I'm not sure at this point exactly which members of the Team defected during the upheaval, but the big word going around is that Naoto Ohshima is among the list of traitors. Actually, it kind of makes sense. Ohshima's style of direction is very mellow and fantasy-based, but the recent Team trend is towards off-the-wall, "wacky-cool" styles. It's not hard to predict just what we can expect from Artoon...think along the lines of Sonic CD and Ristar, both of which were made by certain members of Sonic Team.

   Artoon's first independent project, Pinobee: Quest of Heart for the Game Boy Advance, ideally reflects the sense of fantasy direction found in the aforementioned titles (as well as NiGHTS). Players control Pinobee, a robotic bee who dreams of becoming real. (The name is actually a play on "Pinocchio.") Apparently, it's an action platformer with luscious hand-painted backgrounds and rendered characters. Pinobee: Quest of Heart is being published in Japan by Hudson. Other titles from Artoon include a couple of cell phone games not really worth mentioning, but if you absolutely must know about them, you can read all the gunky details here (in Japanese, of course).

   While I've no intention of covering future Artoon projects at the GHZ (although don't think I didn't toy with the idea), it's a promising new developer with names we know and trust. Pinobee is already standing out as one of the more exciting developments on the GBA, and we know there's more where that came from.

   -- Green Gibbon!

Compiled and arranged by Jared "Green Gibbon!" Matte. Hosting provided by Emulation Zone and Emulation World.