PANZER DRAGOON COVER STORY

No, there isn't a new Panzer Dragoon game in the works. It could happen, though, if series creator Yukio Futatsugi and Orta producer Takayuki Kawagoe can unite on a vision and direction for the franchise. The reason for this unique cover story is to take a look back at this underappreciated, underbought, near-legendary series that climaxed with the release of 1998's Panzer Dragoon Saga, a game that is unlikely to ever see a port to any system, ever. Taking the DNA of Sega stablemate Space Harrier and welding it to an Empire Strikes Back-style plot, developer Team Andromeda created an epic, picturesque showdown between good and evil that would send lasting shockwaves through the fledgling 32-bit era. In this expos, we go behind the scenes of the Panzer series and talk with Futatsugi (also the director of Phantom Dust) and Kawagoe about one of Sega's most beloved properties. Futatsugi, especially, has plenty of surprises to share about the development of the franchise, so dive right in and rediscover the world of Panzer Dragoon.
-James Mielke, Executive Editor

Making the Most of What You've Got. The Sega Saturn's launch was by all accounts a logistical disaster. Sony's upstart PlayStation would quickly seize the spotlight from the overpriced, underpowered machine, and would set the tone for total gaming dominance for the next decade. Not all was lost on Sega's homefront, though, at least not in terms of moral victories and artistic triumphs. With the release of Panzer Dragoon, Sega's Team Andromeda was one of the first developers to truly understand what the CD format could do, and take advantage of it they did.

Panzer Dragoon
System: Sega Saturn | Publisher: Sega | Developer: Team Andromeda | Release Date: 1995

An eye-opening taste of the 32-bit era's potential. Beautiful and impressive.

In hindsight, the first Panzer is really just a stylishly produced tech demo for the Saturn.

To fully understand the impact of the original Panzer Dragoon, one must first consider the time in which it debuted. The 16-bit era was coming to a close, and the cartridge format and all its limitations would soon become (despite the Nintendo 64) obsolete. Videogaming was moving to the CD-ROM format, which offered increased storage space, video playback, and superior Red Book audio (meaning: CD-quality digital audio). Although Sega gave the CD-ROM format a shot with the Sega CD console, it wasn't until the release of the Sega Saturn in 1995 (and later that year, of course, the Sony PlayStation) that CD-ROMs became the industry's media standard. Unfortunately, the Saturn's early titles -- games like Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter: The Movie,

Myst, and Robotica -- did little to showcase the system's abilities, fueling anticipation for Sony's impending PlayStation release. Instead, it was a little game called Panzer Dragoon that finally showed what Sega's beleaguered Saturn could do. While Panzer Dragoon was, in the strictest sense, "on rails," the game provided a greater sense of freedom than, say, your average light-gun shooter, with limited freedom of movement within a confined 3D space as well as a simple four-way camera-angle/radar system that allowed the player to see enemies coming from any direction. More importantly, Panzer Dragoon took advantage of everything the CD format offered: full-motion video, Red Book audio, increased storage capacity at a fraction of the cost of RAM-based cartridges. Those who played Panzer know why it's so magnificent, if not in function then in form. From the opening cinemas of a hunting party on patrol and the unexpectedly dramatic scenes of a dragon-riding warrior doing battle in the skies to the eventual transfer of dragon ownership to the game's hero and the first signs of the empire's forces marshaling to capture the dragon, no one had ever seen anything like this in a videogame before. Final Fantasy VII was still nearly two years away from becoming reality, leaving the field wide open for fledgling developer Team Andromeda to make its mark. It wasn't just the near-wordless CG cinemas that defined Panzer Dragoon, nor the distinct realization of the game world's organic technology--It was the music. One of the finest game soundtracks ever produced, Panzer Dragoon's orchestral score still sounds tremendous. While the soundtrack was released in extremely limited quantities in Japan (it's now long out of print), the game disc itself (coded in Red Book audio) functions as a disc playable in any CD audio player. The stirring opening theme, wrapped in swirling synthesized strings and horns, remains a landmark in videogame soundtracks that, alongside the opening theme to NiGHTS Into Dreams and Grandia, forms an unintentional trio of brilliantly composed, underappreciated game music that, subjectively speaking, a decade's worth of subsequent soundtracks has yet to match. The game itself, however, staggers a bit under the glaring light of a critical rereview. On rails and lacking the multiple paths (and pretty much any of the advancements) of its eventual successor, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, the first Panzer is little more than Space Harrier with a 3D camera and cut-scenes. Possessed of three different, but mostly ineffectual, camera perspectives, Panzer Dragoon was a bare-bones first crack at establishing the game world's mythology. Overly difficult and somewhat brief, the game was known more for its atmosphere than for its mechanics. That said, it's still impressive to witness the giant sandworms erupt from the desert stage, hot on the heels of the rider's dragon. Up until this time, most game enemies were tiny, 16-bit 2D sprites outfitted with two or three frames of animation, not enormous, malevolent, red-eyed armored worms that recalled the furious Ohmu from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. And even if the lock-on-or-blast-away shooter mechanics of Panzer didn't amaze, the lightning-quick forays into the onrushing foreground usually did, with enemies coming in from all sides to harass your dragon. The bittersweet self-sacrifice of your dragon (who telekinetically transports you to safety) still remains one of the 32-bit era's most touching moments, right alongside Aerith Gainsborough's death in Final Fantasy VII (although the latter event is by far the more famous). With little to unlock save for a smattering of visual codes (Space Harrier mode, dragon-only mode, and such), the replay value of the first Panzer is scant, although it's worth it if only to see the evocative cut-scenes that precede each stage. In hindsight, Panzer Dragoon may not be memorable for the lasting appeal of its gameplay, but its impact as one of the first games to wholly embrace the CD format is undeniable. Random Statistics: Panzer Dragoon's development team was comprised of 15 people, and the game took one year to develop. The artists used Softimage as the main 3D tool.

The Panzer Dragoon series has a very loyal following, and for good reasons, it was evocative, had a unique storytelling style, played well, played simply, and made Saturn owners feel like they owned the system for a reason. But behind every great gaming story lies a creative force, and to discover all the things we didn't know about Panzer Dragoon, we spoke with original creative director, Yukio Futatsugi about how Panzer Dragoon was born. YF: Panzer Dragoon wasn't accepted that much in Japan, but that's maybe because it was on Saturn. Do you know the camera collision as system in Shenmue was taken from Panzer Dragoon? A few of the Azel (Panzer Saga) staff went to the Shenmue team, and when someone asked them how they made the camera system, they said "Oh, we just copied it from Panzer."

1UP: As of the 32-bit era most of the Sega internal development teams had names, like Sega AM2, Sonic Team, etc. How did Team Andromeda form, and did you form before Panzer Dragoon's development, or did you name yourselves that after you created the first Panzer? YF: Each Sega Saturn project was named after a star, and it went in alphabetical order, so since we were the first game in development, our team was called 'Andromeda.' Inside Sega there was the arcade division and the consumer division, and there were people who came over from the arcade side to the consumer division, like Mr. [Yoji] Ishii, who is the president of AQ Interactive, who created Outrun. And Mr. [Manabu] Kusunoki, who's did the art for the first two Panzer Dragoon games, who works at Artoon now. 'Team Andromeda' was the code name for the project, but then it became the name for the team. So, Team Andromeda existed from Panzer Dragoon to Panzer Dragoon Saga, which is when we disbanded, and that's when I quit Sega. 1UP: It must have been very difficult for you to create games on the Sega Saturn, since the hardware was originally designed to be the ultimate 2D graphics machine, and then had an extra processor added at the last minute to combat the PlayStation's 3D-specific design. What was the challenge when you set out to make Panzer Dragoon. Did you want to make a 3D game, did you want to do something that took advantage of the CD-ROM format, what was the spark that turned into Panzer Dragoon? YF: The specs for the Saturn was supposed to be much higher in the beginning. So then Sega said they wanted us to create a high-spec 3D shooting game, so that's where our direction came from. 1UP: It's amazing, because I played through the first Panzer Dragoon a couple weeks ago, with my editor friend from Famitsu, and the soundtrack is so awesome, it sounds like

