Habitat II

Habitat II

Developer(s):	Fujitsu Limited
Publisher(s):	Fujitsu Limited
Platform(s):	Windows, Mac, Sega Saturn
Released:	March 1996

Origins

In 1993, Fujitsu had shown interest in bringing Fujitsu Habitat to the west. The plan was to backport Fujitsu Habitat to Windows computers. However, the source code for Fujitsu Habitat revealed major architectural problems and so minimal progress was made on bringing this to fruition. It was instead decided that development efforts would be better focused on writing something from the ground up. The original creators of Habitat, Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer were both onboard and had already done this once before.

A team in Japan was formed and they received regular code updates and support from the American WorldsAway team. The Japanese team localized everything and even added new features, such as the ability to record your session and play it back offline at any time. This was done by recording packets sent to and from the server and because of the design of the WorldsAway client, it wouldn't be able to tell the difference between receiving that data from a live server or playing back an offline recording.

Habitat II was planned from the start as a way to transition from the FM Towns, over to more modern computers. The initial world setting was custom made by Fujitsu in Japan specifically for Habitat II and it looked like a near future version of a Japanese city. This became known as Elysium and it was specifically designed with ease of use in mind and with a view that it should be simple for adults and children alike to navigate. Later on, a second Habitat II world was established named Graceville. Graceville was a copy of WorldsAway's Dreamscape and used the 2.x client and server architecture, whilst Elysium remained using the 1.x client and server. Both Elysium and Graceville were set on the island of Intercosm, with Elysium being on its southern tip.

Habitat II v2.0 Development Staff

This data was taken from the credits section of the Habitat II V2.0 client.

Title	Name (English)	Name (Japanese)
Executive Producer	Kazutomo Fukuda	福田　和智
Director	Kenji Sugawara	菅原　健次
Production Manager	Tadayuki Tahara	田原　忠行
Public Relations	Makoto Urano	浦野　真
	Etsuko Iwata	岩田　恵津子
Server Development	Kazuhiro Ouchi	大内　和博
	Kiyomi Ito	伊東　清美
	Fumitoyo Takizawa	滝沢　文豊
	Satoshi Sato	佐藤　哲
Client Development	Manabu Yanagida	柳田　学
	Makoto Minamijima	南島　誠
	Yuji Aoki	青木　勇治
	Takanori Sasaki	笹木　孝倫
Porting Support	Yuichi Kojima	小島　祐一
Space Design/Direction	Ko Naka	中　　恒
Art Design	Fujitsu Apprico	富士通アプリコ
	Ultra Digital	ウルトラ・デジタル
	Aibit	エイビット
Voice Actors/Cast	Koji Ochiai	落合　弘治
	Atsushi Goto	後藤　敦
	Yuko Maruyama	丸山　裕子
	Masako Watanabe	渡辺　真砂子
	Emiko Kuriyama	栗山　微笑子
Special Thanks	Media Mix	メディアミックス
	Algonyx	アルゴニクス
	Warabe	童
	Robot	ロボット
	Toa Eizo Rokuon	東亜映像録音
	Studio Echo	スタジオ・エコー
	Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory	富士通ソーシアルサイエンスラボラトリ
	Fujitsu Parex	富士通パレックス
	Fujitsu System Business of America, Inc	N/A

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