and lies.

[lordnikon]

Via IGN:

Toshiyuki Kubooka, from the Idol Master and Lunar series, is overseeing character creation. Tooru Shiwasu, who previously headed up the online quests in Phantasy Star Online but went on to become an author, is working on PS0's scenarios with another author, Teru Arai.

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www.onlineconsoles.com - network gaming for the Dreamcast, GameCube & Playstation 2

[sfried]

I'm still waiting when they'll bring this over here.

[takashi]

[FortNinety]

Just got an email from Sega that says its coming to both NA and Europe in "fall 2009". Yay!
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[sfried]