something John Williams would compose for a video game. I think the only other game theme that's as exhilarating is the theme to Grandia, or NiGHTS. YF: If you look at movies, they create music around what's going on on the screen, and that's what I wanted to do with Panzer Dragoon. And with other types of games it's difficult to do that, but with Panzer since it's a relatively simple shooting game, the music can be context sensitive. Let's take Starfox for example, after starting the game and going into the cave, you don't know where the player's going to be after the first minute. Some people are going to be in the cave, some people might outside of the cave. But with Panzer Dragoon, since it's on rails, we know exactly where the player's going to be after one minute, he's going to be at this point, after two minutes he's going to be at this point. We could score the music to apply to exactly what was happening on screen at all times. So how we ordered the music was we first created the game, "Do you know the camera then we commissioned the music. We'd show a video of the specific areas to the composers and say "You'll collision as system in be going into this area now, so I want the music to Shenmue was taken from pump up here." So that's how we made such an Panzer Dragoon?" effective soundtrack. So if we changed any parts of the game, we'd ask the composers to adjust the music as well. 1UP: Was the music done internally or by an external musician? YF: It wasn't internal, it was outsourced. We ordered it from this guy who composes music for special TV programs for NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai, aka Japanese Broadcasting Corporation). 1UP: It was great because Panzer Dragoon was able to do so many things that games never did before, like have CD-quality audio, full-motion video, huge 3D levels and enemies. And the concept is so classic, like a boy and his dog, except this time it was a dragon, versus the world. It did everything, and had a new type of camera system. Many games up until then may have done one of these things, but Panzer did them all at once. Are you aware of what you really accomplished with the first Panzer Dragoon? YF: Yeah Panzer Dragoon is a title that had everything in it, but because of that it was a title that was very tough on the staff who worked on it, of whom there were 15 members. Looking back, it's something we were able to do because we were young and energetic. You're able to be a little selfish when you're young, you can say "I want to do this. I want this thing, I'm not going to change it." I was also lucky to have very good people around me, like the sound coordinator, and a couple great programmers, like Mr. Takeshita that works at AQ Interactive. Because of these guys, we were able to make Panzer. There were 15 people on the team, so I still hook up with some of them and catch up and we remain friends. 1UP: One of the most distinctive things about Panzer Dragoon was the 'organic technology' style, and the Germanic theme, from the word 'Panzer' and the sequel named 'Zwei' (German for two). YF: I was the creative director, but it was my first year in the company, so I didn't have experience watching over a whole title by myself. So we had this guy named Hondo-san, who helped me keep the project on track. He was responsible for a game called 'Switch,' he was the director on that game. 1UP: I think your newness to the industry helped keep the Panzer concept very pure. It had these stark, minimal CG cutscenes, a ship would fly on screen, a couple lines of fictional dialogue would be said, and the subtitle would say "We must find that dragon at all costs" or something, and that was it. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. We were so used to stuff on the SNES or Sega Genesis at that point, that Panzer's cutscenes were mind-blowing. It created an instantly believable world. You bought into it immediately.

YF: I agree that my pureness came from it being my first year, which meant my ideas were very clear, and I thought I could do a lot of things, like this and that and that. But really, what I was able to do was only simple things, but I had a clear vision and the ability to do these simple things, so the balance of everything was there, so that's how Panzer turned out this way. When I create a game this is what I value a lot, which is "Don't talk too much." Don't explain too much, don't talk too much, don't show too much... 1UP: Like Final Fantasy... YF: [Laughs] Don't say the name! [Laughs] I value having to use your imagination and thinking. Also, back then if you zoomed into the face, the expressions weren't beautiful or anything because of the technology, so the conclusion I came to was since things wouldn't look so great close up, let's put the dragon at a farther view, and that's the best way I thought I could express what I wanted in the game, by borrowing the player's imagination. I don't like in-game cutscenes that much. So with Azel, when we created the demo, I kept saying "Let's create the demo with the actual game-engine, and not CG movies or decoration," because to do that, to use the actual game-engine, users would understand the actual game from the start and would be able to use more of their imagination, rather than get some preconceived notions of the game based on what they saw in CG scenes. So back when I was creating Panzer Dragoon, I didn't think that games were in line with movies. I thought that games were more in line with books. Nowadays with PS3 specs and Xbox 360 specs, the way I think now may be a little outdated, that's how I think and that's what I value.

1UP: One of the things I like about Panzer Dragoon is the actual design of the dragons. They're not like the typical American Dungeons and Dragons dragons. Panzer's dragon is blue, it has bone armor, and the enemies are equally distinct. Enemy airships and the such are a big departure from the spaceships you'd see in Gradius or a game like that. YF: First, when I was talking with Kusunoki-san, the art designer, we were thinking about what the main character should ride. Should it be a helicopter? A plane? Maybe a dragon? We thought a dragon would be fun. Then we thought how should we design the dragon? We didn't want it to be a normal dragon, that's very boring. Neither Kusunoki-san or I like normal things, we don't like average things. So that's how we went in this direction. And inside the game, we wanted to distinguish 'old' technology from the 'new' technology. The dragon comes from the old times, so we wrapped him in white shielding, the same with the enemy airships, which are all covered in white. 1UP: How did you get Moebius to do the cover art? I met him one time at a convention, and had him sign a book of his, but instead he drew his famous character Arzach riding on his winged companion who looks like a pelican for me. So for Moebius to draw the cover of Panzer was really cool, I thought. A french comic artist doing the cover for a Japanese game. YF: Internally we decided to have somebody famous do the cover design, so we wondered who should we ask. But Kusunoki-san is a big fan of Moebius, and said "I want him to do the

package." But the team thought "There's no way he's going to do it for us." But then Moebius said "OK," and everyone said "Is he really going to do the package for us?" But a lot of people out there thought he'd done the cover art for us first, but that's not how it went. We had our designs and we gave them to Moebius and we asked "Can you do something like this?" And that's not how you usually do things like that, to give a big artist like him orders like that, but that's how we did it, even though we wondered "Is this "Back when I was OK to ask like this?" 1UP: That's how we work with Yoshitaka Amano. If we commission a painting from him for a cover for EGM, he asks us what we want, we tell him, he does it, he paints it. But after Moebius did the illustration for you, who got the drawing?

creating Panzer Dragoon, I didn't think that games were in line with movies. I thought that games were more in line with books."

YF: We didn't receive the original, we only got the high-resolution film cel, which we used for the package and advertisement, but Moebius has the original art. 1UP: What did you think of the art when you saw it? YF: I was very happy, and I was touched. Actually there are some characters in the cover art that don't appear in the game, but we were like "Forget about it, it's a Moebius drawing. Who cares?" We felt like we were being spoiled, because Moebius was drawing the atmosphere we requested. Actually there's a piece of art that Moebius did that we never used. It was a drawing of the main character by himself, but I have no idea what happened to that. It might be in the [Japan-only] Sega Ages edition of Panzer Dragoon [Sega Ages Vol. 27: Panzer Dragoon], but I'm not positive if it is or not. In the Sega Ages Panzer Dragoon commentary both myself and Kondo-san [Who works at Land-Ho!] and Kusunoki-san [Who works at Artoon], we're commenting about how "this part was difficult and that part was difficult." Like how I explained before how the original Panzer game and the music are synched, well our commentary is synched with each section of the Sega Ages version as well. [Laughs] 1UP: One of the most pivotal moments I've ever seen in video gaming was when the sand worms erupt from the ground in the second level of Panzer Dragoon. I don't think anyone had ever seen anything like that at that time. Remember, this was 1995, so this was something special. [Pointing to the Japanese cover of Panzer Dragoon] This screenshot here shows the showdown between the dragon you're controlling and the boss at the end of the sand worm level, another dragon, who you duel with. Can you tell me a little bit about this boss fight? YF: This is one of the first two stages we created. The second stage and the fifth stage were the first two we created. You'll notice there are no objects in either of these two stages, it's all sand effects and stuff. The fifth stage is just forest. We were learning the hardware and we weren't sure what we could do, and it had the dual processors, so we wondered if the hardware were going to be able to do what we wanted. So we thought "What should we do? It's too plain," but we had to consider the CPU specs, but wanted it to look cool. So we figured a tornado would look cool but not demand too much from the CPU.

Living Up To Your Potential. While the original Panzer was an average game with superb atmospherics, Panzer Dragoon Zwei grabbed the baton and ran with it. The barebones first game was now the beneficiary of a sequel that was, in fact, a prequel that expanded the gameplay elements, offered multiple routes through the game, an innovative growth system, better graphics, and a host of unlockables. All within a year of the first game's release. Incredible! Random Statistics: Panzer Dragoon Zwei took an entire year to develop, and the staff increased to 20 people. Again, the artists used Softimage as main 3D rendering and design tool.

Panzer Dragoon II Zwei

System: Sega Saturn | Publisher: Sega | Developer: Team Andromeda | Release Date: 1996

So much more than the original game, it thrust the Panzer series into the realm of the all-time greats.

More than just being an excellent, stylish shooter, Zwei set the stage for the legendary Saga.

