Hero of Legend
Member
I made an article about this at a site I write for, I will NOT link to it because I don't want to blatantly advertise, so instead I will rewrite it here as I would making a normal thread. 
This started when I found a credits video for the 3DS version of the game and shockingly Arzest was one of the companies involved with the game (the other being Spike Chunsoft, how about that), but now Arzest also added the game to their Japanese site (it's not up yet on their English page):
http://www.arzest.jp/p1_works.html
First a history lesson.
Most know Naoto Ohshima as one of the creators of Sonic, most specifically his character design as well as Robotnik's. He would work at Sega on the series all the way until 1998 when his final game at Sega would be Sonic Adventure 1 on Dreamcast.
The roles he took for the game were CG Movie Producer, Story Event Coordinator, one of the Event Motion Designers, and Opening Movie Editor. In the following year, he and several other Sega veterans, including Yoji Iishi and Yutaka Sugano would leave Sega and all form Artoon.
Yoji Iishi worked on many of Sega's early arcade classics, and also was the main man behind Flicky. Yutaka Sugano is most well known for his work on the Panzer Dragoon series.
Anyway, their first game was Pinobee for the GBA, which later got a PS1 port. But their most famous works include Blinx the Time Sweeper for Xbox and Blue Dragon for Xbox 360 with Microsoft, and also Yoshi's Topsy-Turvy for GBA and Yoshi's Island DS with Nintendo.
Eventually in 2005 they were bought by AQ Interactive, who also owned Cavia and Feelplus. Things went fine and dandy until 2010 when all of the sudden AQ decided to absorb all three developers and making everything under the AQ name. Artoon was essentially no more as a company of its own.
Over the next couple of years however they would be known to specifically work on a few more games, all of which on Wii. First was Club Penguin: Game Day with Disney, Flingsmash with Nintendo, and original IP, and their swan song; The Last Story with Nintendo and Mistwalker.
Apparently they may have also worked on Fortune Street (it's under the AQ name), as apparently assets from Club Penguin: Game Day exist in the game.
Only Flingsmash actually retained Artoon's name, all others were under the AQ name.
Anyway, in 2010 after Artoon was absorbed, Ohshima and the other founders left the company, and formed Arzest.
Arzest would straight away connect with Nintendo, and their first task would be to create mini-games for Wii Play Motion. Their games were Spooky Search, Jump Park, and Cone Zone. What some might NOT know is that one other among the rest of the group of devs to work on the game, was none other than Prope, formed by another creator of Sonic; Yuji Naka.
The best thing? The two had the same idea for a mini-game!
Yuji Naka says in the Iwata Asks of the game:
Trigger Twist was Prope's only mini-game in Wii Play Motion.
Afterwards, Arzest would help out Nintendo by adding SpotPass support to Mii Plaza's features including Find Mii II, StreetPass Map and Puzzle Swap. They also would do some character modeling for the formerly 3DS-exclusive Time Travellers for Level-5 and help out with Terra Battle with Mistwalker throughout, including making some oddly familiar looking characters for the game...
Eventually in 2013 their first full retail game would be revealed; Yoshi's New Island, carrying the torch from their predecessor. Oddly enough they got the now defunct Imageepoch to help with character model animation.
So after doing some mobile/browser work, they'd eventually work on another 3DS retail project for Nintendo, and that's where Mario & Sonic Rio 3DS comes in.
I've already compiled their spot on the credits as seen below:
This marks the first time one of Sonic's creators has officially worked on a new Sonic project (if you don't count Yuji Naka being asked via email by M2 how he got the Spin Dash into Sonic 1 in Sonic Jam, for them to get it in 3D Sonic 1 on 3DS) since Yuji Naka's departure in 2006, AND is Ohshima's first Sonic project period since 1998!
There were some claims however that Naoto Ohshima was credited under "Special Thanks" in Sonic Generations (mostly Wikipedia pages), and so I've checked the credits of both the HD version and the 3DS version and never saw his name mentioned under Special Thanks in either, so I highly doubt he had any involvement whatsoever.
