(Gamespot Japan) Announced today at Sega's "Game Jam" festival in Tokyo Japan, RED Entertainment - popularly known as the producer of the "Sakura Wars" series, has been revealed to become a part of the Sega Group.

Sega COO Tetsu Kayama revealed that Sega has already acquired 67% of Red Entertainment's stocks from last year. Kayama comments "[I] hope this will strengthen the weak aspects of Sega- project designs and collaboration power." RED president Yasuaki Nagoshi comments "(RED) will continue tie-up projects with other game makers and toy producers, even after becoming a member of Sega.".

Sega has announced three titles in which RED Entertainment will be producing. The first is "The Planet Gun Smoke - TRIGUN", based on the manga "Trigun" by Yasuhiro Nightow. Sega subsidiary SmileBit will be developing the game, headed by producer Tooru Kubo. The game will take advantage of Sega's network technology, and also feature their own new unique presentation technique called "Manga Dimension". The platform for the title is unannounced.

The second - already announced previously with its opened web site, is "GunGrave", a gun shooting game for the Playstation 2. Likewise to "TRIGUN", the game is developed under RED Entertainment and Smilebit. Character designs of the game is handled by Trigun's Yasuhiro Nightow as well, and the mech / robot designs are done by "Sakura Wars" / "Ah My Goddess" artist, Kousuke Fujishima. GunGrave is scheduled for release on the Playstation 2 in July.

The third title- named "Magun Keppuuroku", is a Versus-style fighter game which features the use of weapons. While "a surprising artist" has been said to be joining in the development, the Subsidiary to be developing the game is undetermined at the current time. The platform for the title is unannounced.



In related news, Sega has announced to release two titles for the Nintendo GameCube- "Beach Spikers", and "Virtua Fighter Quest (tentative name)". Virtua Fighter Quest will not be a versus style fighter game, but an Adventure-RPG style game, focusing on storyline. Likewise to the past in the VF series, "Virtua Fighter Quest" will be produced by Yu Suzuki. "Virtua Fighter Quest"- a 10th anniversary commemoration project for the Virtua Fighter series, is scheduled for release in 2003.