Although it would be easy to say that Panzer Dragoon II Zwei is everything the first game should have been, you can say that about nearly any sequel worth its salt. But considering the newness of the storage medium, the time it must have taken to master the Sega Saturn's tricky, barely-3D architecture, and the wealth of ideas that had only just jelled in the first game, it's arguable that Zwei (German for "two") couldn't have existed without the groundwork laid by the original. Zwei was and is, by all accounts, a tremendous leap over the first game. While the ever-forward "on-rails" thrust of the original game mechanics remained intact, nearly everything else was improved by leaps and bounds in both concept and execution. While the first Panzer Dragoon was, by Saturn standards, a pretty solid graphic accomplishment, Zwei was aeons better. Improved texture quality and detail resulted in lusher, more intricate environments, while Team Andromeda made exceptional use of space and contrast to give each stage (and more often than not, substages within stages) more impact. Bosses were bigger, more beautifully animated, and downright threatening compared to the first game's less intimidating battleships. It should also be noted that Zwei's incredible water effects made stunning use of the Saturn's 2D abilities, creating a liquid effect the PlayStation would never match. Interestingly, Zwei is actually the prequel to the first Panzer Dragoon, which makes it doubly ironic that Zwei is littered with so many improvements to the game system. First of all, the triplet of useless camera perspectives from the first Panzer were ditched in favor of an all-purpose

"medium" camera view that was more or less ideal. Also added was a "Berserk" meter, which filled incrementally with each enemy shot out of the sky. A full Berserk meter could be activated at any time, unleashing a fusillade of homing lasers that cut a destructive path through the sky. Plus, just like using a bomb in any classic 2D shooter, activating Berserk mode made your dragon temporarily invincible, which helped a lot in tight scrapes or during particularly close boss battles. Arguably the most significant of the advancements made to Zwei were the multiple, user-selected paths. Basically, at various crossroads throughout the game, the player was given the choice to either go left or right. One path was usually a little more difficult than the other (usually by throwing additional enemies at you), but beyond the sightseeing elements introduced by the varying paths, your path selection also had an effect on the eventual transformation of your dragon. Since the game begins with you riding "dragonback" on your dragonling, an immature wyvern unable to fly, you spend most of your time blasting enemies out of the sky (as well as on the ground). As you progress, passing by overhead battleships and the like, you eventually come upon optional path selections. If you were to do nothing, the game automatically sends you down one path, but if you were to veer left at the diverging point, your choice would have multiple, residual effects. Different patterns of enemies would attack you, of course, but your subsequent battle would take place in the sky, as opposed to the default path's ground battles. If you did take the more difficult path (and eventually everyone does), the first time you see the ground disappear from beneath your dragonling's feet as it takes flight is nothing short of breathtaking. Surrounded by nothing but white space and the mere whisper of the wind as your dragon's wings spread for the first time, the full potential of the series -- and the 32-bit, 3D era to some extent -- was finally realized in real time. The subsequent boss battles that would take place shortly thereafter were but icing on the cake. The real payoff to all the route-taking and discovery was the eventual dragon-morphing that would punctuate each level. Depending on the routes taken, your dragon would gain proficiency in specific areas, making it a more powerful attacker, a dragon with higher defense, or a sleeker, more agile dragon. As it grew, it would change appearance, affected solely by your combination of route selections. It was this sort of new game design that electrified Saturn owners as they played and replayed Zwei time and time again to see what sort of effects different path combinations would have on their dragons. For something so simple as an on-rails shooter, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei achieved something few other games of its ilk have ever accomplished: a bond between player and character. On top of all the replay value added by the multiple-path mechanic, Team Andromeda included a little bonus option called "Pandora's Box" ("Pandra's Box" in the Japanese version) that was filled with some of the most generous omake (Japanese for "extras") ever assembled in a videogame. Unlockables like different dragons (including enemy dragons), special types of gun "shots," the original Panzer radar style, a speed mode, Space Harrier mode, and more were among the items die-hard fans could continue to enjoy long after they'd initially beaten the game. The soundtrack, as in the first game, was meticulously orchestrated, if not quite as memorable. To call Zwei twice the game as the first is to shortchange it, and while the core game mechanics are as simple as they come (the equally name-dropped Rez is little more than Zwei in cyberclothing), the presentation and expansion of the original concept makes this one of the most fantastic, evocative shooters ever made.

Panzer Dragoon Zwei is adored by just about everyone who played it, because it defied expectations and gave Saturn owners hope. It was also one of the only original IPs for Saturn that spawned a sequel (besides the long-forgotten Clockwork Knight). And what was up with that insanely great water effect? Futatsugi tells us how it was done. 1UP: What's great about Panzer Dragoon Zwei is that it takes all the game mechanics from the first game, but builds on it. From the branching paths, to the dragon evolutions, to the improved graphics and water effects. In fact, I love the fact that you start out riding a dragon baby that can't even fly. You feel so protective of it, like a mother. Every time it

gets shot it makes a cry of pain, and you're like "Oh no! They hurt my baby!" This series is full of great moments in gaming, especially when you take flight on your dragon for the first time. Its feet leave the ground and you're surrounded by whiteness and silence. It's amazing.

YF: You know, we actually started Azel [aka Panzer Dragoon Saga] and Zwei at the same time. As you know Azel is an RPG, and it takes a long time to create an RPG, so that's why we started at the same time, by prepping for Azel. Since we knew the next game after Zwei was going to be an RPG, so that's why we added the factor of taking different paths and evolving your dragon. 1UP: What made you guys decide on the German naming convention, using "Panzer" and "Zwei"? YF: It was pretty simple, actually. When we first had the game concept in mind, it was called "Kiko-ryu," meaning "armored dragon." But "armored dragon" is boring, so we looked up what that would mean in German, which was "Panzer Dragoon." I'm not a huge fan of German war equipment, but I liked the word "Panzer." 1UP: Even the word "dragoon" has a cool feel. It's not "dragon," but a little more special sounding than that. You know, after Zwei came out, [Softbank's] Sega Saturn Weekly magazine had a pull-out suggestion card in it that asked the reader to fill in what you'd like to see in a sequel to Zwei. I sent mine in saying "I'd like to earn my dragon by doing some kind of quest or exploration on foot before actually inheriting my dragon." And then later in the year, in that same magazine I saw the first screenshots of Azel. It's like you guys answered my wish. Besides the branching paths of Zwei, or the dragon evolution system, one of the things everyone loved about Zwei was the water effects. It looked so amazing at the time, I'm guessing you used special 2D layering to get that effect. YF: [Laughs] The Saturn was much better for expressing water than PlayStation, because Saturn was a machine that was designed for 2D, and we were able to use scrolling bitmaps. You couldn't do that on PlayStation because it was built to use polygons specifically. But with Saturn we could use scrolling and sprites. The Sega Saturn couldn't do true 3D, but the scroll functions was good for drawing water. Do you know raster scrolling? We'd draw raster scrolling and layers, and it looked like water. 1UP: Another cool thing was the rankings and statistics you got after the end of every level. That brought out the crazy gamer in me. If, at the end of the game, I only had 99.8% completion, I'd replay the game over and over until I was able to kill that one enemy that always got away on the third level or something. Besides that, you'd unlock more and more stuff in Pandora's Box, the bonus option. That game had so many Easter Eggs, more than I'd ever seen at the time. Where did all that come from?

YF: Regarding Pandora's Box, a programmer just made it himself and said "Why don't we put something like this into the game." And that's how it ended up in the game. It wasn't in the original game concept. The completion percentages and stuff were already in the game, but then the programmer created this idea himself and asked what we all thought. Then everybody liked it, and thought it was cool so we put it in the game. 1UP: Did he come up with all the unlockables himself? Because there's a lot of stuff in there. YF: Yeah, after he came up with the Pandora's Box idea, everybody chipped in their contributions and ideas. 1UP: What was your contribution? YF: [Laughs] Hmm, I don't remember whether I put in an idea or not. 1UP: Are there any specific memories you have of the development period of Panzer Dragoon Zwei that you think are interesting?

