Old Dragon Quest Developer Returns

With the remake of Dragon Quest VII heading to Nintendo 3DS in Japan next February, interesting news has emerged of the revival of a former Dragon Quest development team. When Heartbeat closed down -- the team that worked on Dragon Quest VI for the Super Famicom and Dragon Quest VII on the PlayStation -- the founder of the company, Manabu Yamana, set up his own company under Nintendo's wing. The group, Genius Sonority, has kept a relatively low profile, with only a smattering of releases since its inception, past highlights being the Pokémon Stadium/Colosseum titles, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness on GameCube, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors for Wii, and even 100 Classic Book Collection for Nintendo DS. More recently the team has finished an intriguing RPG project on 3DS eShop called The Denpa Men: They Came by the Wave, but the CEO has surprisingly announced his plans to resurrect his old company after a decade.

Roughly translated, he said:

"I will restart the Heartbeat! Heartbeat has remained silent for 10 years, but we have decided to restart it and use business perspectives that are different from the past. For more information I will publish a web page next year."