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Working Designs

United States Founded 1986 Website

Working Designs was an American video game publisher that specialized in the localization of Japanese role-playing video games, strategy video games and top-down shooters for various platforms. Though the company had published many cult hits, it was known best to fans as the long-time exclusive North American publisher of the Lunar series. The company was one of the few game publishers that attempted to bridge the cultural gap between the Japanese and American video game industries during the 1990s with an eclectic selection of releases from various genres, and was also one of the earliest American publishers to make use of the CD-ROM format for full, spoken English dialogue in their titles at a time when voice acting was not a common feature in most mainstream games. On December 12, 2005, Victor Ireland, President of Working Designs, announced via the company's message board that it was closing its doors. He later started a new company called Gaijinworks.

Working Designs at a Glance

Working Designs has been active in the gaming industry from 1990 to 2000, with 12 titles tracked on PlayPile. Their catalog primarily spans Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Strategy, with additional titles in Arcade and Shooter. With an average community rating of 82.7/100, Working Designs is among the highest-rated studios in our database -- 7 of their rated titles score 80 or above. Their highest-rated title on PlayPile is Lunar: Eternal Blue (90.0/100). Games from Working Designs are available across 10 platforms, most notably PlayStation, Sega CD, PlayStation 3.

12
Total Games
82.7
Avg Rating
1990
First Release
2000
Latest Release

Genre Breakdown

Role-playing (RPG)
39%
Adventure
11%
Strategy
11%
Arcade
11%
Shooter
11%

Platform Spread

PlayStation
3
Sega CD
3
PlayStation 3
2
PlayStation Portable
2
Sega Saturn
2

Release Timeline

1990s
10
2000s
2

Rating Distribution

7
80-100
0
60-79
0
40-59
0
0-39