" I'm not a huge fan of German war equipment, but I liked the word 'Panzer.' "

YF: You know Yamada-san who made the concept for Rez? He used to be at UGA, then he quit, then went to Microsoft, then quit and went over to FeelPlus, but maybe he'll go over to Q Entertainment now. Anyway, he was the main guy on Zwei. It's difficult, because the two projects were going on simultaneously, so it was hard for me to look over both. So Yamada-san was concentrating on Zwei while I was concentrating on Azel. In the beginning I was looking over both, but towards crunch time at the end of Saga development, Yamada-san was focusing on Zwei. 1UP: This is going to sound like a funny question, but when your dragon would get hit by a shot, it would let out a scream. Was that designed to evoke an emotional reaction from the player? YF: In Panzer 1 the dragon is strong and helps you, but in Zwei we wanted to make the dragon a baby in the beginning, so we made it a little weak. That's why we made it sound weak as well, which made you feel more attached to the dragon so you'd want to take care of it. The main concept of the story of Zwei is that you're able to raise this baby dragon until it's strong enough for it to eventually leave you and fight the empire by itself. There's the departure of the dragon, and that's the main concept of Zwei. 1UP: It's interesting that at the end of the first two games that the dragon leaves you to sacrifice itself, although it's always a little foggy as to exactly what happens. What was really going on at the end? YF: I had this main 'line' going through all three projects. That's why Zwei ended with the departure of the dragon, what I wanted to express there was the connections. In the first game, the story had already been going on for decades, and characters that had come before are either dead or don't exist any more, but still there's a relationship and connection going through the whole series. And in Saga, the connections with the characters and dragons that didn't exist in the first game were given life in Saga. Do you follow?

Zwei was the second title in the series, but it was the first story in the series (it was a prequel). So I didn't want to end episode 1 (Panzer Dragoon) with a happy ending, because I wanted it to bleed into the second episode. That's why I cut the story off there to make you wonder what was going to happen next, or what happened to the dragon, or why was there a departure? The soul of the dragon got carried over to episode 2 (Panzer Dragoon), meets a different character and they connect, which is what I wanted to express. 1UP: In regards to the ship design and technology, were the ships in Zwei consciously designed to appear 'older,' since you explained that older technology was covered in white, bone-colored armor. YF: The white shielding is from way before the storyline, like thousands of years old. The continuity of the story is Zwei, the Panzer Dragoon, then the events of Panzer Dragoon Saga. The whole story arc takes place over the course of a few decades at most.

A Decade Later, Still The Excalibur of RPGs. The game is already legendary, but few know of the tragedies that touched the development process of Panzer Dragoon Saga. One of the few games worth the exorbitant rates it commands on auction sites around the world, Saga's value will only increase as people realize that -- unlike the seemingly endless ports of every Final Fantasy that Square cranks out every month -- the chances of playing anything but the original Saga grow dimmer by the day.

Panzer Dragoon Saga

System: Sega Saturn | Publisher: Sega | Developer: Team Andromeda | Release Date: 1998 A startlingly fresh RPG from a development team on fire.

The wrinkles and creases of time only serve to enrich and improve this game's character.

There is only one Panzer Dragoon Saga, and unless Sega makes a serious effort to emulate it, that's how it will remain, since it's rumored that the original code no longer exists, making anything but a raw data dump and emulation ( la Princess Crown to PSP) possible. Sure, Sega could re-create the game from scratch, but there's little indication that they would ever do such a thing. For people wondering what all the fuss is about, let's put things into perspective. In the nearly 10 years since Panzer Dragoon Saga's original North American release, how many times has Square Enix ported any number of the first six Final Fantasy games to various handhelds and consoles? Too many times to count. On the other hand, unless you have a Sega Saturn and one of the rare copies printed in the U.S. (under 20,000 were made), chances are slim that you'll get to experience Saga's unique spin on the role-playing format. Instead of putting the player right in the dragon's saddle from the get-go, Saga took a more organic approach to things by expanding the game world with a fleshed-out plot and on-foot exploration of towns, campsites, and dungeons. One of the main criticisms leveled at Saga at the time was that there were too few characters and NPCs populating the game, compared to a more traditional RPG, one loaded with excess, like Chrono Cross. But in Saga, the characters that were presented were the ones who mattered. In an age of jumping plumbers and bandicoots, where gaming grew more sophisticated by the week, for a 3D shooter to suddenly make the unexpected jump from shooter to RPG so gracefully was a major accomplishment. This was, after all, the saga of a young man named Edge, the few friends he'd acquire along the way, and the enemy who would eventually become ally. That enemy was Azel, a female drone unearthed during an excavation, who would at first try to defeat Edge before grudgingly turning to him for help. A game like this needed no superfluous characters with little to contribute but a couple trite lines of text. That's not to say Saga didn't have some random NPCs to fill the space with idle chatter, but at least most of the characters in this game counted. For players weaned on the ever-growing ambition of the Panzer series' first two games, Saga was an epiphany, offering a full 3D world to go along with the shooting -- and shooting there was aplenty. Saga's battle system was similar enough to that of other RPGs, using an Active Time Battle-style of timed combat not dissimilar to that of Final Fantasy. During battle, three action gauges would fill up, and each full gauge would allow the player access to a number of attacks or items. Attacks would typically come in either a focused burst of gunfire from Edge's gun for more power or as a series of homing lasers erupting from the dragon (who you could give a personalized name to, for once) that would target multiple enemies, but with the strength of the lasers divided by the number of total targets. The more bars that filled, the greater the number of options that became available, making battles a real-time tactical decision, as waiting for any amount of time left the player vulnerable to attack. Players also had access to a number of Berserk points -- an evolution of the Berserk gauge added in Panzer Dragoon Zwei -- that offered the equivalent of magic spells, ranging from healing moves to powerful attacks. Movement was also a tactical consideration. Players could move the dragon out of the line of fire at times (if an enemy's attack was unidirectional, for example, moving the dragon to the side of the enemy would help it stay out of range), but doing so froze the action gauges until the dragon settled into place. And with some enemies having a specific weak point (vulnerable to

attack from the rear, for example), keeping the dragon mobile was often a necessary tactic. Even dressed up in RPG raiment, Saga still provided incentive for nimble fingers and sharp minds. At the end of each battle, statistics would fill the screen, indicating how well the player performed in numerous categories while awarding an overall rank. Random Statistics: Panzer Dragoon Saga took twice the amount of people as Zwei to develop (40 people total), and twice the time (two years to develop), using -- again -- Softimage as the 3D software of choice. Another Panzer staple, an element initiated in a previous game -- namely dragon evolution from Zwei -- was brought back for Saga, but this time around it could be done on the fly, enabling players to adjust their dragon to suit the needs of the battle at hand. If you needed extra defense you could morph into the wing type that dramatically (or incrementally, for that matter) increased defense, usually at the expense of mobility and evasion. If added speed was needed, you could morph into a speedier model with lower defense and HP, and so on and so forth. While this feature seemed a little unnatural at times, it was still fun, and added a lot of strategic depth to the game. But for all the unique gameplay elements, the real appeal of Saga came from the cybernetic allure of the game's principal antagonist, Azel. While Edge was the typical Japanese everymanstyle hero, Azel was unique, from the first moment you saw her unearthed from an excavation site encased in stone, to the first head-to-head encounter against her as she rode the skies atop a giant enemy dragon. Free of the typical, overly-mawkish, "orphan hero saves the world" Japanese RPG plotline, Saga's barren, postapocalyptic world (not to mention the fictional game language created specifically for Panzer Dragoon) formed an especially stark backdrop against which Azel and Edge would duel and eventually become partners, forging through four discs worth of discovery and action.

While much has been made of Sega's decision to print an excruciatingly limited number of copes in the U.S. -- a necessity created by retail reluctance to stock any new Saturn titles in light of the PlayStation's dominance -- far too little attention has been paid to the sacrifices and losses the development team took in creating this game. While fans attempt to score near-mint copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga on eBay and RPG lovers bicker over the relevance of Saga in the harsh light of hindsight, few people know the trials Team Andromeda went through in bringing Saga to market. Resting comfortably in the top five most anticipated games list in Japan's Sega Saturn Weekly for what must have been approximately two years, it was understandable that Sega would have high expectations for the title. Of course, all things being relative, the Saturn's rapidly dwindling market share and comparatively miniscule (compared to that of the PlayStation) installed base should have tempered the excitement stirred up by the hardcore Saturn users who voted weekly. Still, despite the glowing reviews and high hopes, sales of Panzer Dragoon Saga (called Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG in Japan) in its home country and North America were underwhelming at best. The fallout, as urban legend would have it, was that one of the lead designers of Saga, who had poured absolutely everything he

could into making it the best game possible, took his own life as a result. So distraught were the surviving members of the development team that they apparently all visited a Buddhist temple to help cleanse themselves of the sorrowful vibrations caused by the suicide. In speaking with original Saga member and Team Andromeda leader Yukio Futatsugi, we discovered that the events, while tragic, were slightly different. In actuality, two members of the development team died during Saga's gestation period, one from an actual suicide that occurred during development (and not afterward, as rumor had it), and another from an automotive accident, also during the release of the game. It's worth pointing out that, for all the analysis we put on games and for all the petty, callous personal demands we make of game developers and their efforts, there are real people with real-life problems going to work every day on the games we play. Not enough focus is applied to the long hours and sleepless nights, for weeks and months at a time, that Japanese developers often endure to meet a game's ship date. Of course, working conditions being what they are there (they're downright inhumane in many cases) this is probably a bigger-picture issue, but we thought it should be noted that the somber overtones of Panzer Dragoon Saga's four-disc epic and the tragic events that befell the development team are probably not unrelated. But, as anyone who played (and finished) the game knows, things don't all turn out badly. Panzer Dragoon Saga was, and is, one of the most unique and memorable role-playing games ever devised -- original, fresh, and never duplicated. It would be hard to suggest that the tragedies the development team suffered were worth it, but the end result of this exceptional game is certainly beautiful. As we mentioned earlier, outside of Sega re-creating the game from scratch or emulating it from existing North American code, we're unlikely to ever see a port of Saga, as the original code (which would allow programmers to go in and adjust text files and the like) is apparently no more. Still, for anyone hoping for some sort of continuation of the series, there's always the relatively obtainable Panzer Dragoon Orta, that -- at the end -- hints at what happened between Edge and Azel at Saga's conclusion, and the revelation from Yukio Futatsugi that, were he able to make any wish in the world, he would like to create one more Panzer Dragoon game before he dies.

