Sega and Nintendo Together At Last?

TOKYO - The latest issue of Famitsu features an interview with Satoshi Kayama, an executive at Marigul Management. Marigul, established by Nintendo and Recruit to fund raise and manage independent game developers announced its first title was Pikachu Genki Dechu.

During the interview, Kayama spoke at length about the 10 or so titles in development for the Nintendo 64. These include: Custom Robo (tentative title) being developed by Noise, Kyojin no Doshin (tentative) for the 64DD by Param, Echo Delta developed by Clever Trick, and Doubutsu Banchou.

The company is also planned three titles to use the Voice Recognition System for the N64 (that came with Pikachu Genki Dechu)--Teo (tentative), Toy (a code name) and Racing (also a code name). Three others will use the 64GB cable to hook it to the Game Boy (and uses the Game Boy as a controller with an LCD screen) -- DT (tentative), an unnamed game which is being developed by Yoshiyuki Tomino (director of the Gundam series) and Capcom and Derby Stallion.

Marigul has established a new company called Sirio Studio, to handle games not related directly to its dealings with Nintendo. Sirio is developing several titles, including: Sakura Taisen for GBC, Columns for Nintendo Power, Gofungo no Sekai (World After Five Minutes), Devil (Dreamcast), and David, Angel, Kerokero King and Gourmet Frontier for Playstation, and many more. But the story doesn't end here.

If you know about Japanese games, Sakura Taisen was one of Sega's killer titles for Saturn. There are two games, Sakura Taisen and Sakura Taisen 2 with several spin-offs. The third installment is said to be in development for Dreamcast. These games were developed by Red and released by Sega. Has Sega given Marigul the OK to do this?

Sega's Shouichirou Irimajiri answered the question on the web.

"The announcement featured in Famitsu was made by Mr. Kayama alone. Indeed we were approached by Mr. Kayama about releasing Sakura Taisen for Game Boy Color. We made a prerequisite against this offer. The prerequisite is to enable these games to allow the Game Boy Color and Dreamcast to link up. If Mr. Kayama announced a Sakura Taisen title for Game Boy Color, that means he saw the light to meet the terms. We have not heard about that yet. So if this is true, it's really exciting."

What that means is, we could see some kind of link-up between the Game Boy Color and the Dreamcast, if Nintendo gives it the OK. This could be an interesting turn of events if it comes to fruition.