Rai's Awakening

"Rai's Awakening is one of the best games I've ever played. Everyone should give it at least one try..." - Nintendo Power

Summary
Rai's Awakening (ライの目覚め) was a game released on December 12th, 1989 in Japan and on December 19th of the same year in North America. The game was a turn-based historical RPG taking place in feudal Japan. The game would release on the NES, Famicom, and the new console on the market, the Sega Genesis. Rai's Awakening would be developed by Ocean Games and published and distributed by Taito. It would be released on ROM cartridges.

Rai's Awakening would release to overwhelmingly positive reviews, with many critics noting the state-of-the-art graphics and invigorating gameplay. It would become the most successful game that Ocean Games would release in that generation.

Development
Rai's Awakening was born in the mind of Yoshioka Koizumi, much like many other earlier Ocean Games productions. Yoshioka was thinking back to his childhood when he lived in the Japanese country-side, living on a small rice farm. He remembered running through fields, having almost complete freedom. He then imagined a game, much like his childhood, where players would be able to go anywhere they wanted, at any time they wanted. So, with this sudden burst of inspiration, he began development of a small prototype with a few other coworkers.

When they had finally finished the prototype, Koizumi went to the company heads and presented his ideas to them. Many people believe that Yoshioka Koizumi didn't even really have to give a pitch to the company. They were sold before he even said a word.

The game officially began development on December 17th, just a couple of weeks after the company had released their last game, Pirate's Treasure II. The game was only being developed for 5 days before the company gave breaks to their workers, however, during the breaks, developers were already dreaming about what they could do with the intimate characters that Koizumi had already created.