The fact is, Panzer Dragoon Saga is the greatest RPG you've never played. It may not be the best RPG of all time, but it's definitely one of the most unique. After all, you can buy approximately 40 different versions of Final Fantasy IV if you wanted to, but you need a Sega Saturn to play Saga. We speak with Futatsugi not only about the wild shift in direction regarding Saga's RPG gameplay (versus the shooter mechanics of the first two game), but also about the never-discussed deaths that occurred in the Team Andromeda family. Read on and readjust your preconceptions about the world of video game development. 1UP: The dialogue in the first two games, the dialogue was kept to a minimum. But with Azel/Saga, there was a lot of dialogue and interaction with characters. Do you feel that it took away some of the mystique that the first two games established, or do you think it was a logical, creative extension of what had come before it? YF: There were a lot of opinions from the gamers that they wanted to know about the game universe, so we felt we needed to explain more about it and added more cutscenes. But I kept a rule that the main character would not speak, and I kept that one firm. Well, in the opening, he speaks, but after you move into the game itself he doesn't say much. 1UP: Some people criticized the game for not having a lot of characters, like Chrono Cross or something. But I felt the characters in Saga were more integral to what was going on. It felt lonely, and that's what made it powerful. YF: I did that on purpose because I didn't want to make a game where you go out and talk to the world, and make a 'save the world' kind of game. I wanted to concentrate on real people

who you are really close to. How can you say something to this person sitting next to you, before you end up talking to another person, and another person, and then of course you have to go save the world. I wanted you to be able to concentrate on the person in front of you and have it mean something.

1UP: One obvious difference between the first two games and Saga is that the first couple games are on-rails shooters. In Saga, you could switch between different formations on the fly. In Zwei you had to take specific paths, but Saga let you transform at any time. What made you come to this design decision? YF: In normal RPGs there are many abilities to the characters, where you can summon monsters, use magic, all kinds of stuff. But in Saga, there's the main character and the dragon, so we thought, "What should we do with this?" During battle, we knew it would be necessary to change abilities, so that's why we came up with this. In most RPGs you have a team, where you can use another character, but with only the rider and the dragon, we knew we had to increase the amount of things they could do during battle. The key person who made this system happen is Satoshi Sakai, who is now the director of Phantasy Star Universe. He was the modeling artist of the dragon, and the reason why this was very difficult is because in one form, the dragon would extend to one point, but if it transformed to a different form, that point would change. To make that happen Sakai would have to create geometry for all possible points, whether the dragon was in that form or not. That type of modeling was very, very difficult at the time. We'd have to basically make four different dragons with all the same points, existing at the same time, even though you could only see one at a time. It was a crazy order. [Laughs] 1UP: How did artist Katsumi Yokoto [now at Q Entertainment] affect the creation of Saga? YF: Kusunoki-san, who was in charge of art up until Azel, doesn't enjoy character art that much, so he picked Yokota-san out of Sega's designers to handle the character designs. That's why Yokota-san was brought in as a designer. He's a very, very good artist. The fragility of the character Azel exists because of Yokota-san. 1UP: Can you talk a little bit about the character, Azel. When you first see her, she's almost Christ-like, encased in this stone she's found in during an excavation. Then the next time you meet her is when you fight her dragon-to-dragon, at which point she's pretty intense. Then Edge and her ultimately become allies. Can you tell us about that dynamic? YF: The main character of the game is really yourself. So when I create a game I don't want the story to be centered on the main character, because it's no longer yourself, it's a fictional avatar. I want you, as the main character, to watch someone else's story. In Saga, you're watching Azel's story, and she advances the plot. At first she's your enemy, then she becomes your ally and you watch her story by accompanying her. Did you play Phantom Dust?

1UP: Of course. YF: Phantom Dust too, the character you play isn't the center of the story. Edgar is the focus, and you're watching his destiny play out. 1UP: Ah, I see now. You like this type of storytelling device. What's ironic is that at the end of the first two games, it's the dragon that disappears. But at the end of Azel, it's the character you play as, Edge, that disappears. Then after the credits roll, and you're all "What happened?", a hooded figure appears saying something like "I'm going to find him," and you realize that it's Azel in the hood. It's like the director's cut of Blade Runner, where people want to know if Deckard is really a replicant or not. Tell us what really happens, in your eyes, to Azel and Edge. YF: In the beginning, I was going to make it so that Azel and Edge wouldn't meet at all, but in Panzer Dragoon Orta they meet up, it's almost miraculous. But then they have a baby, Orta. But my original intention was for them never to see each other again. 1UP: Do you feel as if Smilebit, who developed Panzer Dragoon Orta after Team Andromeda disbanded, sort of betrayed the legacy, by rewriting the storyline like that?

YF: I don't feel betrayed. There are a lot of gamers out there who wrote their own fiction about what they thought happened, using their own imaginations. So with Smilebit, I view it in the same way, like they wrote something new using their imaginations. 1UP: Are you sad that after doing all that work, that by the time it came out in America, that the Saturn was basically dead, and Sega only made a few thousand copies and that so few people were able to buy it? YF: Of course, back in the day I thought "If this was on PlayStation, so many more people would have been able to see this story." 1UP: That's interesting. Do you think Saga could have actually been done on the PlayStation hardware? YF: I think it was impossible to bring out this kind of quality on the PlayStation. PlayStation and Saturn, the way the machines expresses color are very different. On PlayStation the colors are more bright, and on Saturn the colors are cloudier. So to express the atmosphere of Panzer, it was necessary to have the color palette of the Saturn.

"I want you, as the main character, to watch someone else's story. In Saga, you're watching Azel's story, and she advances the plot."

1UP: That's one interesting point between the original Panzer series and Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox. You went from having an overachieving game running on an underpowered system. It's kind of like when you see a true 3D game, like Mario Kart, running on Nintendo DS. It might not be as powerful a 3D machine -- specs-wise -- as the PSP, so when you see something that looks as good as Mario Kart or Metroid Prime Hunters running on the DS, you're extra excited about it because you didn't think a 3D game that good looking could run on it. By that token, Orta was running on the most powerful hardware at the time, so maybe it lost a little of that underdog charm. YF: That's probably because most of the team members had changed. To create a project that goes one step beyond a regular game, that project has to have someone who plays the bad guy role, someone who acts a little selfish, acts a little forceful to the team to achieve specific goals. I think that may have been the difference with Orta. Perhaps the Orta team didn't have that dynamic. The Saturn series had that dynamic. The Orta team probably needed that little push to

make the game transcend. Having team members that will support that kind of bad cop is necessary, and if they don't exist then you can't get those kind of results. A Death In The Family 1UP: Speaking of the development of Azel, there's something I want to ask about but I know it's a pretty touchy subject, but I think it's a story that needs to be shared. Most kids these days get into some ridiculous arguments, meaningless arguments on message boards everywhere, arguing about system superiority, or perceived sales figures, making uninformed rants about anything involving gaming, criticizing things like they could do any better. But one of the most famous, little known stories about Panzer Dragoon Saga is about the Team Andromeda member who killed himself. Urban legend says that the developer thought he had created the best game he possibly could have, but in the light of Saga's minimal impact saleswise, took his own life as a result. The story goes on that the surviving members of Team Andromeda were so distraught that you all went to a Buddhist temple to cleanse yourselves of the negative spirits. Would you be willing to tell us what really happened? YF: I think the person you were talking about during the development of Azel, he didn't kill himself. He actually got into a motorcycle accident. Back then, of course, I was thinking to myself "You shouldn't ride a motorcycle at a time like this." But the team member kept driving his motorcycle anyway, but I don't think his head was in the right place. Game development is stressful, for some people it's too stressful. You do hear a lot of stories about a lot of people not being able to take the stress. For people who have that trait, who can handle the stress, this is the perfect job for them. That person might not be able to work in another type of company, but this is the place for them. But there are people who don't fit in this kind of role. Whenever I have a team, I tell people "If this is too tough for you, you can quit, or go to another team, and I won't hold it against you." People need to find the right match. The people who can handle this, we're going to work great together. There was another person above me who killed himself, actually. My feeling on that is if you end your own life, that's obviously the end of everything right there. That's it. I don't think you should do that. Even if things are hard, if you keep going, good things can still come from it, you can always continue to do things. In the industry we often hear about people becoming mentally ill by working in the game industry. Are there people like that in America? Do they snap from the stress?

