Grandia (video game)
Grandia is a role-playing video game, developed by Game Arts and published by ESP Software for the Sega Saturn console as the first game in their "Grandia" series. Released in Japan in 1997, the game was ported to the PlayStation in 1999, with an English version of the game appearing on the platform in North America in the following September by Sony Computer Entertainment, and in Europe in 2000 by Ubi Soft. The game was produced by much of the same staff who worked on the company's previous role-playing endeavor, the "Lunar" series, including producer Yoichi Miyagi and composer Noriyuki Iwadare.
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.