“This month we are proud to celebrate the unique and musical driven games of United Game Artists (ユナイテッド・ゲーム・アーティスツ). The team was made up of members of SEGA AM6 and headed by Sega AM3’s Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Unfortunately, the team was short lived and only released three titles under the ‘United Game Artists’ banner. Regardless, those three games have made such an impact on us gamers that we are still talking about them over a decade later.
AM6 was a video game research and development division within SEGA. They were strange team compared to other SEGA in-house studios because they structured into smaller teams with their own names. There was Team Aqulia, makers of the Victory Goal games, Team Andromeda (which we also celebrated a month of), which made the Panzer Dragoon series, and G9 Team, which produced Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine ’97. SEGA AM6 named most of their teams (with the exception of G9) after space constellations. This was to keep up with SEGA’s theme of codenaming their home consoles after planets. SEGA AM6 would be broken up after SEGA’s 2000 restructure, splitting the members over various teams including Smilebit and United Game Artists.
While they are most widely known as United Game Artists (UGA), the team wasn’t originally going to be called that. Before the team started development of their first title, Space Channel 5, they were known as Sega AM R&D #9. The Japanese release of Space Channel 5actually has their Sega AM R&D #9 brand logo. For the international version, SEGA published it with their new (and better) team name that we all know and love.
The team was headed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who got his fame when he produced the arcade mega-hit Sega Rally Championship with AM3, which would later be ported to various consoles including the Sega Saturn. United Game Artist wasn’t the first team Tetsuya Mizuguchi would help run. Shortly after his success at AM3 he split off with fellow Sega Rally Championship team members to form AM Annex, which created Sega Touring Car Championship and Sega Rally 2. That team was also short lived and got merged into Sega AM8 in 1998, where they helped developStar Wars Trilogy Arcade.
While United Game Artists only released three games, all of them have become cult hits well known throughout the video game industry.”