Cinema" award. GameSpot named it the best Xbox game of January 2003. Orta has been consistently listed as one of the best games for the original Xbox, by publications including GamesRadar, Digital Trends, and IGN, which described it as the "pinnacle of rail shooters". Legacy Alex Wawro of Gamasutra called Orta the best Panzer Dragoon game for gameplay refinements and the technical and graphical achievements made possible by Xbox. In a 2007 series retrospective for 1Up.com, James Mielke said that Orta had aged well both mechanically and aesthetically, and was graphically equal to many games on the Xbox 360. In 2008, Joystiq said it would be a good candidate for porting to the Wii, complimenting the quality of its gameplay and graphics. In January 2011, Darren Jones of Retro Gamer said that it had aged well, predicting it would be seen as a genre classic, and that it represented the older development ideals of Sega as a risk-taking company. Orta was featured in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die (2010), and was selected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum for its Art of Video Games exhibition in 2011. As part of the 1Up.com retrospective, Kawagoe and Futatsugi were interviewed. Kawagoe felt that, while the team were successful in bringing the series to a new platform, fan expectations had an impact on Orta perception. Kawagoe also noted the development of future entries depended on fan demand. Futatsugi felt the team were held back by confining themselves to the Panzer Dragoon universe rather than designing a game based on an original concept. Later opinions from staff including Mukaiyama and Kobayashi on Orta were mixed, mainly due to how it continued the narrative past its planned conclusion in Saga. SaiTong Man, combat designer for Heavenly Sword, credited the dragon forms in Orta as an inspiration for protagonist Nariko's three combat stances. Future Panzer Dragoon projects, ranging from a Saga sequel to a film adaptation, were dependent on reactions to Orta. The Panzer Dragoon series became dormant following Orta, a fact attributed to low sales for the series as a whole. In 2018 publisher Forever Entertainment announced remakes of the first two Panzer Dragoon games, and 2020 saw the announcement of a virtual reality game based on sequences from the first three games. Notes References Citations Bibliography External links (Archive) 2002 video games Airships in fiction Cancelled Dreamcast games