"It was developed by them and had nothing to do with Bullfrog, except that we (EA Square) worked with the management at Bullfrog (by then, it was more EA UK Studio than Bullfrog) to use the Theme brand."Īs Kanaoya notes, the Theme brand has been rather successful in Japan, and so EA was very eager to slap it on another title for the Japanese audience. "It's a while ago now, and my memory is a little fuzzy, but the Tose story is basically right," he tells me. As it turns out, one of Kanaoya's projects at the company was Theme Aquarium, on which he provided localization assistance.
Shintaro Kanaoya, currently director of business operations at Microsoft, was lead designer on Dungeon Keeper 2, before he moved from Bullfrog to EA Square. This raises the question, then, of how exactly Bullfrog was involved, if at all.Īfter asking around, I managed to find a former Bullfrog lead who was at the studio from 1997-1999. is a Japanese developer best known for creating Nintendo's Game & Watch Gallery series, and for helping out with Japanese ports, so it appears that this would make a great deal of sense. The MobyGames page for Theme Aquarium potentially offers more insight, stating that the game was developed by Tose Co. As if this wasn't already suspicious enough, Bullfrog being a UK-based developer and such, the plot thickens when you discover that the game received a Windows PC port in Europe two years later - but the Theme part of the name was removed, the logo was completely altered, and Bullfrog's name disappeared from the packaging.
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