Eurogamer is running a pretty neat piece on Yukio Futatsugi, the creator of the Panzer Dragoon franchise. Like every great piece they go into detail on how he grew up, the schools he went to and how he ended up at SEGA. One of the neat pieces of information was that at age 23 he took over Team Andromeda. Think about it, this dude was in charge of many people older than him at the age of 23. He was 25 when Panzer Dragoon came out. Crazy!
“I handed in several proposals, one of which was Panzer Dragoon,” says Futatsugi. “I’d only been there about two years, but they accepted my proposal and put me in charge of the project. Just like that I was making Panzer Dragoon for the Saturn launch. It was a difficult project. All the programmers and designers were above me in the company but I had to tell them what to do, which was tricky. But I was young, so I could be stubborn.”– Yukio Futatsugi
The piece goes on and talks about his work after leaving SEGA, working at Microsoft Studios and releasing Phantom Dust (a great Xbox game, if you haven’t played it). He also confirms that Crimson Dragon is still in the works!
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His departure from Sega and the suicides was peculiarly vague.
It doesn’t look like he was around for Orta… though the tag line on Orta acknowledges that he was.
If the delay to Crimson Dragon is due in part to them adding support for controllers, I’m all for it. I’m really looking forward to that game, and it’s just a shame that it won’t be published by Sega.