A tribute to Working Designs.
We recently passed a sad anniversary in the gaming world. A little more than one year ago, on December 12th, 2005, legendary game publisher Working Designs announced it would close up shop for good. Today, even as we celebrate a holiday bounty of hot new consoles and great new games, let's take a moment to look back at the life and times of one of the great companies in gaming history, Working Designs.
Working Designs began its life as a software company specializing in accounting programs. When the lead programmer died, Victor Ireland, fellow programmer and video game junkie, took over. At the time, Ireland was a writer for VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, an early 90's gaming mag. He was a big fan of Japanese games and dreamed of bringing them to an American audience. Ireland convinced the head of Working Designs to leave the thrilling, fast-paced world of accounting software and become a game publisher.
WD burst onto the gaming scene in the early 1990's with a mission. They wanted to introduce American gamers to the scary and exciting new world of Japanese RPGs. At that time, RPGs were a rare breed in the States, despite their overwhelming popularity in Japan. Working Designs brought us a new species of game, filled with unique characters, quirky humor, and quality gameplay.
What set Working Designs titles apart from other games was the amount of time and effort they put into polishing and perfecting the games they brought over. WD never made a simple port with a rough translation. Their localization teams would often scrap most, if not all, of the dialogue from the original game and rewrite it with American audiences in mind. They would also make little tweaks to gameplay and changes in the storyline when needed to improve on the original. Their titles weren't so much ports of Japanese games as they were enhanced "director's cut" versions.
From the very beginning, Working Designs took advantage of the new futuristic Compact Disc technology to feature extensive voice acting in their games. Back when they first started, voice acting was nearly unheard of, and when it was used, it was more of a gimmick than a real storytelling device. And, unlike other less than stellar efforts , the voice acting in WD games was generally pretty good.
WD was known for not taking themselves too seriously. Their games are filled with hidden little humerous real-life references and odd non-sequiturs. Many of their games also include a "blooper reel" which features the voice actors flubbing their lines.
In the beginning, Working Designs published games for the TurboGrafx-16. Despite the overwhelming runaway success of the TG-16, WD decided to move to Sega's consoles. The Sega CD housed much of their early work, including the first two Lunar Games, Vay, and the oddly-named Popful Mail. In fact, Working Designs games were one of the few reasons to even own a Sega CD (the other reasons being Shining Force CD, and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch: Make my Video).
Eventually, WD migrated to the Saturn, where they released Albert Odyssey, Magic Knight: Rayearth, and the critically acclaimed Dragon Force. However, a major falling-out between WD and Sega of America (which was partially caused by a tiff over booth space at E3) caused WD to move its future releases, including remakes of the original two Lunar titles, to the Playstation. The PS1 would host, among others, the Lunar remakes, Alundra, and the Arc the Lad Collection.
The PS2 would be the home of Working Designs' final game, Growlanser Generations. Although they did work on a title based on the Ganbare Goemon series, Sony would not approve it for release.
Working Designs' titles came in all 31 flavors of RPG goodness. There are 2D platformer-style RPGs like Popful Mail and Cadash. Zelda-type action RPGs like Alundra and Shining Wisdom. Tactical RPGs like Growlanser Generations and Dragon Force. Also, traditional turn-based games like the Lunar series and Vay.
WD also released top-down rail shooters including RayCrisis, Thunder Force V, and Silhouette Mirage. These games were released under the Spaz label, which was eventually phased out (most likely because the name Spaz sounds pretty dumb).
Working Designs pioneered the idea of including extra stuff with their games. They knew full well that nerds have an irresistable attraction to swag. They also know that hardcore gamers would pay extra money to have a fancy display set that they could show off to their friends. (Hardcore collectors are often known to get their sustenance by feeding off the envy of their friends, much like vampires do with blood.)
Both Playstation Lunar games, the Arc the Lad collection, and Growlanser Generations were available in deluxe edition box sets. These games were packaged in a jumbo set with a full metric ton of extras. Each deluxe set came with the game, a special hardcover manual, a soundtrack, and an Omake Box. The Omake Box (omake being a Japanese word that roughly translates to "phat stash of loot") contained awesome goodies like pendants, sets of cards, or wristwatches.
So why did Working Designs close down in what was a very positive environment for their type of games? In an interview with Gamespot, Victor Ireland blamed the inability to get the titles he wanted to localize approved. Growlanser 2, Growlanser 3, and Goemon were all nixed by Sony on the same day back in 2001. Although Growlanser Generations was eventually approved and released, the company had been losing so much money by not releasing anything else in the meantime that they had to eventually go out of business.
If you haven't experienced any of Working Designs' games yet, do yourself a favor and head on down to your local game store and check out one of their classic titles. And after you're done, have a moment of silence for one of the true greats in the history of video games.
