tri-Ace was founded during the development of Tales of Phantasia on March 16th 1995 by the "three aces" Yoshiharu Gotanda (story writer and sole programmer of ToP), Masaki Norimoto (game designer of ToP), Yoshiaki Inagaki (lead graphic designer of ToP) and Joe Asanuma (last Wolfteam director before former Riot director Eiji Kikuchi took over) out of protest how Namco and Telenet handled the development and branding of the Tales game. tri-Ace on the other hand is contracted by then Enix, now Square Enix while being allowed to retain independence and full control over their projects. After finishing Star Ocean 2 sound programmer Hiroya Hatsushiba founded tri-Crescendo which then kept doing all sound related works in tri-Ace's games.