Rieko Kodama

, also known as Phoenix Rie, was a Japanese video game artist, director, and producer employed by Sega from 1984 until her death. She is primarily known for her work on role-playing video games including the original Phantasy Star series, the 7th Dragon series, and Skies of Arcadia. She is often recognized as one of the first successful women in the video game industry.

Kodama began her career at Sega as a graphic designer on arcade games and Master System games, including Alex Kidd in Miracle World (1986) and Phantasy Star (1987). The success of Phantasy Star led her to continue with the series thereafter, including directing Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium (1993) for the Sega Genesis. She did artwork for other Genesis games, including Altered Beast (1988) and Sonic the Hedgehog (1991). Later, as producer, she oversaw the development of several Sega video games, including the critically successful Skies of Arcadia. Kodama remained a producer at Sega until her death. She received the Pioneer Award at the 2018 Game Developers Choice Awards in recognition of her lifelong contributions to video games.

Early life and education Rieko Kodama was born in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan, in May 1963. (Nintendo Power provides a birth date of May 25 and no year.) Sega-16 provides a date of May 23, 1963. In high school, Kodama was interested in designing advertising materials. After entering college, she felt indecisive between pursuing studies in art or archaeology, since she carried an interest in Egyptology. She grew an interest in graphic design and wanted to pursue doing her own work rather than trumpeting works of others as in the advertising business. Her first job was as character designer for the arcade game Champion Boxing (1984).

Phantasy Star With the popularity of Enix's Dragon Quest role-playing game (RPG) series on the Famicom in the mid-1980s, Sega formed a team of several people to develop a competing RPG for the Master System, titled Phantasy Star (1987). Kodama served as the main artist for the game, designing the characters, the 2D environments, the battle screen backgrounds, non-playable characters, and other details. One such challenge to differentiate Phantasy Star was to create a female hero. According to Kodama, a defining element during development was to not rely on advanced graphics and particularly the CGI movies that were popular in games at the time, which Kodama felt took control away from the player. Kodama has stated that Skies of Arcadia along with the Phantasy Star series were her favorite projects she worked on. 7th Dragon 2020 and 7th Dragon 2020-II for the PlayStation Portable, and 7th Dragon III Code: VFD for the Nintendo 3DS. In 2018, she was the lead producer of the Sega Ages series.

Death A memorial message dedicated to Kodama was included in the end credits of the Sega Genesis Mini 2, which was released on October 27, 2022. Addressing inquiries by IGN and Famitsu, Sega confirmed that Kodama had died on May 9, 2022, and initially refrained from a public announcement to respect her family's privacy.

Legacy Kodama has garnered recognition as one of the first female video game developers. The Next Level called her one of the first female video game artists, and Nintendo Power dubbed her the "First Lady of RPGs".

Kodama believed that women are gradually taking a greater interest in gaming. Although Kodama no longer drew art assets directly for her games, she did paint and make handcrafts and accessories in her free time. She was also a fan of Dungeons & Dragons and the character Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance series. She played the D&D table-top games and read the novels. She enjoyed the way dragons are portrayed with different personalities in western fantasy, which is different from dragons in Japanese culture. Nou ni Kaikan Minna de Aha Taiken!

Saitou Takashi no DS de Yomu Sansyoku Ballpen Meisaku Jyuku

7th Dragon

7th Dragon 2020

7th Dragon 2020-II

7th Dragon III Code: VFD Nintendo 3DS

Sega Ages Nintendo Switch