as the topic suggests ~ out of all teams that design games for consoles & pc's, which one stands out as your favorite amongst favorites? for myself, i would have to say Level 5 ~ as of late, this one is pushing the boundaries with beautiful games - for TFLO & their newest one, Dragon Quest VIII ~ it's looking good.. =)

honorable mentions..
Crystal Dynamics (Soul Reaver II & III), Konami JP (Castlevania) & ST (PsO)

Probably Capcom, SquareSoft (of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger fame), and ST (PSO and the Sonic games),

Westwood (when they were alone, god damn merges). I grew up on the Command & Conquer games, I loved every game they made, and I still play one of em almost every other day.

Their games always have a certain charm and flair to them.

I think Tri-Ace stands out as a first-class dev team. They made Valkyrie Profile, and the Star Ocean series. These are about the only Japanese-style RPGs I can stand to play...they are simply excellent games.

Konami's KCET is great for their work on the Silent Hill series, and the home conversions of DDR. Of course KCEJ is great too, with MGS, MGS2, and ZOE2 under their belts, and MGS3 forthcoming.

On the SEGA front, I like Amusement Vision (Monkey Ball series, F-Zero GX/AX, Daytona USA (DC)), Smilebit (Jet Set Radio series, Panzer Dragoon Orta), and of course Sonic Team (PSO, Samba De Amigo, Nights, and of course Sonic series). With the new SEGA restructuring, the new Smilebit might not be pumping out the same qualilty software as before though (although Amusement Vision is even better because of it).

Atlus' Cave is a great (if not the best) shooter dev...Donpachi series is amazing, E.S.P. Ra De and Guwange are works of art, and the forthcoming E.S.P. Guwange is looking excellent.

From Nintendo, I like Intelligent Systems, most notable for the "Wars" series.

Amoung the game developers not mentioned, treasure is some what underated and pretty good at the "twitch" genre. Guardian Heros anyone?

id Software. I gotta give props to the creative team behind such greats as the Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake series.

QUOTE (HC82 @ Aug 1 2003, 10:17 PM)

Amoung the game developers not mentioned, treasure is some what underated and pretty good at the "twitch" genre. Guardian Heros anyone?

I think that if anything Treasure is overrated. They have many great games under their belts, but many mediocre ones as well. Yet still their hardcore fans rabidly profess Treasure to be the greatest game dev ever.

Capcom pwnz you all.

QUOTE (Crushinator @ Aug 2 2003, 01:37 PM)

I think that if anything Treasure is overrated. They have many great games under their belts, but many mediocre ones as well. Yet still their hardcore fans rabidly profess Treasure to be the greatest game dev ever.

While they do have many medicore titles under their belt, I just really like guardian heros and gunstar heros(or whatever that game was for Genesis) alot. Besides most well known gaming developers have created their fair shares of "average" games, and twitch games are generally fairly rare nowadays. Well done twitch games that is.