After finishing work on Beyond the Beyond, Camelot continued working with Sega on more Shining games for their ill-fated Saturn console. Camelot gaining their independence is a unique story from Sega's history; they're the only internal Sega studio that gained independence (not even AM 2 could pull that off). Camelot, and Sakuraba, finished work on Shining The Holy Ark and Sega released it worldwide in 1996. Camelot followed this with an epic three part series, all under the Shining Force III name. Only the first part in this trilogy was released outside of Japan, since the Saturn just didn't have the audience for continued support by the time the games started releasing.




Camelot's independence allowed them to continue to develop games for other consoles, and they started work on Everybody's Golf (Hot Shots Golf in North America). Future games in this series would not be developed by Camelot, as they received an offer they couldn't refuse. Future Camelot golf games would be developed for Nintendo, starting with Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64. Nintendo was interested in branching out into other sports as well, and Camelot was also signed on to make Mario Tennis. Since Shining Force went into dormancy after the trilogy of Shining Force III, Camelot was not making a role playing game at that time, which was odd since that's how they became known in the first place! Nintendo then published two handheld RPGs from Camelot for their Game Boy Advance, Golden Sun, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age.


Wolf Team kept themselves busy with a follow up to their first game in the Tales series. Since Tales of Phantasia released so late in the Super Famicom's life, they would move on to Sony's Playstation. Tales of Destiny was released in Japan in 1997, and was the first in the series to be localized for international release. Tales of Destiny's North American release came the following year; sales were lukewarm overseas, but not bad enough to discourage all future localization efforts. The series was a hit in Japan from its first release, so the series quickly became Namco's flagship RPG series. Tales of Eternia followed Destiny, and in an odd move it was renamed to Tales of Destiny II for its North American release. An actual Tales of Destiny 2 was Wolfteam's next release on the Playstation 2, which was not localized for a Western release, likely to avoid further confusion. Instead, Westerners got to play Tales of Symphonia for Nintendo's Gamecube, which was more marketable as the first 3-D release in the series. By this point, the name change from Wolfteam to Namco Tales Studio had happened.


The third arm of this history involves the releases of tri-Ace. Star Ocean was a successful release, even though it came after Tales of Phantasia and was also developed for the Super Famicom. As a smaller company, tri-Ace was mostly limited to this first series. Like many other companies that stayed with Super Famicom to the end, they made the seamless transition to the Playstation for their next generation. Star Ocean: The Second Story would follow up the first game, but would be the first in the series localized for Western release. For this series, the name was not changed, leaving many shoppers to ponder, "Where is the first Star Ocean?" while they looked at the display.

The company also released the classic Valkyrie Profile the following year. tri-Crescendo spun off from tri-Ace during Valkyrie Profile's development. They handled sound for most tri-Ace games afterwards, but also branched out to develop their own games. This move branched Sakuraba's work out even further in the industry.


Like many other developers, tri-Ace would move onto the Playstation 2, where Star Ocean: Till the End of Time was released in 2003. By now, Sakuraba was established as one of the great composers in Japan, but internationally may have been less easily recognized. His work spans many series, for many systems, but a lot of his early work is buried on systems that are largely considered failures in the West. This third Star Ocean game was quite popular on its release, and is one of the easiest RPGs to find for the PS2, so this game, and the first two Golden Sun games, are likely a few of his first mass market exposures to the West outside of Camelot's Mario sports games.

Permalink | Comments [2] | Digg This Article | Tweet