Rieko Kodama



Reiko Kodama, also known by her alias of Phoenix Rie, was a long running Sega employee who has worked as a video game artist, director and producer.

History
Born in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Reiko was unsure which of her loves to pursue, archeology or art, with her indecisiveness leading her to fail all her classes. In the end she ended up pursuing her love of art and thought she could work as an advertiser, enrolling in a design class in a trade school. After graduating and gaining a love of graphic design, the video game industry caught her eye as an emerging and exciting new field.

She came to work with Sega in 1984, originally believing she was to be used in the advertising department, but after witnessing the game development department she believed this could be a fun department to work for.

Reiko's first game was Champion Boxing in which she designed the characters. She then went on to design for several high profile games including Sega Ninja, Quartet, Altered Beast, Alex Kidd in Miracle World as the background artist, was involved in the design work for Sonic the Hedgehog and the Zone design of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and was the lead art designer of Phantasy Star, creating all the character designs and the world.

Reiko continued to work on the Phantasy Star series, working as a designer for Phantasy Star II and later had her first directory role for Phantasy Star IV: The end of the Millennium.

Reiko's first producer role was on the game Deep Fear, known as the last first party Sega Saturn game released in Europe. During the Dreamcast era, Reiko produced Skies of Arcadia, promoting the game at TGS '99. She later went on to be the producer for the 7th Dragon series.

Reiko was also the lead producer on the 2020 Sega Ages range.

According to Sega, Kodama died in May 2022. This was not widely shared at first due to Kodama and her family preferring to keep their privacy, and only became known after a memorial to her was found in the Sega Genesis Mini 2 in October 2022.

Trivia

 * Reiko Kodama is well known as being one of the first notable women in the video game industry, although she has stated that she hasn't thought that much about her position as a woman making games, although notes that the games she made may have been different from the ones made by an all-male team in terms of both story and art style since she added her own point of view into all her creations.
 * Reiko also stated at one point she was unsure if Phantasy Star would even release, let alone was aware of the effect the Phantasy Star titles would have on the JRPG genre.