Comix Zone box art by the late Tony DeZuniga:

Dragon Force was the 2nd game that I localized at Working Designs. I was responsible for translating the heroine's name as "Teiris" instead of the intended "Tillis". It's the only game we ever did a PAL localization of. I had to add a few football chants as well as FPS adjustments. Such a fun game!

Space Harrier recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and I still have no idea who designed the main illustration. (PS: Yoshinobu Iwai only illustrated the Japanese computer adaptations)

Jackie Chan for PC Engine turns 35 today!Box art by Takayuki Masuo / 増尾隆幸. vgdensetsu.net/takayukimasuo/

Dragon Force box art by Shinnosuke Hino / 日野 慎之助. It was originally developed by J-Force and, for his first game, Hino was appointed chara designer and illustrator. The company went bankrupt along the way, and the project was taken over by Sega with some former J-Force employees (including Hino).

Proposal for an unreleased simulation game for Famicom and PC Engine called Monkey Trainer / モンキー・トレーナー, dated April 1988. xcancel.com/studiohazuki...

Yasushi Yamaguchi drew a preliminary sketch for the box art of Sonic & Tails, the JPN ver. of Sonic Chaos. The final illus was outsourced while Hayato Takebayashi / 竹林はやと, a former member of Sega's Design Departement, designed the packaging. x.com/judy_totoya/... vgdensetsu.net/yasushiyamag...

Some of Atsushi Seimiya's works as a graphic designer during the Mega Drive era: 1) Blaze from Streets of Rage 1 2) the main character on the title screen of Cyber Police ESWAT 3) a background for the ending of Strider 4) the background of the level 5-1 of Revenge of Shinobi (with his signature)

The title screen for the Mark III version of Hokuto no Ken was drawn by a graphic designer who worked on World of Illusion (I assume it's either Hisato Fukumoto or Tamun ; there is no staff roll in Hokuto no Ken). xcancel.com/SiFi_TZK/sta...

Left: in-game illustration from the 1991 game Boy game Aretha II Right: a drawing made by the late Mutsumi Inomata for the April 1989 issue of Technopolis vgdensetsu.net/mutsumiinoma...

BREAKING: A UK judge has *denied* interim pay to the 31 employees fired by Rockstar Games last year, saying she "was unable to conclude that it appears likely that the tribunal will find that the principal reason for the claimants’ dismissal" was union organizing www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

R-Type for Game Boy illustrated by former Irem in-house artist Shinji Kubota / 窪田シンジ. Note that this box art is actually made of 2 different illustrations. xcancel.com/Kubota_4nz/s... vgdensetsu.net/shinjikubota

This is the first time I have seen this cartridge, designed for the Linguaphone Education Gear, the Japanese version of the Multi-Mega/CD-X. xcancel.com/mega_dra/sta... auctions.yahoo.co.jp/category/lis...

Coming from the guy who banned Horses from his store for no reason barely a month ago, that took some nerve.

This photo of the Zelda: A Link to the Past development team made me realise that it wasn't until Link's Awakening that a woman worked on a Zelda game developed by Nintendo. On home consoles, apart from voice actresses and translators, it wasn't until Wind Waker that women joined the dev teams.

"It Has To Happen Outside Of Japan" - Game Preservation Society Launches Patreon And Opens US Office Following Government Fund Freeze. (Image: @gamepres)

FukuD, background designer on NAM-1975, voiced the game's main character as well as some of its enemies. xcancel.com/engines_D/st... xcancel.com/engines_D/st...

With David Rosen's death, bad information about Sega as a company is starting to re-emerge across the internet. I will try to give a very condensed version of the Sega corporate shenanigans here as to clear some of the air. 🧵

The game Boy version of Contra turns 35 today! Box art by Hideaki Kodama / 小玉英章: vgdensetsu.net/hideakikodama/

Speaking of Kazuyuki Hoshino, he recently said that he designed the NiGHTS logo: "In my logo, only the “i” is lowercase. It represents a tiny “love” (pronounced [aɪ] in Japanese) just starting to bloom between Elliot and Claris — a small love story." xcancel.com/KazuyukiHosh...

In case you were wondering: Kazuyuki Hoshino drew this Sonic held by the late David Rosen. xcancel.com/KazuyukiHosh...

RIP Loren Carpenter (1947-2025), who I just learned passed away on December 21 at the age of 78. He worked for the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Division (where he helped create the Genesis effect for Star Trek 2, and Rescue on Fractalus!). He co-created RenderMan and was chief scientist of Pixar. 🤯

Has anyone documented or scanned these Nintendo brochures? Were probably aimed at retailers rather than direct consumers. Not sure if the images are fronts or interiors. SNES one saw additional use in international Nintendo mags (Chile, Sweden) but I'm looking for info on the actual brochures

Development on VGMdb was slower than we'd planned in 2025. We only have one developer, so our focus has been on maintenance and bug fixes rather than new features. We hope to continue making progress in 2026. If you're a web dev passionate about music and data, join our Discord to connect with us.

David Rosen, who helped create Sega and changed the coin-op industry forever, has passed away. www.replaymag.com/segas-dave-r... An absolute titan in video game history. May he rest in peace.

