Prior to founding Genius Sonority, the studio behind games such as Pokémon Colosseum, Dragon Quest Swords and The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave, company president, Manabu Yamana, ran a studio named Heart Beat.
Back in 1995, Heart Beat developed Dragon Quest VI on the SNES and later Dragon Quest VII on the original PlayStation.
Prior to Heart Beat’s work on Dragon Quest VI and VII, Manabu was personally involved as a programmer on the series right from the first game. Later, he was made one of the chief programmers, which was a role he filled up until Dragon Quest VII.
Now, Yamana intends to re-launch his old company after a decade of dormancy, he revealed over Twitter. More details of the re-launch will be shared next year, Yamana says, and mentions that Heart Beat will be doing business differently from where it left off.
Reviving Heart Beat is a little odd, as Genius Sonority is already a rather small studio, consisting of just 16 employees. It makes one wonder why Yamana isn’t choosing to ramp up staff at Genius instead of reviving an older company—unless, of course, Heart Beat is being set up to develop games for non-Nintendo platforms, which we aren’t certain if Genius can do at the moment, as both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are shareholders.
Earlier in the year, we had the opportunity to interview Manabu Yamana, and asked him about his goals in an increasingly competitive videogame market. At the time, Yamana informed us that his goal is to satisfy “high-level gamers” with cheaper-priced downloadable games. Two of these have already been released on the Nintendo eShop—The Denpa Men and The Denpa Men 2.
“The goal our company wants to achieve in the consumer games market is to become an existence leading the development of deep, immersive games with high originality in the download-only market,” Yamana said.
Food for thought:
Before anyone asks, the Dragon Quest VII remake for Nintendo 3DS is being developed by ArtePiazza, who also developed the Nintendo DS remakes of Dragon Quest IV, V and VI.
A big thanks to Siliconera reader, Zero Destiny, for the tip!
