Working Designs is a small development/publishing house that specilizes in finding some of the best Japanese titles available and giving us stateside gamers a chance to get in on the action. They've been delivering high quality games since the Turbografix 16 and have developed a signature style of addictive gameplay and superb writing. Most recently they've given us Lunar and Vanguard Bandits, two of my favorite RPGs on the PlayStation. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue will probably (hopefully) make its way into your PlayStation pretty soon, and Working Desings has two titles, Silpheed and Gungriffon Blaze, lined up for the Playstation 2 launch in October. I had a chance to ask Victor Ireland, President of Working Desings, some questions and get the skinny on their new titles, their creative approach, and those ever-so-sweet RPG translations.

My wife hates it whenever I make a significant electronics purchase; she doesn't mind the money spent as much as the buyer's anxiety I always experience after plunking down a few hundred dollars for something I know will be obsolete within a few months. The DVD player, the stereo, the camcorder are all sources of great anxiety to me whenever I think about them. Should I have waited for them to go down in price? Could I have gotten a better deal if I had looked around a little more? Did I get the right brand? Because of this tendency to second guess myself, I try to avoid making major purchases of things new to the market. I waited a year to see if DVD would really take hold, and it did. I had intended on breaking the waiting restriction with the Playstation 2. I didn't think that there could be a surer bet. At the beginning of the summer I started putting pennies away in anticipation of October 26th. I would be the first one on my block to own it, and it would be glorious. There was no doubt. After all, Newsweek even ran a cover story on it. Sure, there were rumors about an X-Box and a Dolphin, but what were they in the face of Sony?

This past summer I reviewed bleem!, a Playstation emulator introduced at E3 last spring. We rarely revisit software titles but because of the ongoing legal battles between bleem! and Sony, and the recent release of version 1.5b, we at GamesFirst! decided to take a second look. The initial review can be found in it's entirety here; let's get this updated review started by sharing a December 13, 1999 press release:

As you are by now no doubt aware, the stateside release date for the PlayStation 2 has officially been announced as October 26, 2000 at an unexpectedly low (although I did win a bet on this one against Rick) $299. As you are also by now aware, Sony is not going to ship an unlimited number of these babies. While I can\'t seem to find my notes as to exactly how many units it was, I do recall shifting a bit uncomfortably in my chair and fighting off the urge to run to the nearest phone and preorder. And why? Because every damn PSX owner in the country is going to get one of these things (unless they are completely insane or financially strapped) as soon as they hit the shelves. If you saw any footage of the Japanese release, perhaps it reminded you of a business suit version of the Cabbage Patch riots of ?84\"mobs of drooling fanatics hopped up on barely concealed consumer rage and nearly bursting bladders, refusing to leave their space in line for any but the most dire of emergencies.

In the grand scheme of things the Dreamcast hasn't sold as well as it could have and I don't think there's any real mystery as to why this is so. A lot of people felt like they got burnt by the Saturn and they've lost faith in Sega's ability to deliver the goods. Gamers coughed up 299 bucks to take a stroll through the next generation system, but then a little something called the PlayStation showed up and preceded to whoop Sega's ass all up and down the isles of your local videogame store. When Resident Evil came out it gave gamers an experience they'd never had before and the Saturn was on the ropes. Sony landed jabs and uppercuts and if you listened closely you could hear bones breaking. Final Fantasy VII rolled out and "Fatality" echoed in the background. FFVII helped sell a bajillion more Playstations, and the Saturn basically just disappeared. When the dust settled and the blood was mopped up Sony was the undisputed champion of the console world and Sega's mangled remains were unceremoniously kicked aside, and the videogame world moved on.

Well, Sony has committed. The PlayStation 2 will be available on October 26, 2000, and it will cost $299. I will take a moment to thumb my nose at anybody who predicted a price higher or lower “ it only makes sense that Sony would release their second system at the same original price as the first. Sony also intimated in their press conference that the PS2 will follow a similar price evolution as its predecessor, which means the price will eventually drop.

Lorne Lanning is the President and Creative Director of Oddworld Inhabitants, undoubtedly one of the most interesting and exciting development houses in the gaming industry. Their first two titles, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, have raised the bar for games to come. The award-winning and best-selling titles incorporate an amazing storyline, insanely innovative gameplay, stellar production values, and a whole bagfull of originality. With two new titles in development for the PlayStation 2, Munch's Oddysee (due Fall of 2000) and Hand of Odd (due sometime after that), the folks at Oddworld look ready to create an all-out revolution in electronic entertainment. We got the chance to ask Lorne a few questions that we've been itching to hear the answers to. Here's what he had to say: