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Sega’s acclaimed designer, director and producer, recognized for stewarding the basic Phantasy Star sequence and Skies of Arcadia, has handed away.
Rieko Kodama, the veteran designer, director and producer whose work graced many basic Sega titles together with the unique Phantasy Star sequence and Skies of Arcadia, handed away in May, aged 59. News of her passing was made public through a commemorate message within the employees roll of the just-released Genesis/Mega Drive Mini 2 plug-and-play system, with additional particulars withheld out of respect for her family and friends.
Born on March 25,1963, Rieko Kodama grew up in Japan’s Kanagawa prefecture, her free time occupied by varied hobbies together with drawing, manga, archaeology and fandom for booming sports activities like F1 racing and soccer. Kodama’s mother and father ran a kissaten (a down-tempo various to a restaurant) in the course of the well-known “Invader growth”, and Kodama would typically go to after-hours to play Space Invaders and different video games her mother and father had put in.
After ending highschool, Kodama’s pursuits have been torn between artwork and archaeology; her break up focus brought on her to fail her college exams, at which level she efficiently utilized to a vocational college to review graphic design with an eye fixed on a profession in promoting. Upon commencement, she efficiently utilized to work at Sega on the encouragement of a senior classmate who’d joined the yr earlier than, with the hopes of having the ability to contribute and develop inside a brand new and as-yet-undefined {industry}.
A number of months after becoming a member of Sega, Kodama made her first direct contribution to a recreation through the SG-1000 title Champion Boxing the place, underneath the tutelage of Flicky designer Yoshiki Kawasaki, she would contribute pixel artwork for the opponent boxers and background parts. (This recreation, which additionally doubled because the debut title for the now-legendary programmer Yu Suzuki, additionally made the uncommon transition from dwelling consoles to arcades.) From there, Kodama labored on a continuing string of video games throughout arcades and Sega’s SG-1000 and Mark III (Master System) consoles, contributing designs and pixel throughout a number of tasks the place wanted, together with arcade video games like Ninja Princess and Quartet and the Master System recreation Alex Kidd in Miracle World, for which she drew nearly all the backgrounds, contributed to the title display screen and drew a number of of the illustrations used within the recreation handbook. (Kodama was credited underneath a wide range of pseudonyms, the commonest being “Phoenix Rie”; Kodama had supplied many solutions or non-answers as to the origins of this nickname, however lately revealed it was borrowed from the character Phoenix Ikki from the favored manga Saint Seiya.)
Kodama would take additional cost on 1987’s Phantasy Star, an bold Master System role-playing recreation that sought to each tackle and surpass Enix’s Dragon Quest; for this recreation, Kodama wouldn’t solely devise the visible aesthetic of the sport’s universe but in addition immediately designed and dotted two of the 4 playable characters, together with the principle heroine Alisa, in addition to dealing with the pixel artwork for the sport’s battle/menu backgrounds, occasion scenes and incidental characters. Upon launch, Phantasy Star instantly established itself as each a marquee Master System/Mark III recreation and a top-class console RPG, in addition to a brand new benchmark for unique dwelling console video games from Sega and a feather within the cap for its growth group, which included the prodigious programmer Yuji Naka and fellow character designer Naoto Ohshima.

Sega’s transition to the Mega Drive/Genesis dwelling {hardware} would see Kodama contributing graphics as a pinch-hitter on many early titles, together with arcade-to-home conversions like Altered Beast and Shadow Dancer, the Japan-only conversion of Falcom’s Sorcerian and unique titles together with The Revenge of Shinobi and Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse, in addition to supervising the character design and drawing particular occasion scenes for Phantasy Star II and modifying and contributing to Sega Players Enjoy Club, an internally-produced journal that includes manga, illustrations and interviews from a lot of Sega’s dwelling employees. Kodama was additionally chosen by colleagues Naka and Ohshima to help on Sonic the Hedgehog, the explosively in style high-speed mascot platformer that exemplified the power of Sega’s elite dwelling recreation builders and catapulted the Sega Genesis to industry-leading success; Kodama contributed stage and background graphics to each the unique recreation and its sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
From there, Kodama was formally elevated to co-director and group chief on Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium, the ultimate entry within the basic Phantasy Star sequence and one other watermark in early console RPG historical past; Kodama not solely managed and co-ordinated the group and contributed to occasion construction and recreation circulation but in addition designed most of the characters and labored on character and automobile sprites, battle and overworld background graphics and assisted on the sport’s voluminous comic-style occasion scenes. Kodama would instantly go on to direct the launch-window Sega Saturn RPG Magic Knight Rayearth, based mostly on the CLAMP manga of the identical identify, adopted by the 1998 survival horror title Deep Fear, closing out Sega’s dwelling console period with a manufacturing position on the cult Sega Dreamcast “sky-pirate” fantasy RPG Skies of Arcadia, developed by the autonomous Sega studio Overworks. (An expanded port, Skies of Arcadia Legends, was launched for the Nintendo GameDice. in 2003.)
Upon Overworks’ merger again into Sega, Kodama continued to provide varied video games aimed primarily on the home Japanese market, together with the acclaimed handheld RPG sequence seventh Dragon, developed in collaboration with Etrian Odyssey sequence director Kazuya Niinou, studio imageepoch and composer Yuzo Koshiro. (Only the ultimate entry on this sequence, the 2016 3DS recreation seventh Dragon III: VFD, was launched globally.) In latest years, Kodama additionally labored as lead producer on the Sega Ages legacy reissue sequence for Nintendo Switch, which not solely noticed her revisit a number of of her previous works but in addition allowed her to see real-time impressions and recollections from gamers the world over through social media, an indulgence not afforded to her in a long time prior.

In 2019, the the nineteenth Annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) awarded Kodama the Pioneer Award, citing her accomplishments as “a trailblazing recreation artist, director and producer who established her profession throughout an period through which ladies recreation designers’ contributions and exercise within the {industry} have been much less acknowledged”; in typical humble trend, Kodama attributed the award to the collaborativebaorate efforts of her varied colleagues and the tradition of her employer, fairly than any specific private accomplishment. She stays certainly one of simply three Japanese builders to obtain this award, alongside former colleague Yu Suzuki and Parappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura.
Rieko Kodama shall be remembered for her inventive contributions to many basic video games spanning thirty-five years, her direct affect on the broadening of Sega’s oeuvre and as an early outstanding feminine chief within the Japanese recreation {industry}. Rest in peace.
Selected gameography:
Champion Boxing (SG-1000)
Ninja Princess (arcade)
Quartet (arcade)
Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Sega Master System)
Phantasy Star (Sega Master System)
Phantasy Star II (Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
Sorcerian (Sega Mega Drive)
Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium (Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
Magic Knight Rayearth (Sega Saturn)
Deep Fear (Sega Saturn)
Skies of Arcadia (Sega Dreamcast)
Skies of Arcadia Legends (Nintendo GameDice)
seventh Dragon III: Project VFD (Nintendo 3DS)
Sega Ages sequence (Nintendo Switch)
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