"Game development is stressful, for some people it's too stressful."

1UP: I'm sure there are, but there haven't been any particular instances where I've heard of someone having a total breakdown. Sometimes people are overworked, sure, but not to a point quite like what is rumored to have happened on Team Andromeda. YF: After working at Microsoft this is something I discovered. I had a chance to see how developers in the U.S. work, and what I discovered is that people in the U.S. are more like manufacturers, people have their own roles, and they're experts in their own roles. And if something goes wrong outside of your role, it's not your problem, it's the other person's responsibility. The roles are split very clearly, and everyone knows their responsibilities very clearly. But Japanese people are a little bit different than that. I mean, we do things like engraving a small piece of art on a grain of rice. You know what I mean? We don't have those clearly defined areas about what we do. The lines blur, so if someone is lacking in a certain area, someone working next to him feels obligated to pick up the slack, or feel obligated to do more, and is more stressed by the overall burden. That's probably why Japan is probably behind in creating really next-gen software. But that's probably why we're good at creating something for Nintendo DS. We're not the best at adapting to the newest technology, perhaps, but we're able to create something of depth.

1UP: Just so I get my story straight, the person who committed suicide on Team Andromeda who was above you, was this related to the response to Panzer Dragoon Saga, or was it just related to the stress of making a game? YF: It's not because of the sales of Azel or anything. Azel was a project that took a year and a half, so it was a tough project. So during the project, his parents got sick, and he had to fly back to Kansai every weekend, and he was getting tired, so that may have contributed to what happened. 1UP: OK, thank you for sharing that with us. I'm glad to get clarification on this subject, as I want people to know how hard video game development can be. I wish it were possible for people to play Panzer Dragoon Saga, since so few people got to experience it. YF: I think it would be difficult for Azel to see a port. There are reasons for it, but the specifics should remain secret. We had to squeeze everything out of the Saturn in order to make Saga, so porting it would be very difficult. You know the Sega Ages port of Panzer Dragoon to PS2? We thought it would be easy to just emulate on PS2, but it took a lot longer than we budgeted and it was a huge effort. And in Panzer Dragoon Orta, the port that was unlockable in the game was the PC version, because it was too much work to port the original code. So, I'm I can't say for sure, but it would be very unlikely that Saga is ever ported to another console. [Futatsugi then told us the politics behind Saga's disappearance, which we can't reveal, but the gist of it has to do with the original code having been lost, making a port -- in case you're wondering -- all but unlikely.] 1UP: I feel stronger about Smilebit and Kawagoe bringing Panzer back for Orta. It's like they wanted to keep the franchise alive. That's nice. YF: The director of Orta was in charge of the battle system in Panzer Dragoon Saga. 1UP: That's good. Orta feels more genuine now that you've said that. How do you feel about Orta overall? YF: I think they tried very hard to make a good Panzer game. Maybe they shouldn't have tried to make a Panzer game as they thought Team Andromeda would have, and instead gone more with their own instincts. It's a tough call, but I think it would have been OK too if they'd followed their own creative instincts rather than try to stick with what happened in the past. My impression was that people might have been trying too hard. The creative spark might have appeared if they came to the development table with a free mind. But if they came to the project with the idea "What is Panzer?" they already limited themselves in a box. But it's probably difficult because nobody was there to say "Create freely." There's one sequel product that I actually like, which is Aliens. The first one was a horror movie, so it's impossible to have the same kind of impact with a sequel. So, the second film was science fiction. It still kept the same core concept, but it took a different spin. It was a war-action movie. 1UP: Which is your favorite character from the series? YF: The blue dragon. [Smiles] 1UP: If you could change one thing about the series, what would you change? YF: I'd make the first game less difficult.

1UP: One problem I had with Saga is that the underground maze part, with Azel riding on the back of your hoverbike was a little long, confusing, and basically just long. [Laughs] YF: Yeah, I have to admit, that part could definitely have been improved. [Laughs] 1UP: If you have any final words for the readers, now is the perfect time to share them. If you could do anything in the world in regards to the Panzer series, what would you do, would you make a new game? YF: I want to make a shooting version of Azel [Panzer Dragoon Saga]. I want to create the third project as a shooting game and end it there.

"if my wish were to come true, I would be allowed to create a sequel to Panzer Dragoon before I die. "

1UP: A remake of Azel as a shooter? Or a shooter based on the events after the end of Azel? YF: To me, the story ended with Azel, so I don't want anything to continue from there. So I want to just create a shooter Azel. Or I want to create a Panzer without a dragon. [Laughs] You know, you're not the person riding the dragon this time. You're just a person, a nobody in the game, and you see a dragon flying in the distance, and you can't even imagine riding such a thing. It might even appear to be an enemy. 1UP: So when does it get fun? [Laughs] YF: I just want to create something that will make no money. You find bits and pieces of old planes and machines, and you rebuild it, and then you fly far away with it. You travel and find pieces of weapons and machines, and reassemble these things. So if someone came to me and said "Make a Panzer game that would make the original fans happy," I'd make a shooter version of Azel. But if there was no lock on the concept, no preconceptions, I'd make the game I just described. You're a little person in this town that's about to collapse, you can't ride the dragon. You just collect pieces from caves all over a mountain, and build a plane, fly somewhere else, create a gun or weapon, and just do stuff like that. I'd probably create a game like that. I'm saying this now, but if the opportunity came I'd be more serious about it. But if my wish were to come true, I would be allowed to create a sequel to Panzer Dragoon before I die.

This cover feature is dedicated to all those who worked on the Panzer Dragoon series, especially those who aren't with us any more. Special thanks goes out to Yukio Futatsugi and Takayuki Kawagoe for their participation in the creation of this special feature.

Getting Back To Basics. When Team Andromeda disbanded, the gaming public thought that was the end of the beloved Panzer Dragoon series. After the bitter apparent swan song of Panzer Dragoon Saga, and zero appearances of the series during the entire lifespan of the Dreamcast, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was "game over" for Panzer. But nearly five years after the limited release of Saga, Sega threw its Panzer hat back in the ring, this time with internal development team Smilebit at the helm. Here's how Panzer Dragoon Orta held up to the legacy.

Panzer Dragoon Orta

System: Xbox | Publisher: Sega | Developer: Smilebit | Release Date: Jan 2003 From worst to first, Panzer roars back to life, this time with graphics to spare.

The shooter format has aged well, and the game still looks fantastic four years later.

Most Panzer Dragoon fans would probably claim, if asked, that if they could have a sequel to any game in the series, it would most likely be Panzer Dragoon Saga. Alas, that was not to happen: Team Andromeda, disillusioned and shattered by the grueling development process and underwhelming success of the first Saga, disbanded after the game's release. Some members -- like Saga artist Katsumi Yokota -- were absorbed into other internal development teams at Sega, while others, like key designer Yukio Futatsugi, left the company altogether. But for Panzer Dragoon Orta, Sega turned to a relatively new internal development team, Smilebit (they of Jet Grind Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, and GunValkyrie), to handle development duties. An interesting twist to Orta was that 1) Team Andromeda had meant to finish the saga with Saga, and that 2) Panzer Dragoon had suddenly gone from being an overachiever on the most underpowered hardware to an overachiever on the most powerful hardware of the time: the Xbox. While much skepticism was made of Sega's decision to resurrect Panzer, particularly in light of many core Team Andromeda members being in absentia, quite a few (but certainly not all) of the original Panzer team had settled down at Smilebit, bringing with them some of the original spirit to the development process. As an early title for Microsoft's Xbox, the goal here was not to create an elaborate (and by that token, expensive) RPG sequel to Saga, but a quick-moving shooter that would let the dev team stretch their abilities and create a fast, fun, and beautiful experience. In essence, Panzer went back to basics, only this time on hardware that would have no problems pushing polygons, rendering true transparencies and particle effects, keeping things running at 60 frames per second, and supporting 16:9 widescreen and 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. Orta -- which told the story of a young girl (the titular "Orta") kept captive in an ivory tower, only to be liberated by the classic blue dragon of old -- wasted no time throwing the player back in the saddle; the controls fit like a glove as Orta and her dragon locked on to enemies...or simply

