In a Sega television advert from 2000, a ballet class is interrupted by a voice shouting “Up, down, up, down!” and “Tchu! Tchu! Tchu!”, and a narrator promises that “you too can be a dance master… and push the aliens back!” That is Space Channel 5 in a sentence. The player is Ulala, a television reporter in the 25th century, and the invading aliens can be beaten only by out-dancing them. Its producer, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, had spent the 1990s making arcade racing games such as Sega Rally Championship. For this, his first game designed for a home console rather than the arcade, he wanted “to target people who don’t usually play games”. Edge named it among the best rhythm-action games ever made: “No game has ever combined so much pink and orange and funk and tapioca.”
Fast facts
- Developer: Sega’s Software R&D No. 9, which became United Game Artists in 2000.
- Producer: Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
- Creator: Takashi Yuda.
- Platform: Dreamcast; later PlayStation 2.
- Released: Japan, December 1999, at ¥5,800; North America, June 2000; UK, October 2000.
- Sequel: Space Channel 5: Part 2 (Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, 2002).
A game for people who don’t play games
In 1999 Mizuguchi left Sega’s arcade division to set up Software R&D No. 9 and moved the team to Shibuya, in central Tokyo. Sega’s president, Shoichiro Irimajiri, he told Edge, “just told me to gather a team of 50 in Shibuya”, and left the creative decisions to him. The team was aiming at “light users”, not hardcore players, because “recent titles have featured quite tough gameplay, which puts a lot of newcomers off”. Mizuguchi summed up the game as “Dance, fight and drag”. The fun part, he said, was “dragging people behind you”: Ulala’s “power, passion and love draw other characters in and synchronise their movements with her.”
According to Yuda’s later evidence in court, he designed the game between 1997 and 1999. He first imagined the hero as a man, then changed her to a woman to appeal to girls, and took her name from the Japanese name Urara, changed to make it easier for English speakers to say.
How it plays
Each stage is a live broadcast. A group of Morolians, the invading aliens, dance a short sequence and call out its steps (“up, left, right”), and the player repeats them in time with the music. Edge later compared it to Simon, the electronic memory game, “made rhythmic”. There are two action buttons, “chu” and “hey”. “Chu” fires Ulala’s ray gun at the aliens. Hostages are rescued not by shooting them, GamesMaster explained, but “by tapping B”. Every rescued bystander joins the troupe dancing behind her, and the channel’s viewing figures rise as more people tune in. The player needs a rating of at least 15% to carry on.
The look was the other half of the appeal. Edge’s preview described “retro sci-fi pop kitsch”, with backgrounds “reminiscent of sci-fi imagery from the ’60s and ’70s”, or “‘Star Trek’ meets PaRappa the Rappa”. Ulala, dressed in orange, with bright pink bunches, used “very few” polygons, and Mizuguchi said her appeal lay in “the way the character moves”. The team had imagined what people would wear 500 years in the future.
Launch and Michael Jackson
Sega launched the game in Japan with a street event in front of Shibuya station, where Mizuguchi played it on three giant screens on the new Q-Front building, and plastered adverts across Tokyo’s train stations. It had one more draw. Michael Jackson appeared in the game as a character called Space Michael, which Edge reported “has generated further interest”. The same Edge photograph showed Jake Kazdal, an American artist who worked on the game and went on to work on Rez. About 25 people made Space Channel 5, Mizuguchi said in 2000.
The Western magazines were charmed but not won over completely. DC-UK called Ulala “the undisputed Dancing Queen in Sega’s fantastic boogie ’em up”, but found the game irresistible only “while it lasts”. GamesMaster thought it “brilliant fun” but “very short-lived”, and noticed that the characters were “pasted onto a rendered background, which looks a little grainy and shoddy”. Edge, looking back in 2007, listed the first game’s faults: “fuzzy and uninteresting pre-rendered backgrounds, a near-fatal animation-based timing flaw, a soundtrack with a severe lack of variety”.
