THE HISTORY OF Rez
The Dreamcast may have been Sega’s swan song in the console business, but in going down swinging it also led to some of the most original and innovative titles in its history. That go-for-broke mentality gave the opportunity to create new experiences and genres that might attract a new audience instead of just the hardcore gamer. It was for this reason that producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, already an arcade legend due to the Sega Rally series, moved to the console side to do something different under his new Shibuya-based division (away from Sega’s then headquarters in Haneda), first simply known as AM9 but later it became its own subsidiary called United Game Artists (UGA). The studios focus was no longer on racing games or even another genre but rather an idea that would become Mizuguchi’s life’s work.
At first glance, UGA’s specialty was in music games, its first game was specifically designed to appeal to a casual female audience, but it ultimately wasn’t looking to emulate the emerging rhythm action games made popular with and Konami’s Bemani arcade titles. Set inside a virus-ridden cyberspace, can also be called a musical game, or by just breaking it down to its basic gameplay fundamentals, it’s a rail shooter in the style of where you lock-on to shoot down multiple targets. It’s typical for game developers to begin with core game mechanics and then build the other elements around it, but when we ask about the origins of , Mizuguchi replies, “To tell the