Now to shine a spotlight on others! It takes many, many communities to do the great work of game history - and they should be celebrated, dammit! Here are some places and people that deserve a highlight, along with things they put out this year.

The Mega Drive version of Gain Ground turns 35 today! Box art for the Japanese version by Sohhei Oshiba / 大柴宗平. vgdensetsu.net/sohheioshiba/ US version by Frank Cirocco. vgdensetsu.net/frankcirocco/

You can now also find PS2 manuals on this site. psinstructionmanual.com/ps2/ If you are looking for manuals for other consoles, you can find them on this other site (in addition to those scanned by the @gamingalexandria.bsky.social team): gamemanual.midnightmeattrain.com bsky.app/profile/gdri...

Flyercade has rescanned its arcade game flyers in higher resolution and resumed its updates this January. www.flyercade.com/archive/

A little late, but happy 2026! VGDensetsu will officially celebrate its 10th anniversary next month, and I will try to put up a gallery of Mega Drive box art for the occasion (several hundred illustrations whose authors have been identified).

Here is the 15th and final chapter in this series on the life and career of Rieko Kodama. vgdensetsu.net/riekokodama15 Dispo en VF vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamav...

Persona 30th anniversary illustration by Shigenori Soejima: www.sega.com/fr/persona xcancel.com/Atlus_West/s...

The box art for Pac-Man (Atari 5200) is signed but I don't think the artist has yet been identified. The same initials also appear on the unused box art for Pac-Man 5200 on page 169 of Art of Atari but the artist also isn't named there. The initials look to me like 'PL' or 'AL'

I have also added a list of games Kodama has worked on, a timeline, a gallery and a list of all the interviews she has given + liner notes and other comments she has written. vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamag... vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamaC... vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamag... vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamaG...

Gentle reminder: I've been working full-time on VGDensetsu for years, and although I've chosen to make my site freely accessible to everyone, I'm currently unable to make a living from it. So if you would like me to continue my work, please feel free to support me if you can. vgdensetsu.net/support/

Since 2012, Arthur O'Dwyer has had an updating web page called The Search for LONG0751 about a lost version of Adventure that was playable on Compuserve. It has long been one of the top early "missing" games. It is now found and playable: quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2025/12...

An early title screen (left) for Phantasy Star II (MD) compared to its final release (right). Besides the similar but nude single woman, the same planets are there, but a nice portrait of Alis/Arisa(?) disappeared for the final title screen.

For about a month now, someone has been uploading Dengeki Playstation magazine to archive.org. Over 100 issues are already available. archive.org/details/@use...

New blog post! I wrote about Father Christmas, the weirdly barebones Japan-exclusive CD-ROM game based on the British storybook. It's... not very good, so I didn't have much to say, but I *did* find some interesting stuff in here anyway. cdrom.ca/games/2025/1...

A new video showing the cancelled Famicom game Shōnen Majutsushi Indy / 少年魔術師インディ has been uploaded. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M_v... A book reusing elements from this game is being considered. www.gamespark.jp/article/2025... Chara design: Hiroshi Fuji / 冨士宏  Enemy design: Yūichirō Shinozaki / 篠崎雄一郎

Got it working!

I was serious! One more article to close out the year... Let's take a quick look at Sega's 1991 beat-em-up Riot City, a supposedly Japanese only game that has an English localization hidden away, as well as a little known alternate, spicy ending... 🔗 sudden-desu.net/entry/riot-c...

Vince Zampella, video game developer behind ‘Call of Duty' franchise, killed in crash www.resetera.com/threads/13...

Deep Fear is often presented as a Resident Evil clone (which it probably is). However, the game was already in development in 1995, more than three years before its release (and a year before Capcom's game) – an unusually long time for a game produced in the 1990s.

Musha Aleste turns 35. According to one former Naxat staffer, Naxat was going to publish it, but they were trying to get a Super Famicom development kit. x.com/superjarikun...

Design docs for 2 Data East games: The Great Ragtime Show / Boogie Wings and The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy. xcancel.com/KoizumiTakah...

Development cartridge of the unreleased Virtual Boy game Tekkō Muteki! Gagaga-in / 鉄鋼無敵! ガガガイン, AKA Invincible Iron Man Gagaga-In, via former Hudson Soft graphic designer Rurabou. Note the Eigting logo in the bottom right corner. xcancel.com/rurabou/stat... xcancel.com/rurabou/stat...

Those are the initials of Dirk John Wunderlich (DJW). He did the SNES box art for Super Troll Islands and confirmed he did the NES Europe art for ASC's The Trolls in Crazyland. He is credited in the manual for Snow White in Happily Ever After SNES but said it wasn't his (though perhaps he forgot)

the Cookie's Bustle nonsense continues ... the blueksy account @romhack.ing got suspended over it this time

Many years ago I went on a search for the creator of the 1982 arcade game BurgerTime. I located him as part of my own research project that unfortunately was postponed. His name is Yuji Gondo. Here is a list of games designed by Mr. Gondo presented here for the first time as part of my research. A🧵