Flagship (company)

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This article is about the Japanese company. For the American company, see Flagship Studios.

Flagship was an independent developer funded by Capcom, Nintendo and Sega that was founded by game designer Yoshiki Okamoto. Flagship has often created scenarios for new and existing products, and has developed for Nintendo several times recently on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. Their last video game was Kirby: Squeak Squad for the Nintendo DS. [1]

Quoting Gamespot's news on the dissolution of Flagship Studios, "According to a Capcom spokesperson, while the Flagship name is getting the axe, its employees won't be. Noting that the only thing to change will be the company name on their business cards, the spokesperson said all Flagship staffers are expected to continue working at the publisher in the same capacities." [2]

On May 2007, Capcom announced that Flagship will cease to exist from June 1st 2007, and their employees will be merged into Capcom's main studio [3]

Contents

[edit] Conception

Flagship was founded by Yoshiki Okamoto on April 24, 1997. The company creates scenarios for games. Work in this field includes material produced for Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil Code: Veronica. Flagship, working under Capcom, with permission from Nintendo, has also developed a few Legend of Zelda and Kirby titles.

[edit] The Legend of Zelda

[edit] Oracle Series

Flagship began developing three new GBC Zelda games under supervision of Shigeru Miyamoto around the year 2000. The original plan concerned a trilogy known as the "Triforce Trilogy", composed of updated remakes of The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and a third installment. After consulting with Mr. Miyamoto, the company decided to make an original trilogy, called the "Mysterious(/Mystical) Seed Trilogy", each game revolving around one of the three Goddesses—Din for "The Mysterious Seed of Power", which had gameplay mechanics related to Seasons; Farore for "The Mysterious Seed of Courage", a time-travel adventure; and Nayru for "The Mysterious Seed of Wisdom", which used color as the central gameplay element. Nintendo eventually decided that having only two games would make linking up easier, so Farore's game was cancelled, and after a bit of shuffling and rearranging, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons were born, bearing several hallmarks of earlier stages of development, particularly elements in Seasons which hearken back to the original Legend of Zelda. The two games combined ended up selling 3.96 million copies.

[edit] Four Swords

The group's next outing in the land of Hyrule was a two-for-one: a port of the Super Nintendo classic, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past; and their new, two-to-four-player game, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords. Four Swords marked the first time a Zelda game had ever featured multiplayer gameplay; indeed, no single-player mode was included, something which frustrated many isolated gamers. Also new to the series were level-based play, with the absence of an overworld (a level-select map screen was used instead), and randomly generated (or at least randomly manifesting) areas within each level. Players had to cooperate to complete tasks (the game adjusted these task to suit the current number of players), but also competed to collect the most rupees in each level. Instead of Ganon, the villain was a wind mage named Vaati. It also inspired a Nintendo-made sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures

[edit] Minish Cap

Released in the US in 2005, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap details the origin of the mysterious Four Sword. As in the Four Swords games, Vaati is the antagonist, but rather than a black, winged eye, he appears at first as a somewhat normal-looking person. Seemingly harmless in the beginning, he soon opens a chest full of malevolent spirits, and generally creates havoc– including turning Princess Zelda to stone. Her friend Link embarks on a journey to save her by finding the legendary Picori, tiny creatures who alone can restore a magical sword Vaati has broken. On his quest, he comes upon a green cap/bird creature being harassed by Octoroks. Saving the creature, named Ezlo, opens up the game's novel play mechanic: shrinking Link to the size of a Picori (known to themselves as Minish) to explore his world from an entirely new perspective. Well received by critics and fans, this game returned to the handheld standard of allowing Link to assign any two items to the A and B buttons, fighting without a sword if he so chooses. It also introduced kinstone pieces, collectible colored fragments which could be joined with appropriate pieces held by NPCs to form a whole kinstone (a process called kinstone fusion) and create an effect somewhere in Hyrule.

[edit] Other titles