Entertainment Software Publishing
"Grandia", which ESP released in 1997, was the first third-party Saturn title to breach 500,000 units in sales. Afterwards, ESP released titles including "Giren's Ambition" and "Baroque", later extending footholds into the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 platforms with titles like "" and "Abarenbo Princess".
Phoenix Games
Phoenix Games was a partnership between Dan Bress and Phil Edgren, and was a successor to the company Little Soldier Games, to which Bress and Edgren had both contributed before it was shut down. Ed Konstant of Little Soldier Games wrote a few products for Phoenix Games, including "The Book of Fantasy Miniatures" (1978) and the open-ended deduction game "Elementary Watson" (1978), whose printing was paid for by Gamescience in return for rights to the Little Soldier back catalog. Some transitional books between the companies, such as "The Book of Shamans" (1978) were published under the Little Soldier Games label, which was itself listed as a division of Phoenix Games. Phoenix Games continued on with Little Soldier's general fantasy role-playing game publications, but they also did broader work in the RPG field than Little Soldier had, supplementing their generic fantasy supplements with generic science-fiction supplements. Kerry Lloyd got his first book, a "generic fantasy" adventure called "The Mines of Keridav" (1979), published through Maryland game company Phoenix Games. Phoenix Games disappeared before the sequel, "The Demon Pits of Caeldo", could be published, so Lloyd decided to start his own gaming company, Gamelords. Phoenix Games also published the fantasy role-playing game supplements "The Book of Shamans" by Ed Lipsett and "The Book of Treasure" by Phil Edgren in 1978, and the fantasy adventure "The Lost Abbey of Calthonwey" by R. Norman Carter in 1979. Phoenix Games also published Ed Lipsett's series of science-fiction role-playing game supplements "Spacefarer's Guide to Planets: Sector One" (1978), "" (1979), "Spacefarer's Guide to Alien Monsters" (1979), and "Spacefarer's Guide to Alien Races" (1979). Lipsett's books led to his "Star Quest" (1983) game, Japan's first entirely original RPG.