Founded August 27, 1999, Artoon is a Yokohama, Japan-based development studio established by Yoji Ishii, the former Senior Director of R&D at Sega of Japan. Ishii left Sega earlier that year along with a number of other talented programmers and designers, including Naoto Ohshima, Manabu Kusunoki, Hidetoshi Takeshita and Yutaka Sugano. Members of Artoon, which currently focuses on Game Boy Advance development, have previously worked on the Panzer Dragoon and Sonic franchises. Artoon’s first major project was the Hudson GBA platformer Pinobee, and the team has gone on to projects such as the Blinx series and Vampire Rain.