Joe Asanuma was a director, business person, and producer at Wolfteam, and was involved with most of their games.

When Tales of Phantasia was in production, Eiji Kikuchi , the head of the Riot division of Telenet was transferred to Wolfteam to direct Tales of Phantasia. Usually Joe Asanuma would direct Wolfteam's games, he protested. In the middle of development, he persuaded many of Wolfteam's staff to join him in his own gaming company. After Tales of Phantasia was completed and released, Joe Asanuma founded Tri-Ace with Yoshiharu Gotanda , and Masaki Norimoto . Their first release (Star Ocean) was directed by him. Joe initially was the president of Tri-Ace, but in 1998, he left the company, and his whereabouts today are unknown.