Team Andromeda rises again?

[07.21.99] » Contrary to earlier reports, the development team behind the Panzer Dragoon series appears to be largely intact.

    The RPG world considered it a sad day indeed last December when word came that Sega's Team Andromeda had disbanded. Details were sketchy, but it was already known that team members had already left to work on one of the Dreamcast's Japanese launch titles, Pen Pen Tricelon. Team Andromeda was responsible for the renown Panzer Dragoon series of Saturn games, which began with two groundbreaking rail shooters (Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon Zwei), and concluded with the only RPG in the set - Panzer Dragoon Saga.

    Despite being the team's only RPG title to date, Saga was critically acclaimed and its limited production run of a sparse few thousand copies is still sought after today. The game's fate was sealed by a US release that was well past the Saturn's point of viability. Was this to be the anti-climatic end for such an accomplished development team? Apparently not. A Sega representative recently commented that "yes, they are still intact and help out on other projects from time to time. [We have] No information on what their current project is." While this comes as a surprise after hearing nothing from the team in the years since Panzer Dragoon Saga's release, we can only hope that Sega takes advantage of the strong franchise name to recreate a world that was missed out on by so many gamers.