The Video Game Revue

Working Designs

I am not happy at all to hear about the disbanding of Working Designs. They have done a great job over the years of injecting some additional magic into the gaming industry for me, and I'm crestfallen to hear that they've close up shop.

I have the orignal Lunar games for Sega CD--both The Silver Star, and Eternal Blue, as developed by GameArts and brought to America by Working Designs. Those are among the very finest of the 16-bit era RPGs, and at the time I considered them second only to the games made available by Squaresoft. The Lunar magic was rekindled by the 32-bit remake versions that were intially released only in Japan for Sega Saturn (I remember reading about them in GameFan and being outraged that there were no plans for an American release), but later brought to the PlayStation by Working Designs. That was a very important event to me.

I also remember rushing out to buy Alundra when it was a new release. I was in University at the time, and too bogged down with work to properly play it, but I've toyed with it repeatedly in the years since; I've even played through the first half of it again as recently as earlier this year (and I really should spend a few more hours to try and finish the darned thing.) I highly recommend Alundra for action RPG and Zelda fans.

Finally, I was very happy with Growlanser Generations this year. It's such an incredible treat to get to play a popular Japanese RPG that never really had much hope of seeing an English language version, and the distinctive (and very high quality) voice acting provided by Working Designs is just as I remember it from playing Lunar on the Sega CD more than ten years ago. Times have changed, but Working Designs has remained a steadfast purveyor of games that really mean something to me.

So here's to you guys, Working Designs. You fought the good fight, and I won't ever forget it.

posted by Parappa @ 1:21 PM