Two of my formative gaming experiences were with Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Sonic 1, so it's fair to say that Rieko Kodama worked on games that deeply affected my life. Although I was able to interview her a couple of times by email, we never met in person and I had hoped that I might get the chance one day. Instead, I inadvertently broke the news that she had passed away. That was a real gut punch. I actually saw the memorial message for the first time on Monday night, and immediately felt awful because I thought I'd missed the news at the time it was reported. I then spent a lot of time fruitlessly searching for any information, to try to find out how far behind the curve I was, only to find absolutely nothing. Because all Mega Drive Mini 2 content was under embargo, I couldn't post anything about it until launch day. I kind of didn't make a big deal of the post because at that point, I still wasn't sure if this was known about - if not in English-speaking communities, then maybe in Japan. Obviously that wasn't the case.
The couple Sega people I have seen posting about it, the mood seems a bit cathartic to finally be able to talk about it. I think you did a good thing, especially because it wasn't on purpose and frankly you are well qualified to talk about all things Sega and its not like you got it from a secret source. It is well out in the open in the MD Mini II. It is really cool you even got to interview her over email.
Phantasy Star was one of my favourite SMS games, and when I heard about Kodama last year when looking up the games on my Genesis Mini I was super intrigued by her body of work - especially on Sonic and Alex Kidd, - and wondered why there wasn't much talk of her outside of PS circles. Hearing about this news fucked with me HARD, because she worked on so many of my childhood games. RIP
Given its almost Halloween and the sad news of Rieko death . I'm going to play one of her classics. Deep Fear is a game that's a brilliant Resident Evil ripp-off with a mix of the Abyss to make a fantastic adventure horror game . Such a classic, that's sadly a little overlooked by some SEGA and Saturn fans, its also feature some of the best quality sound effects I've ever heard on a Saturn game, so sad we never got a sequel. Thank you and RIP Rieko Kodama
