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![Attachment](/media/thumbs/8/18988.jpg)
Associate Planner No. 001, the Grand Prize winner, was Fumiko Sato. Of the 29 winners, three of them are known to have gone on to work in the video game industry and returned for work at Sega:
• No. 004 was 17-year old Masahiro Sakurai, who won the "Game System Award". Sakurai often recalled the contest without mentioning the game by name, claiming he came up with "something like the action-focused Active Time Battle system seen in JRPGs" before it existed. It's believed that this meeting was what prompted Sakurai to drop out of vocational school to pursue a full-time career in game design, using the award to advance his professional image until he was hired by HAL Laboratory after graduating high school in 1989. Sakurai became known for his work with them and Nintendo, creating the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series.
• No. 005 was Yukinobu Arikawa, who won the "Game System Special Award" for his entry titled "Those who inherit the legend". While it's not known if he attended the planning meeting, Arikawa would join Sega's AM2 team in 1990 and is still employed at Sega as of 2022. He became known for the comedic touches he adds to the games he works on, having worked as a game designer, writer, localizer and texture artist on different games in the Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Super Monkey Ball, Virtua Fighter, and Daytona USA series.
• No. 011 was middle schooler Keisuke Ōuchi, who described his proposal as being full of "middle school syndrome", but was unable to attend the planning meeting because he lived in the countryside at the time. Ōuchi worked on games as a character designer and graphics artist in various capacities, and created and directed the 1998 visual novel Ojou-sama Express, which similarly to Phantasy Star II held a long-term reader participation contest in the gaming magazine "Dengeki G's Magazine". He also works as a collectors' toy designer under the name Alan Moriguchi, specializing in mechs and robots.
It's unknown if or how any of the winners' ideas were used in the final game, as all of the developers used pseudonyms in the credits and no Associate Planners were credited.
Beep! - screenshots of March 1988 issue (in Japanese; it's believed that this issue is where the full list of winners were first published, but no full scan of the issue is available online):
https://retoge-mag.websa.jp/archives/215
Beep! - June 1988 issue (in Japanese; Page 86 in the magazine):
https://archive.org/details/beep-1988-06/page/86/mode/2up
Beep! - September 1989 issue translated developer interview:
https://shmuplations.com/psiirelease/
Masahiro Sakurai (No. 004) on Creating Games video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk8WsbCQXGc#t=194s
Sakurai translated magazine column on school/early work experience:
https://sourcegaming.info/2015/07/06/school-work-and-specialists-sakurais-famitsu-column-vol-3334/
Sakurai - The Guardian interview:
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/aug/08/super-smash-bros-ultimate-masahiro-sakurai-35-years-gaming-history-nintendo
A conversation between gamers and game journalists about the future of computer games, held on August 15, 1989 at Dempa Publications, Inc. (19-year old Sakurai partook in this, and is credited with winning the Game System Award in the Phantasy Star II contest) [published in "CHALLENGE!! Personal Computer AVG & RPG 5 JP Book"] (Pages 341-355 in the book, Sakurai only appears on page 348 and did not participate in the rest of the conversation):
https://retrocdn.net/images/d/d5/CHALLENGE%21%21_Personal_Computer_AVG_%26_RPG_5_JP_Book.pdf
Yukinobu Arikawa (No. 005) career history:
https://segaretro.org/Yukinobu_Arikawa
https://www.mobygames.com/person/69425/yukinobu-arikawa/credits/
Keisuke Ōuchi (No. 011) tweets:
https://x.com/AlanMoriguchi/status/1320302751096553472
https://x.com/AlanMoriguchi/status/1321068321450553347
Alan Moriguchi (Ōuchi) revealing his identity in 2014:
https://x.com/AlanMoriguchi/status/520581151493070849
Ōuchi MobyGames page:
https://www.mobygames.com/person/456584/keisuke-ouchi/
Dengeki G's Magazine - August 1998 issue (Pages 49-61 in the magazine):
https://archive.org/details/dengeki-gs-magazine-013-august-1998/page/48/mode/2up
Japanese Wikipedia article on Ojou-sama Express with magazine citations (including the above issue):
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/お嬢様特急