blew them out of the sky. As with the Panzer games before it, this one toyed with the morphing system, allowing players to cycle between three dragon configurations -- Base Wing, Glide Wing, Heavy Wing -- each with its own specific strengths and weaknesses. Each form had five upgradeable steps of evolution -- "leveling up," in a sense, along the way. While you could complete the game in any form (you could pour all your "gene base" upgrades into one style, for example), having a balanced array of Wing types leveled up was in your best interest: Some bosses were only susceptible to specific forms, while later bosses required tactical use of all three forms. Orta also added a new dash (and brake) mechanic that allowed players to accelerate or decelerate around enemies in order to exploit their weak points. In the later stages, expert use of these tools become necessary to beat the game's final bosses, of which one stage's giant humanoid boss, Abadd, ironically resembles a boss encounter in Rez (which, in its own way, resembled Panzer Dragoon). As with Zwei (and not so much with Saga), the ultimate payoff of Orta was the incredibly rich Pandora's Box full of extras and unlockables. The one found in Orta was, to be fair, so packed with fan service, movies, additional modes, missions, and dragon models, that it makes the one in Zwei look barren by comparison. Clearly a nod to the Panzer faithful, Orta even contained an unlockable port of the PC version of the original Panzer Dragoon, making this iteration in the canon the most accessible and satisfying yet. However, while the Orta experience was obviously subjective depending on how much prior exposure one had to the original trilogy, it felt like something was just a little off. Our theory is that when the series found its first life on the Sega Saturn, there was something charming about seeing such a grand 3D vision enacted out on such underpowered hardware. In the move to the Xbox, Panzer suddenly had a surfeit of processing power, and while the end result of Orta was and still is wonderful to see in motion, a little bit of that underdog feeling had disappeared. Still, beggars can't be choosers, and Panzer fans were lucky to have a follow-up to Saga in the first place. That such a follow-up was so beautiful and complete is a rare example of Sega reviving a beloved series right. The recent patches that Microsoft added, allowing for backward compatibility on Xbox 360, ensure that Orta is just as playable (if not obtainable) as it was upon its release back in 2003. That it looks as good as half of the original 360 games being released today is testament to Smilebit's development powers and to Orta's timelessness. Random Statistics: Artists working on Panzer Dragoon Orta used Softimage for animating and 3DS Max for other 3D tasks. 16 ex-Team Andromeda members worked directly/indirectly on Panzer Dragoon Orta.

Stepping into Team Andromeda's shoes and breathing new life into the Panzer series couldn't have been an easy task, as anything but the perfect follow-up to Saga would be met with skepticism and, possibly, outright derision. But Smilebit took the high road, silencing potential critics by going back to basics and creating a fast-paced shooter worthy of the legacy. A whole new legion of gamers were discovering Panzer for the first time in Orta, and if anything, the game left a great first impression. Hearing the dragon's cry in the opening cinema was like hearing an old friend's voice from a long-ago era and playing Orta was just as engaging. To put things in perspective, we talked with Smilebit's general manager and producer, Takayuki Kawagoe -- a man responsible for some of Sega's most unique franchises (like Jet Set Radio) -about his team's time with Panzer and how, nearly five years later, he looks back on the effort and it's place in the pecking order. 1UP: Panzer Dragoon Orta was one of the best-looking Xbox games ever, and even now with the recent patch that added backward compatibility for it on 360, it still looks absolutely beautiful. In hindsight, do you feel you achieved what you set out to accomplish with the game?

Takayuki Kawagoe: Panzer was revived and as a result Orta was welcomed. Orta evoked new beautiful questions and memories about Panzer's past. I think we can say that we fulfilled most of our goals. I thought the reactions were basically favorable. However, I also think that the users' beautiful memories had some differences, since we were able to create richer visual expressions in Orta than we had in the past. 1UP: What was Smilebit's feeling toward Orta when you were finished with the game? Was everyone very satisfied with what they had created? After all, it came as something of a surprise that Sega had made another Panzer game in the first place, and the finished product was very fun and very beautiful. Was the team proud of what it had created? TK: We are proud of our work, but I've never come across a developer who feels satisfied with the end result. 1UP: Orta was a very value-packed game, with all the unlockable movies and archival material, the extra characters and minigames, and the entire original Panzer game hidden as an Easter egg. There really wasn't anything lacking in the game, but if you had to do it all over again, is there anything you would have added or changed? Would you have made it longer or shorter, easier or harder? TK: I really don't want to answer this question since we are proud of our work, but if I had to, [I would say] adding difficulty levels would be my answer. 1UP: Back in 2003, during an interview I did with you during the promotion of Orta, I asked about a possible sequel to the Panzer Dragoon Saga RPG. Your specific quote was, "We have a plan for the sequel to Panzer Dragoon Saga, but whether it happens depends on how people respond to Orta." Obviously that hasn't happened yet. Has Sega abandoned the idea of continuing the Panzer franchise? TK: All I can say is we haven't decided on not making a sequel.

The nucleus of Smilebit's Panzer Dragoon Orta team, circa E3 2002.

1UP: If the decision to create new Panzer games was going to be based purely on software sales of Orta, that seems like a tricky proposition in the first place, since the Xbox installed base at the time wasn't yet mature, especially as the hardware wasn't popular in Japan. What would have to happen for us to see another Panzer game being made?

TK: Xbox had the all the requirements to revive Panzer. For another Panzer, we'd definitely need the voices of the fans all over the world. 1UP: One thing that made the first three Panzer games so endearing was that they overachieved on underpowered 3D hardware. Orta, by comparison, had the distinction of being the most beautiful-looking game at the time on the most powerful hardware. Do you think that affected the reaction to the game on any level? TK: I feel that the time between [the first] three Panzers and Orta and the improvements of videogames during that span [created] mixed expectations and reactions in so many ways. 1UP: What has the team you assembled to create Panzer Dragoon Orta gone on to do in the years after Orta's release? We know you've been working on a lot of sports-related games. That doesn't seem like the direction you were going in with Panzer and GunValkyrie. TK: The Orta team's staffs are working hard on their individual projects. I [spent some] time working on sports-related titles, but now I'm overseeing all the developments in Sega of Japan.

More desirable than Panzer Dragoon Saga: The Japan-only Panzer Dragoon Orta limited edition Xbox, of which only 999 were made.

1UP: Lastly, unrelated to Panzer but related to you is GunValkyrie. It would have been nice to see a sequel to that game at some point. The only thing holding it back was the control scheme, but it was still great to look at and had cool character designs. Is there any chance a sequel to Gunvalkyrie might ever be made? TK: Making a GunValkyrie sequel would probably be difficult, but action games as good as GunValkyrie will from us in the future. 1UP: Thanks again for your time and for your contributions to the Panzer series, and good luck on whatever you develop in the future. TK: Thank you. I'll continue working hard to fulfill your expectations.

Life After Panzer Dragoon. Not all entries in the Panzer Dragoon canon were as memorable as the first three games. There was a mediocre PC port of the first game, a tragically brief anime series, and of course Panzer Dragoon Mini, an aberration in the series that is best left forgotten. On the upside, Team Andromeda's Yukio Futatsugi, who left after the completion of Saga, showed that he had more of the ol' Panzer magic up his sleeve, and while Phantom Dust isn't a part of the series by any means, it does carry some of the DNA that made Panzer so great.

Panzer Dragoon Mini

System: Sega Game Gear | Publisher: Sega | Developer: Sega | Release Date: 1995 Crap when it first came out, ironically.

Ironic because it's crap now too. Don't bother trying to track this one down.

So rare (original Team Andromeda member Yukio Futatsugi doesn't even have a copy) and so meaningless it's barely worth a footnote, Panzer Dragoon Mini on Game Gear is a dumbeddown, cartoony shooter for kids that bears little resemblance to the epic adventures on Saturn. For starters, the dragons you can choose from, of which there are three, don't even have riders. Instead it's just a brief foray into the foreground blasting pixelated ships and enemies out of the sky, but it's a lot less fun than it sounds. Since the game only came out in Japan, on a system very few people owned, it's incredibly rare, even more so than the comparatively obtainable Panzer Dragoon Saga. The primary difference between the two, however, is that Saga is actually worth the investment. Mini is not.

