TITLE
Panzer Dragoon Saga: An oral history
AUTHOR
James Mielke
PUBLICATION
Polygon
YEAR
2018
ARTICLE TYPE
Interview
FROM THE ARTICLE
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 follows, you’ll learn about how this peculiar RPG — designed to be a solitary, avant-garde counterculture experience — wound up becoming the Sega Saturn’s last great hope. As you’ll learn firsthand from the people who were there, not all legends have a happy ending. This is one of those stories.
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Sega
Team Andromeda
GAMES MENTIONED
Panzer Dragoon
Panzer Dragoon II Zwei
Panzer Dragoon Saga
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Shin Futakawame
Yukio Futatsugi
Heather Hawkins
Takashi Iwade
Saori Kobayashi
Masahiro Kumono
Manabu Kusunoki
Akihiko Mukaiyama
Hitoshi Nakanishi
Norihiro Nishiyama
Satoshi Sakai
Jina Ishiwatari Tsukahara
Katsumi Yokota
Kentaro Yoshida
PLATFORMS MENTIONED
Saturn