United Game Artists[a] (UGA) was a subsidiary of Sega headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.

Mizuguchi hand-selected the team that would join him at AM Annex, which worked on arcade racing game Sega Touring Car Championship.

Later on, Mizuguchi received direction to create a game that would appeal to a broad spectrum of people, leading to development of Space Channel 5 for the Dreamcast.

In 2003, due to financial issues, United Game Artists was merged into Sonic Team, another of Sega's subsidiary companies.

Space Channel 5 is frequently credited with being a unique concept that helped bring about music-based video games.

Prior to entering the video game industry, Mizuguchi majored in literature at Nihon University's Faculty of Arts.

"[2] Mizuguchi has expressed that he originally had no interest in making video games and wanted to be involved in other areas of entertainment, including creating theme parks and attractions.

[5] Mizuguchi had been tasked by Sega with creating a video game that would have a broad enough appeal to draw in casual female gamers.

In order to lighten the mood with his staff, Mizuguchi invited a mime artist to visit the department and help his team to loosen up.

Mizuguchi initially considered the concept of a video game as an art form after playing Xenon 2 Megablast.

[12] Later, while traveling Europe in 1997, Mizuguchi had been taken to the Street Parade in Zurich, during which there was a large electronic dance music concert attended by around 300,000 people.

[13] He saw this tie to his previous ideas and envisioned a game where one would shoot down enemies in time to the beat of music that would put the player into a trance,[12] using a theme of synesthesia,[14] forming the basis of Rez.

Mizuguchi and his team began to research how to structure this game, visiting clubs and attending Taiko drumming festivals.

"[10] USA Today gave the Dreamcast version all four stars and said it was "all about fun, and [Space Channel 5] delivers with a song.

"[24] Entertainment Weekly gave the same version an A− and said that "gamers of all ages undoubtedly will want to help Ulala get her groove back — if not get their hands on a pair of those boots.

[33] The game received unanimous praise for its immersion, sense of place, visual and sound design, and its new level Area X.

Despite the age of its previous iterations, many reviewers considered it to be the finest PSVR title to date, and an essential game for anyone owning the device.

Martin Robinson of Eurogamer called the game a "modern masterpiece",[34] and Alexa Ray Corriea of GameSpot considered it to be "a new classic".