Sega Associate Planner No. 017 tweet:
https://x.com/suginov/status/1321062605033664513
Sega Associate Planner No. 019 tweet:
https://x.com/unlucky_numbers/status/1539132578120486912
1988 contest materials were reportedly republished in the reprint mook " Beep(ビープ) 復刻版―特別付録 音楽CD2枚組 ":
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Beep-%E5%BE%A9%E5%88%BB%E7%89%88%E2%80%95%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5%E4%BB%98%E9%8C%B2-%E9%9F%B3%E6%A5%BDCD2%E6%9E%9A%E7%B5%84-Softbank-mook/dp/4797326239
Tweets that served as a starting point for researching this submission:
https://x.com/gosokkyu/status/1585114095329898496
https://x.com/gosokkyu/status/1705220228828045506
https://retoge-mag.websa.jp/archives/215
Beep! - June 1988 issue (in Japanese; Page 86 in the magazine):
https://archive.org/details/beep-1988-06/page/86/mode/2up
Beep! - September 1989 issue translated developer interview:
https://shmuplations.com/psiirelease/
Masahiro Sakurai (No. 004) on Creating Games video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk8WsbCQXGc#t=194s
Sakurai translated magazine column on school/early work experience:
https://sourcegaming.info/2015/07/06/school-work-and-specialists-sakurais-famitsu-column-vol-3334/
Sakurai - The Guardian interview:
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/aug/08/super-smash-bros-ultimate-masahiro-sakurai-35-years-gaming-history-nintendo
A conversation between gamers and game journalists about the future of computer games, held on August 15, 1989 at Dempa Publications, Inc. (19-year old Sakurai partook in this, and is credited with winning the Game System Award in the Phantasy Star II contest) [published in "CHALLENGE!! Personal Computer AVG & RPG 5 JP Book"] (Pages 341-355 in the book, Sakurai only appears on page 348 and did not participate in the rest of the conversation):
https://retrocdn.net/images/d/d5/CHALLENGE%21%21_Personal_Computer_AVG_%26_RPG_5_JP_Book.pdf
Yukinobu Arikawa (No. 005) career history:
https://segaretro.org/Yukinobu_Arikawa
https://www.mobygames.com/person/69425/yukinobu-arikawa/credits/
Keisuke Ōuchi (No. 011) tweets:
https://x.com/AlanMoriguchi/status/1320302751096553472
https://x.com/AlanMoriguchi/status/1321068321450553347
Alan Moriguchi (Ōuchi) revealing his identity in 2014:
https://x.com/AlanMoriguchi/status/520581151493070849
Ōuchi MobyGames page:
https://www.mobygames.com/person/456584/keisuke-ouchi/
Dengeki G's Magazine - August 1998 issue (Pages 49-61 in the magazine):
https://archive.org/details/dengeki-gs-magazine-013-august-1998/page/48/mode/2up
Japanese Wikipedia article on Ojou-sama Express with magazine citations (including the above issue):
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/お嬢様特急
Sega Associate Planner No. 017 tweet:
https://x.com/suginov/status/1321062605033664513
Sega Associate Planner No. 019 tweet:
https://x.com/unlucky_numbers/status/1539132578120486912
1988 contest materials were reportedly republished in the reprint mook " Beep(ビープ) 復刻版―特別付録 音楽CD2枚組 ":
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Beep-%E5%BE%A9%E5%88%BB%E7%89%88%E2%80%95%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5%E4%BB%98%E9%8C%B2-%E9%9F%B3%E6%A5%BDCD2%E6%9E%9A%E7%B5%84-Softbank-mook/dp/4797326239
Tweets that served as a starting point for researching this submission:
https://x.com/gosokkyu/status/1585114095329898496
https://x.com/gosokkyu/status/1705220228828045506
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According to early drafts of the game, Lutz from the first Phantasy Star was originally going to be the main character. The plot involved him awakening from cryosleep 1000 years in the future with new powers and a different personality.
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In the Japanese release of Phantasy Star II, the piano teacher, Ustvestia, is openly homosexual. When a male party member volunteers to be taught the Musik technique by Ustvestia, Ustvestia replies, "He looks cute." Ustvestia then proceeds to charge the male party member less for the lesson than he would charge a female party member.
However, in the English release of Phantasy Star II, Ustvestia simply says, "He looks smart." The gender-based disparity in the fee for learning Musik is left unexplained.
However, in the English release of Phantasy Star II, Ustvestia simply says, "He looks smart." The gender-based disparity in the fee for learning Musik is left unexplained.
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