A decade ago, Cozy Okada, one of the original founders of Atlus, lead the Shin Megami Tensei team. Okada left the company in 2003 and formed Gaia. His studio worked on Folklore with Game Republic, the Atlus USA published Monster Kingdom: Jewel Kingdom, and was signed by Nintendo to create Cosmic Walker for Wii.
Gaia’s biggest hit, though, was a clever iPhone game called Sword & Poker, which blended RPG elements with good old Poker. After Cosmic Walker faded into memory, Gaia’s fate was unclear, with their website closed. However, Okada has been making games and Gaia, in some form, still exists.
Gaia and Konami got together to create Dracolle & Poker, a spinoff of Konami’s money making Dragon Collection series with the fantasy-meets-Poker gameplay from Sword & Poker. The game was released for GREE in Japan last year.
The bad news is Dracolle & Poker was, unfortunately, shut down sometime last year, too. Still, it’s nice to see Okada around creating games and I’m looking forward to seeing what he develops next.
