The Overlooked Legacy of Working Designs

The guys over at Toy Bounty Hunters have begun a new retrospective series — a documentary, if you will — about the history of the video game company known as Working Designs. But, as you’ll see in the following video, they didn’t get their start with the system they would perhaps grow to be most synonymous with, the SEGA CD. In fact, they didn’t even get their start in video games!

My own history with Working Designs is… kind of from a distance. Growing up, a good friend of mine was a huge fan of theirs, though, starting with Lunar: The Silver Star Story, and since that was a role playing game and entirely outside of my wheelhouse at the time, I got to experience it vicariously through him. Even though I wasn’t playing, good times were still had as a little line of chibi characters marched around a world map and cut to animated scenes that were by and large unlike anything seen on consoles at the time.

Ah, but I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself — or rather, ahead of them. I imagine that game and more will come next time, but since I’m not sure whether I’ll be talking about each entry in the series, I wanted to say something now while drawing attention to it. The story told so far is rather interesting, and I believe it will only become even more so as it continues; I hope you’ll be watching as well.

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David Oxford is a freelance writer of many varied interests. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.