Search Results - Naka, Yuji

Yuji Naka

, credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese former video game programmer, designer and producer. He is the co-creator of the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.

Naka joined Sega in 1984 and worked on games including ''Girl's Garden'' (1985) and ''Phantasy Star II'' (1989). He was the lead programmer of the original ''Sonic'' games on the Mega Drive in the early 1990s, which greatly increased Sega's market share. After developing ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' (1991) in Japan, Naka moved to California to develop ''Sonic the Hedgehog 2'' (1992), ''Sonic the Hedgehog 3'' (1994) and ''Sonic & Knuckles'' (1994) with Sega Technical Institute.

Naka returned to Japan to lead development on Sonic Team games including ''Nights into Dreams'' (1996), ''Burning Rangers'' (1998), ''Sonic Adventure'' (1998) and ''Phantasy Star Online'' (2000). After Sega left the console market in 2001, Naka remained as an executive officer and oversaw its output for the next five years.

In 2006, Naka left Sega and founded the independent game company Prope. He joined Square Enix to direct the platform game ''Balan Wonderworld'' (2021), which reunited him with the ''Sonic'' co-creator Naoto Ohshima. Naka claims he was removed from the project six months before the game was released, and ''Balan'' underperformed critically and commercially. He left Square Enix in April 2021. In 2023, Naka was found guilty of insider trading at Square Enix. Provided by Wikipedia