Phantom Dust
System: Xbox | Publisher: Majesco | Developer: Microsoft Game Studios | Release Date: 2005

Good-looking and unlike any other "card game" around, this PD was worth savoring.

If you own an Xbox or 360, this game can be had for cheap, and belongs in every gamer's collection.

When Yukio Futatsugi ended up at Microsoft Game Studios, and before he left active game development in order to manage the department, he cooked up a little corker named Phantom Dust, which he deliberately named using the letters P and D in order to keep the spirit of Panzer Dragoon burning. Like Panzer, Phantom Dust was set in a postapocalyptic world, but this time the protagonist had no memory of his former self. Unlike Panzer, Phantom Dust was not technically a shooter. It was generally described as a kind of card game, although any similarity between Dust and something like Culdcept or Yu-Gi-Oh! were minimal at best. With the world in disarray, and nearly everyone having lost all of their memories, the Espers -warriors who can control the dust on the world's surface and bend and shape it into powerful attacks and defensive abilities -- are all competing to find the legendary Ruins, which hold the key to the mysteries of Phantom Dust. The original Japanese game was released entirely in English, and had been intended as an eventual first-party release by Microsoft Game Studios in the U.S. But for whatever reason, the powers that be at MSG HQ, the same people who released such "gems" as Brute Force and Kung Fu Chaos as first-party titles, let Phantom Dust go to small East Coast publisher Majesco, where the game languished and suffered from a miniscule ad campaign. That's a shame, because that meant that most U.S. gamers missed out on -- along with the under-appreciated Otogi 2 -- one of the most satisfying and original Xbox games to come out of Japan, regardless of console. Phantom Dust is, despite the card concept, basically an action game. Players run around the cavernous, ruined arenas, picking up skills and building arsenals on the fly. By running over a "token" a player can then map a particular temporary ability to one of the four primary buttons on the Xbox controller. The player is then free to use those limited abilities in battle, either alone or accompanied by an NPC ally, needing simply to recharge his arsenal by finding more tokens on the playfield, like weapon spawns in a first-person shooter. The rock-paper-scissors dynamics of the battle engine worked very well, and Phantom Dust offered tremendous replay value (and foresight) by implementing head-to-head online functionality. Building and mastering your deck was of utmost importance in online battles, as an unbalanced deck spelled doom for the amateur Duster. Knowing what to use in the right situations from the five different "schools" - Psycho, Optical, Nature, Ki, and Faith -- was crucial to success in the online arena. The game was visually rich, using a unique cel-shaded visual style similar to techniques employed in Jet Set Radio Future. Character models were cut from a classic cyberpunk mold, reminiscent of the Mad Max movies, and the moody oranges and blues of the arenas helped set a distinctly futuristic tone. Because Futatsugi would spend the years following Phantom Dust's release managing the progress of other development teams' games as MSG's design manager in Japan meant that the proposed Dust sequel would never materialize. However, not all hope is lost. In a somewhat unexpected turn, Futatsugi is hoping to license the game he helped create for a future sequel -- you're hearing this right -- on the Nintendo DS. Since Microsoft is letting some of its Rare franchises (Banjo) go to the DS, this isn't as unprecedented a move as one might think, although it is somewhat surprising. But if Futatsugi has his way, the final chapter of Phantom Dust hasn't been written just yet.

Yukio Futatsugi and Team Andromeda had nothing to do with the development of Panzer Dragoon Mini. But he'd like a copy. Also, Phantom Dust, one of the most critically acclaimed, unplayed Xbox games to come out of Japan. Futatsugi discusses yet another missed opportunity. 1UP: Why did Microsoft suddenly not publish Phantom Dust in America? I'm glad Majesco picked Phantom Dust up, but it kind of marginalized it, whereas if it had been published by Microsoft, it would have conveyed a lot more confidence in the product, and received a higher profile. They'll publish Brute Force, but pass on Phantom Dust? I don't get Microsoft sometimes.

YF: When I joined Microsoft five years ago, there were a lot more people around that understood games, in both Japan and America. But Microsoft as a company, when people smell money, or when people think the business is going to make a lot of money, they start gathering at the game division. Business people who want to be part of the new thing, and that's when things start to become weird, when you're dealing with people who are only interested in the business and don't understand games or game quality. That's why Phantom Dust got swallowed up and it wasn't released by Microsoft. I think that since the game has tactical features in it, the marketing types at Microsoft U.S. assumed it was a game that was too difficult. 1UP: If you could find a way, would you make a sequel to Phantom Dust? YF: I do want to. If I had a chance I'd want to make a sequel, and as a matter of fact I'd been planning the sequel. I wanted to improve the graphics and change the game rules a bit for the sequel. I had everything planned out in my mind for it. 1UP: Now is that a Microsoft Game Studios property or license, and could you even do another one if you didn't work at MSG? What's involved? Would they license the property to you since they obviously don't have any plans to do one themselves? YF: When I talked with my boss at Microsoft recently to tell him I was going to quit I said "I know you guys aren't going to create a sequel to Phantom Dust, so if I wanted to make one myself, could you let me use the property with a small licensing fee?" So they said "OK" if I create it on Xbox 360 or Xbox 3, or whatever, but if I were to make the sequel on DS, it would be difficult. 1UP: Is the Nintendo DS technically able to handle what you have in mind for a sequel? YF: Well, the visuals of course are not possible to do in the way the original game looked, but in terms of the game system it's very possible.

1UP: Hell, any sequel would be great. I know a lot of gamers love Phantom Dust. Another thing about Phantom Dust is the initials of the title are "P.D." Was this an intentional homage to Panzer Dragoon? YF: I did it on purpose, since the previous games I worked on that sold the most were Panzer Dragoon games, I named my Xbox game 'Phantom Dust' to carry the luck. 1UP: With Phantom Dust you may have run into a little bit of bad luck because of Microsoft's handling of it, but would you make another game with " P.D." in the title? YF: [Laughs] I don't know if the next one will be a "P.D." title or not. As you can tell now, the focus of Phantom Dust are the magical powers, the "ESP" powers, but that wasn't the original

concept. The original concept for Phantom Dust actually involved dragons, so that's why I wanted to use " P.D." It changed after that, though. So I chose a name using those letters. 1UP: Panzer Dragoon Mini for Game Gear. What's up with that? YF: [Laughs] My only involvement I had with Panzer Drgaoon Mini was to approve the packaging, everything else was handled by Sega of America. Nobody I know owns it, and we have no idea who developed it. Hell, I want a copy. [Laughs]

"If I were to make [a Phantom Dust] sequel on DS, it would be difficult."

1UP: Panzer Dragoon, when I think about it, seems like it could run on the Nintendo DS. Although it seems unlikely to happen, do you think Sega could technically port one of these games to DS? YF: Viewing the specs, I think it could probably go to the DS. But if Sega came up to me and asked me to port this to the DS, I don't think I'd be interested in revisiting a past project. So instead of doing a port, I'd rather do a whole new game for DS. But Sega has changed. Now they're a pachinko company, it's not the Sega it used to be. Now the Panzer series, looking at the numbers, it didn't sell that well, so I doubt that Sega would do something like that again.

What the users expect from the Panzer series is nothing less than the most the latest machines can produce. They want to see us push the hardware. So if you think of a Panzer coming out today, you'd want to see it on 360 or PS3 today, and that would need a 10 million dollar budget. People don't realize how much these things cost to develop, or how many copies we'd have to sell to actually make a profit. But if someone asked to make a new Panzer, what I'd probably do is create a Panzer Dragoon game on PSP, with a budget of 3 million or so. That's more feasible. It's got the beautiful widescreen, so we could make it look beautiful. 1UP: You don't think the DS stylus would lend itself to some fast gameplay? Or would it be too easy? YF: If we did one on the DS it'd be possible to create new gameplay styles too.

The captivating aural and visual beauty of gaming's greatest dragon saga.
The Panzer Dragoon series has always been widely appreciated for its unconventional use of organic textures, colors and mechanical designs to present the game world's futuristic milieu, instead of relying on cliched metals and cybernetic parts to tell the tale. The music, too, has always been an integral component in purveying the windswept, epic dragon versus military showdown. Scores of synthetic brass and strings swirl in cry out from the ramparts as rider and dragon rush in headlong against incredible odds. And yet, somehow, the pair always win. In this edition of Sights and Sounds, we're happy to showcase the music and images that helped shape the unique, one-of-a-kind vibe the Panzer games are so fondly remembered for, and to offer a hope of what might yet lie in store.

The captivating aural and visual beauty of gaming's greatest dragon saga.

The captivating aural and visual beauty of gaming's greatest dragon saga.