Native name 小玉 理恵子 Name Rieko Kodama | Role Video Game Designer | |
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Born May 23, 1963 (age 60) ( 1963-05-23 ) Kanagawa, Japan Similar People Yuji Naka, Makoto Uchida, Naoto Ohshima, Hirokazu Yasuhara | ||
Rieko kodama interview
Rieko Kodama (小玉 理恵子, Kodama Rieko, born May 23, 1963 in Kanagawa, Kanagawa Prefecture) is a video game designer, artist, and producer.
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Career
Born in Kanagawa, Japan, Kodama began her education undecided between art and archaeology. She opted for art and enrolled in a trade school for advertising design. In 1984, a fellow student brought her to work at Sega.
Kodama started in character design, for arcade titles such as Champion Boxing (1984) and Ninja Princess (1984), as well as Master System games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World (1986) and Quartet (1987).
As one of the few designers at the company, she found herself working on multiple titles at once, being credited on as many as five or six games a year. Kodama built up a reputation as an artist and was soon given a chance to work on larger projects, such as Phantasy Star. As the main designer, Kodama was responsible for creating all the character designs, the 2D maps, battle-scene backgrounds, and townspeople, among other things.
In 1993, she took on directional and production roles with Phantasy Star IV, Magic Knight Rayearth, Deep Fear, Skies of Arcadia, and the 2005 Altered Beast reboot.
After working on a variety of edutainment games on Nintendo DS and PSP, it was announced in 2008 it that Kodama would be producing a new RPG entitled 7th Dragon. It received positive reviews and sold 80,000 copies on its Japanese launch. She has produced games in the series since.