Nex Entertainment

Nextech spearheaded Sega's early 2000s Shining series revival with the action RPG Shining Soul. Artwork by Yoshitaka Tamaki.

Nex Entertainment (ネクスエンタテインメント), known as Nextech (ネクステック) between 1994 and 2005, was a game development studio that developed Ragnacënty (originally Shining Rogue), Shining Soul, Shining Soul II, Shining Tears, and Shining Wind.

Company History

Nex Entertainment was originally founded as EMAG (エマーグ) in September 1992 with investment from Sega and Yomiuri Planning (株式会社読売企画). EMAG changed its name to Nextech in March 1994 and acquired Gau Entertainment, who was developing Ragnacënty, in April 1994. Gau Entertainment had been a studio founded by former staff from Telenet's Wolf Team. In August 1997, Nextech became a fully owned subsidiary of Sega, whose investment in the company then totaled one hundred million yen. In April 1998, Sega merged its forty million yen in stock in Sonic! Software Planning into Nextech. After a management buyout in November 2003, Nextech became independent from Sega, and the company changed its name to Nex Entertainment in 2005.

At some point, Nex Entertainment became a subsidiary of Tsubaraya Fields Holdings, who announced the studio's closure in 2016.

Games Developed

After Sega's merger of Sonic into Nextech and the release of Camelot's final scenario of Shining Force III in 1998, the Shining brand fell into disuse as the Dreamcast entered and exited the console market. The series would make a comeback when Sega tasked Nextech with creating the first Shining game since Sega's transition to third-party software publisher. The game would be 2002's Shining Soul, a Game Boy Advance action RPG developed alongside Goichi Suda's Grasshopper Manufacture. The handheld game was made by a core team of not many more than a dozen people. Original series artist Yoshitaka Tamaki returned to design the characters and monsters for the first time since the first Shining Force.

Nextech continued to work with Tamaki and Grasshopper Manufacture on Shining Soul II, released the following year in 2003.

Nextech's first Shining game for home consoles was Shining Tears, an action RPG for the PlayStation 2, which retained Tamaki for the design of monsters and some characters but featured character designs by Tony Taka. Following its Japanese release in 2004, Shining Tears was the last Shining game from Nextech to receive an English localization, which released in North America in 2005.

The final Shining game to be made by Nextech was 2007's Shining Wind, an action RPG sequel to Shining Tears that drew connections between the series' new continuity and the classic games. Although Nextech did not develop any more Shining games, the continuity that they established would be maintained in later games by Media.Vision and Studio Saizensen.

As Nextech often played a supporting role in the production of games for which it was not the primary developer, the list below is incomplete and requires additional research.

Games Developed by Nextech or Nex Entertainment

Release	Title	Publisher	Platform
1994-06	Ragnacënty	Sega Atlus	Mega Drive
1995-05	Gran Chaser	Sega	Saturn
1995-08	Pro Striker Final Stage	Sega	Mega Drive
1995-11	Toshinden S	Sega	Saturn
1996-03	Linkle Liver Story	Sega	Saturn
1996-09	Toshinden URA	Takara Sega	Saturn
1996-09	Sakura Taisen	Sega	Saturn
1997-05	D-Xhird	Takara	Saturn
1997-07	Bio Hazard	Capcom Sega	Saturn
1997-07	Full Cowl Mini 4WD Super Factory	Media Quest	Saturn
1998-03	Choro Q Park	Takara	Saturn
1998-05	MeltyLancer Re-inforce	Imadio	Saturn
2000-02	Biohazard Code: Veronica	Capcom Eidos	Dreamcast
2000-09	Dino Crisis	Capcom Virgin	Dreamcast
2000-11	Dreamstudio	Sega	Dreamcast
2001-03	Biohazard Code: Veronica 完全版	Capcom	Dreamcast
2002-03	Shining Soul	Sega Atlus	Game Boy Advance
2002-12	Shin Megami Tensei Nine	Atlus	Xbox
2003-07	Shining Soul II	Sega Atlus	Game Boy Advance
2004-11	Shining Tears	Sega	PlayStation 2
2006-03	Children of Mana	Square Enix	Nintendo 3DS
2006-06	Time Crisis 4	Bandai Namco	Arcade
2007-05	Shining Wind	Sega	PlayStation 2
2007-11	Time Crisis 4	Bandai Namco	PlayStation 3
2008-03	Dramatic Dungeon Sakura Taisen	Sega	Nintendo DS
2009-03	Razing Storm	Bandai Namco	Arcade
2009-10	Bayonetta	Sega	PlayStation 3
2010-10	Time Crisis: Razing Storm	Bandai Namco	PlayStation 3
2011-01	Music GunGun! 2	Taito	Arcade
2012-11	Weapon Shop de Omasse	Level-5	Nintendo 3DS
2012-11	Crimson Shoud	Level-5	Nintendo 3DS
2014-04	Sailor Zombie: AKB Arcade Edition	Bandai Namco	Arcade

Studio Directory

See alsoː Who Made the Shining Series?