Yuji Naka has always been a big name to SEGA fans, not only did he program Sonic the Hedgehog on the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, he also has a long history of being a company man. Yuji Naka’s first game for SEGA started way back in the SG-1000 days with Girl’s Garden (in 1984!). After that he helped launch SEGA classics such as NiGHTs Into Dreams…, Samba De Amigo, ChuChu Rocket!, Burning Rangers, Phantasy Star Online, and the list goes on.
Yuji Naka announced in March 2006 that he would be leaving SEGA to form his own development team called Prope, where he worked with SEGA to launch the mini-game collection ‘Let’s Tap‘. Now Yuji Naka has confirmed via twitter that he joined SQUARE ENIX this month, coming back to game development. According to a earlier tweet from December, he started learning how to develop in Unity, C# and PHP; stating that it was the first time programming in 20 years. That means he stopped doing programming around 1997, which would be after the death of the SEGA Saturn. This would mean Yuji Naka is returning to actually programming games and that for the last twenty years he was more in a managing role and/or producer for Sonic Team and his own studio Prope.
What do you guys think about Yuji Naka joining SQUARE ENIX as a programmer? Would you guys be interested in what he has to offer in the near future? Sound off in the comments below.
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And he will make some mediocre games
Out of curiosity, what mediocre games did he make?
The fact that Square Enix of all even decided to hire him itself says something.
Well: modern sonic games to begin with.
What has he made aside from Sonic?
They were nevet mediocre.
Yvy the kiwi was ment to be an average.
That game on wii u was not mediocre at all. Just no PR. Tha’ts all
It may be hard for him to no longer have control over a studio amd to have a boss again. However, this may prove make him a better contributor to gaming than ever before. Such an exciting time for Naka-san!
I lost my respect for him since at least 12 years
Ikagura. You r a millenial. How can u say 12 years. U were changing your teeth
Excuse me? Also do you know you can fully write words?
Dude u have no respect. All his sonics were good. Sonic 06 went wrong because sega had unrealistic deadlines. Better start researching. O guess what u were only 6 years in 2006.
Sonic 06 wasn’t the moment it went wrong. Also even if it wasn’t rushed the game would be a weak sonic game.
Anyway stop assuming I was 6 in 2006 when you are writing like that
Dude u know what u did. So start to apologize.
The dude was basically being rushed under sega. It became a stressfull environment. Even christian whitehead got the denuvo stamp. And sonic forces is basically just sonic dash. What a joke. Yuji naka left cuz he didnt like the direction it went. U however dont see that. Start apologizing to the community if u r a real man
I owe you no apoligizing at all…
Christian was a better dev than all Sega has ever done (Denuvo or not)
Boost Sonic game are like Sonic Dash yes.
Yuji isn’t special, Miyamoto, despite being Mario’s creator and dev, didn’t touch videogaming as much since a long time.
Sonic has failed since 2 decades and nobody from Sega could do anything
Ok man fair enough. U have good taste. Im of the opinion that they can lose passion. Look at yu suzuki. Fanboys may love him. But clearly the game is not meeting ends
I wish he would come back to Sega.