Sogna rights

[Alcaster42]

Question on Sogna intellectual rights.
Who bought the rights to their stuff?  If anyone(s).

Thanks ahead of time.  And, sorry if I post in the wrong area.  The paragraph said any question.  So, hope I did not misread it.

[Sleepy_we]

I think who ever owns/ed sognas rights still has them, as they have put up nearly all their games on popular legit DL sites.

[Hyperguy]

If anyone has 'em it's probably Power Warrior.  I know that's a silly name, but that's how he's credited.  He wears a mexican wrestling mask too so that other Japanese people don't recognize him.

I wish I was making this up, but could you imagine how much attention you'd get if you were famous in Japan, as small of an archipelago as it is?  Satoshi Urushihara especially prohibits cameras and even sketch pads from his appearances to discourage stalking.

So yeah, Power Warrior's one of the more prevalent members of Sogna, and uses an alias and mask to protect his privacy.  Since he's credited with writing many of the Viper game's storylines I'd imagine he has a percentage of the company at least and copyrights at least.

[Moge]

So where did all the staff members of Sogna vacate to?  In semblance Erogos is the closest to a modernization of the company.

[Alcaster42]

Checking Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogna
 -> Japanese Wikipedia

Links on the JP page.
有限会社
 -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugen_kaisha
サイレンス (ゲーム会社)
 -> does not have an English equivalent.

So, maybe Yugen Kaisha?

[JG]

I think P-Warrior still writes scenarios for h-games and h-animes, if not whole scripts.  I strongly suspect he had a hand to play in Angel Blade, as there's just way too many similarities between it and the concept of the cancelled VIPER-Z3.  My guess is he's using his real name on whatever projects he's involved with now.

I'm sure the artists went on to do more art, but I couldn't name anything any of them have worked on.  I'm sure some of them went to Erogos/Yui but to my knowledge the big name artists like Edage Katsura and Awaji Sugawara did not.  The ones that did go to work on Love Fetish may have worked on Angel Blade between Sogna and Erogos.

Erogos games use the same game engine as VIPER-M3 (or, more accurately, version 2.0 of the 1.0 engine used in M3), so at least we can say with some certainty that the programmer went to work for Erogos/Yui.

What these folks are working on now is anyone's guess.  Erogos hasn't published anything in nearly a year, so they're certainly living up the Sogna namesake as far as rapidly dropping off the face of the Earth is concerned.

-> Japanese Wikipedia

I give you +1 rep for this link becuase I learned something new about Sogna from it, and that just doesn't happen every day.  I had no idea that a subtitle had been selected for M6 ("The Night Master"), let alone that it was publically known.

[Moge]

One year isn't long considering Jellyfish's track record.  How long has it been since Lovers was released?  Five years ago?  I forgot, but it's been REALLY long. 

[Trapani21]

I thought Hobibox had bought the rights to the Sogna games. They're the only ones that still sell V-16 and Paradice.

[Hyperguy]

I believe Hobibox only bought a license to distribute them in other territories.

[JG]

I thought Hobibox had bought the rights to the Sogna games. They're the only ones that still sell V-16 and Paradice.

Only as international distributor.  And that was a per-game arrangement, not blanket for the whole series.  They only have rights to V16, M1, Paradice, and Digital Museum, and specifically, only the international versions of them.

[Trapani21]

I wasn't sure if Hobibox had the rights to the whole series of not, but thanks for clarifying for me. That Japanese wiki article would have been great if I had kept up with my Japanese though.

[Alcaster42]

Thanks for the stuff JG00.