It was Team Andromeda — an internal R&D team at Sega of Japan — that first revealed the potential of the Sega Saturn. Its debut game was the on-rails shooter Panzer Dragoon. Part Space Harrier, part Dune, part Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Panzer Dragoon filled Sega Saturns around the globe with evocative 3D shooting action featuring a blue dragon and its rider. Over the course of three initial games — Panzer Dragoon (1995), Panzer Dragoon 2 Zwei (1996) and Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998) — Team Andromeda continued to mine this simple yet compelling premise: that of a rider and his dragon facing off against a mysterious empire. While 2002’s Panzer Dragoon Orta (developed by ex-Team Andromeda members who later joined another studio, Smilebit) kept the series going later, it was the role-playing game Panzer Dragoon Saga that ended up becoming the standout. Taken at face value, Panzer Dragoon and its much-improved successor, Panzer Dragoon 2 Zwei, offered just enough mythos to compel players to work through each game’s handful of beautifully realized stages to completion. However, given their fast-paced action setting, there was little time to dive deeper into the series’ fiction outside of their atmospheric CG cinematics. Panzer Dragoon Saga pivoted sharply from its predecessors, taking the unusual step of shifting from the on-rails shooter category. In order to pull off the exponential, ambitious growth of the Saga concept, Team Andromeda founders Yukio Futatsugi and Manabu Kusunoki had to grow the staff. In the story that… [Read full story]