Part 2
Space Channel 5: Part 2 came out on the Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2 in 2002, one of the last games United Game Artists made before Sega merged it into Sonic Team. Edge called it “perhaps his most human title”, and wrote that it “makes the first game look like nothing more than a proof of concept”. The sets were now fully 3D, the music changed style from scene to scene, and in new instrument battles Ulala, as PlayStation 2 magazine put it, “bangs the drum and wields the axe”. The “chu” and “hey” buttons stayed. Michael Jackson was back as well, and Edge judged that “it’s only in Part 2 that UGA made proper use of” him: the player rescues him, and he gets a whole sequence of his own. Sega released Part 2 again in 2011, as a high-definition download.
Ulala in court
The singer Kierin Kirby, known as Lady Miss Kier of the band Deee-Lite, sued Sega, claiming that Ulala took her likeness and identity. In July 2000 a Sega company had asked her about using her music to promote the game in England, and she had declined. The trial court found for Sega. In September 2006 the California Court of Appeal agreed. It accepted that Ulala’s features, clothes, hair and catch phrases were “sufficiently reminiscent” of Kirby to suggest imitation, but held that Ulala was a “fanciful, creative character” in “a unique and expressive video game”, and so protected as free expression. Kirby was ordered to pay about $608,000 towards Sega’s legal costs.
Later history
A Game Boy Advance game, Space Channel 5: Ulala’s Cosmic Attack, followed in 2003. In 2020 the Shibuya studio Grounding Inc. made Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash! for PlayStation VR, with the player as a rookie reporter following Ulala’s lead. Several of Mizuguchi’s Space Channel 5 colleagues led its development, but he was not involved. Wireframe gave it 25%, calling it a 35-minute “nostalgia-baiting cash grab”.
Sources
- Edge issue 77, Autumn 1999, pp. 34–36: Space Channel 5 prescreen and interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Software R&D No. 9, Shibuya, Irimajiri and the team of 50, “light users”, “people who don’t usually play games”, “Dance, fight and drag”, the retro sci-fi look, Ulala’s polygons and movement, the 25th century).
- Edge issue 74, August 1999: Shoichiro Irimajiri as Sega’s president.
- Edge issue 80, January 2000: the Shibuya launch event (three giant screens on the Q-Front tower).
- Edge issue 81, February 2000: Space Channel 5 review (Dreamcast, ¥5,800); reportage from Tokyo (station adverts, Michael Jackson as Space Michael, Jake Kazdal).
- Edge issue 85, June 2000: the Japanese television advert and its script.
- Edge issue 89, October 2000: interview with Mizuguchi on United Game Artists (about 25 people made Space Channel 5).
- GamesMaster issue 100, November 2000: Space Channel 5 review (the commands, rescuing hostages with B, the 15% rating, “short-lived”, the rendered backgrounds); UK release schedule for October.
- DC-UK issue 16, December 2000: buyer’s guide (Ulala as “the undisputed Dancing Queen”, “while it lasts”).
- Edge issue 128, October 2003: rhythm-action games feature (“so much pink and orange and funk and tapioca”); Space Channel 5: Ulala’s Cosmic Attack review (Game Boy Advance).
- Edge issue 177, July 2007: Time Extend, Space Channel 5: Part 2 (Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, 2002; Simon “made rhythmic”; the first game’s faults; the “chu” and “hey” buttons; instrument battles; Michael Jackson; “perhaps his most human title”).
- PlayStation 2 issue 12, March 2003, p. 66: Space Channel 5: Part 2 review (the instrument sections, Michael Jackson).
- Edge issue 222, Christmas 2010: Space Channel 5: Part 2 HD download re-release due early 2011.
- Wireframe issue 38, May 2020, p. 59: Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash! review (Grounding Inc., PlayStation VR, Mizuguchi not involved, 25%).
- Kirby v. Sega of America, Inc., 144 Cal.App.4th 47, California Court of Appeal, 25 September 2006 (public record): Yuda’s account of creating the game and naming Ulala; release in Japan in December 1999 and North America in June 2000; the July 2000 approach to Kirby; the ruling and the award of about $608,000 in fees. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1347124.html
- Mark Litwak, “Kirby v. Sega (2006)”, Entertainment Law Resources, March 2008 (web, secondary): summary of Kirby’s claim and the ruling in Sega’s favour. http://marklitwak.blogspot.com/2008/03/kirby-v-sega-2006.html
- Wikipedia, “Space Channel 5” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Takashi Yuda as director; the PlayStation 2 release of the first game in 2002; the Part 2 HD release in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Channel_5