And that concludes the history of Arzest.
I hope you liked it.
This started when I found a credits video for the 3DS version of the game and shockingly Arzest was one of the companies involved with the game (the other being Spike Chunsoft, how about that), but now Arzest also added the game to their Japanese site (it's not up yet on their English page):
http://www.arzest.jp/p1_works.html
First a history lesson.
Most know Naoto Ohshima as one of the creators of Sonic, most specifically his character design as well as Robotnik's. He would work at Sega on the series all the way until 1998 when his final game at Sega would be Sonic Adventure 1 on Dreamcast.
The roles he took for the game were CG Movie Producer, Story Event Coordinator, one of the Event Motion Designers, and Opening Movie Editor. In the following year, he and several other Sega veterans, including Yoji Iishi and Yutaka Sugano would leave Sega and all form Artoon.
Yoji Iishi worked on many of Sega's early arcade classics, and also was the main man behind Flicky. Yutaka Sugano is most well known for his work on the Panzer Dragoon series.
Anyway, their first game was Pinobee for the GBA, which later got a PS1 port. But their most famous works include Blinx the Time Sweeper for Xbox and Blue Dragon for Xbox 360 with Microsoft, and also Yoshi's Topsy-Turvy for GBA and Yoshi's Island DS with Nintendo.
Eventually in 2005 they were bought by AQ Interactive, who also owned Cavia and Feelplus. Things went fine and dandy until 2010 when all of the sudden AQ decided to absorb all three developers and making everything under the AQ name. Artoon was essentially no more as a company of its own.
Over the next couple of years however they would be known to specifically work on a few more games, all of which on Wii. First was Club Penguin: Game Day with Disney, Flingsmash with Nintendo, and original IP, and their swan song; The Last Story with Nintendo and Mistwalker.
Apparently they may have also worked on Fortune Street (it's under the AQ name), as apparently assets from Club Penguin: Game Day exist in the game.
Only Flingsmash actually retained Artoon's name, all others were under the AQ name.
Anyway, in 2010 after Artoon was absorbed, Ohshima and the other founders left the company, and formed Arzest.
Arzest would straight away connect with Nintendo, and their first task would be to create mini-games for Wii Play Motion. Their games were Spooky Search, Jump Park, and Cone Zone. What some might NOT know is that one other among the rest of the group of devs to work on the game, was none other than Prope, formed by another creator of Sonic; Yuji Naka.
The best thing? The two had the same idea for a mini-game!
Yuji Naka says in the Iwata Asks of the game:
Trigger Twist was Prope's only mini-game in Wii Play Motion.
Afterwards, Arzest would help out Nintendo by adding SpotPass support to Mii Plaza's features including Find Mii II, StreetPass Map and Puzzle Swap. They also would do some character modeling for the formerly 3DS-exclusive Time Travellers for Level-5 and help out with Terra Battle with Mistwalker throughout, including making some oddly familiar looking characters for the game...
Eventually in 2013 their first full retail game would be revealed; Yoshi's New Island, carrying the torch from their predecessor. Oddly enough they got the now defunct Imageepoch to help with character model animation.
So after doing some mobile/browser work, they'd eventually work on another 3DS retail project for Nintendo, and that's where Mario & Sonic Rio 3DS comes in.
I've already compiled their spot on the credits as seen below:
This marks the first time one of Sonic's creators has officially worked on a new Sonic project (if you don't count Yuji Naka being asked via email by M2 how he got the Spin Dash into Sonic 1 in Sonic Jam, for them to get it in 3D Sonic 1 on 3DS) since Yuji Naka's departure in 2006, AND is Ohshima's first Sonic project period since 1998!
There were some claims however that Naoto Ohshima was credited under "Special Thanks" in Sonic Generations (mostly Wikipedia pages), and so I've checked the credits of both the HD version and the 3DS version and never saw his name mentioned under Special Thanks in either, so I highly doubt he had any involvement whatsoever.
And that concludes the history of Arzest.
I hope you liked it.
