Phantasy Star II

Year: 1989
Genre: JRPG
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Platform: Sega Mega Drive

Phantasy Star was a success for Sega. The game sold well enough for a sequel to be made quite quickly, and while one would be forgiven for expecting it to be a direct sequel again starring Alis, it turned out to be something else entirely and just as important to the growth of Japanese Role-Playing Games.

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Puggsy

Year: 1993
Genre: Platformer
Developer: Traveller’s Tales
Publisher: Psygnosis
Platform: Sega Mega Drive, Sega Mega CD, Commodore Amiga

Traveller’s Tales have an interesting history in that though they’ve been around since the early 90’s and have developed a lot of great selling games (i.e., the Lego series of games), they’ve never actually had their own intellectual property – they’ve always done work for other people. They started off working with Psygnosis (more recently known as Studio Liverpool and sadly made defunct by Sony Computer Entertainment) on Leander, an Amiga game similar to Shadow of the Beast and a game based on the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo (other console versions were handled by Probe Entertainment or an internal Psygnosis team). Their third game, Puggsy, is something a bit more special.

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