Yuji Naka

NIS America interviews Yuji Naka to promote Rodea: The Sky Soldier

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NIS America just posted an interview with Rodea the Sky Soldier creator Yuji Naka (Sonic the Hedgehog, Chu Chu Rocket and NiGHTS) and director Zin Hasegawa (Fatal Frame series) on their Youtube channel. It’s a pretty interesting interview with Yuji Naka starting off by saying that it has been a long time and it really has, so it’s good to see him do these types of interviews for games again.

Yuji Naka even talks about how he has created games that have to do with speed like Sonic the Hedgehog and flying games like NiGHTS and whether that factored into creating Rodea the Sky Soldier since it has similarities. Listen in and I hope Prope and SEGA work on a project again in the near future.

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Rodea The Sky Solider gets 16-minute gameplay video

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Recently some Japanese game programming decided to take a look at Rodea Sky Solider, since I don’t really understand Japanese and I assume you don’t either, I skipped the video above to the gameplay (and if I did it wrong it starts at the 8 minute mark). A few thing that I noticed was the long loading at the start and the low resolution textures (mostly because the game started as a Wii game).

It was recently announced that NIS America would bring the game to America and Europe this fall; so you’ll be able to play it in English soon enough. The game will be coming to Wii U and 3DS, the video mostly shows off the Wii U version but at the end they show off very little of the 3DS version too (off screen gameplay).

So who is picking up this title?

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Rodea: The Sky Soldier gets new screenshots, story and gameplay details

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rodea-s-17-1

Rodea: The Sky Soldier was originally set to be a Wii game and now is going to get new life next year on both the Wii U and 3DS. Just last week the publisher, Kadokawa Games released a new trailer for the game and not much else. But now they have released the story overview, character profiles, gameplay details, and even a ton of new screens.

The story has empires, battle with technology and other themes present in past Sonic Team games. They even added a hint of Panzer Dragoon in there for good measure with its little map and on-rails looking gameplay.  Not only that, the Wii U version of the game also got a filter that gives it a sketched out feel, similar to what Valkyria Chronicles did compared to the Wii original. Oddly enough no 3DS screenshots have been shown yet.

Hit the jump to see Gematsu’s translation of the story,characters and a screenshot gallery.

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Yuji Naka’s Rodea: The Sky Soldier gets new trailer showing off Wii U footage

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Yuji Naka’s Rodea: The Sky Soldier is a weird story, seeing as it was supposed to be released on the Wii in 2011, even Yuji Naka said the title was completely done and just needed to be released by publisher Kadokawa games. No information was released and even Yuji Naka said he wasn’t sure if the game was going to be released last year. Well, thankfully the publisher Kadokawa games came to its senses since they announced the game coming for both Wii U and 3DS.

Seems that they are sticking with the Spring 2015 release window for Japan. Now we have a trailer showing off footage of the game and as you can see it looks like very low quality Wii graphics. But you know what? The game looks so fun, that it can be running on the Sega Saturn and I’d buy it. Let’s hope this is a good one, for Prope’s sake.

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Yuji Naka’s Rodea the Sky Soldier is Still Alive

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Have you been wondering what Yuji Naka has been up to since leaving Sonic Team besides making a bunch of small and kinda neat games? Well, a new action adventure game called Rodea the Sky Soldier was announced for Wii and 3DS, publisher Kadowaka Games released a trailer which can be seen above. So why is it being released for Wii? Well, this trailer was released a little more than two years ago, after which the publisher never spoke of it again. Yuji Naka gave an update a few months later saying that the game was finished, but that they were waiting for Kadowaka Games to publish it. After a while everyone who did know about the game either forgot about it or assumed that it was scrapped.

Now we finally have an update on the title. Yoshimi Yasuda, the president of Kadowaka Games had said that they were having trouble adapting the control scheme to the 3DS version, which is being handled by the publisher. Yasuda said that the version is about 70% finished and that there will be more information in the near future. Maybe it’ll get a re-reveal at TGS 2013? We’ll see.

Prope also released a Digimon RPG called Digimon Adventure for PSP earlier this year in Japan, a western release doesn’t seem likely for this game though.

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Round Table: Which ex-SEGA developers do you miss the most?

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exsegaroundtable
Most people follow around sport teams and their players, here at SEGAbits we follow SEGA studios and developers. There have been tons of employees and developers that SEGA have fired or left throughout its long history, as is expected with every big publisher. But sometimes there is that developer that was behind one of your favorite games, when he leaves the company it really tugs at the heart strings. So in this week’s round table we will be discussing which ex-SEGA developers we miss the most!

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What is Yuji Naka’s studio working on? Digimon Adventures

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I know most of you will give me crap for posting this on the blog, since it doesn’t have anything to do with SEGA as a publisher. But let’s be honest, I think we are all interested in what big high profile ex-SEGA developers are up to in the world. This time we look at Yuji Naka’s Prope, who will be working on the upcoming Digimon Adventure.

The game promises to cover the story of the original Digimon anime series and will be a RPG game. Yep, this will be the first RPG from Prope and oddly enough is coming out on the original PSP. So that means no one will probably play it. Find it on shelves in 2013.

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Yuji Naka spills the beans on a Sonic movie?

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It has been revealed by Naka himself recently that he visited the Mazra Animation studios. The animators behind the Sonic Unleashed CGI scenes and Generations CGI ads. On both Twitter and Facebook he makes comments that sound along the lines that there may be a Sonic animated movie in the works.

Marza Animation Planet is made up of members from VE R&D (http://sega.jp/corp/saiyo/csjob/ve.shtml), which is a division he had a hand in creating. It looks like they’re working on a Sonic movie. Their offices seem nice, and they have a screening room / theatre there.

Whether it may just be some CGI for an upcoming game or a full blown movie remains to be seen. Sega has not made any comment on the matter so far.

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Yuji Naka’s Prope shows off ‘FlickPig’ for iOS

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Above is the latest title from Legendary SEGA developer Yuji Naka and his team at Prope. The game is already out and available on the iOS App Store. Good news? Its only a buck.

The game will even offer you 100 different stages to unlock, Game Centre support and achievements. Not bad.

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Yuji Naka talks about his cancelled Wii game Haunted Tower

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[Yuji Naka shows his troll face to Nintendo]

Nintendo had one of their ‘Iwata Asks developer round table’ things, where Iwata asks all the hard hitting questions to developers. This week they had other developers from companies that worked on Wii Play: Motion. This included Yuji Naka who represented Prope. Oh yeah, Naoto Ohshima from Arzest is also there in the picture.

Naka revealed that when Nintendo first showed MotionPlus two years ago, he pitched a game to them called Haunted Tower. The point of the game was defeating monsters, only that they would not just be on your TV screen, but also “outside the screen”.

The project was cancelled and Prope instead helped work on Wii Play: Motion. They did the mini-game called “Trigger Twist“.  How far along the game was in production is unknown, though most likely it was just in planning stages.

[Source: Siliconera]

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Yuji Naka working on a fishing game with Namco Bandai

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Famitsu has revealed a new fishing game being done at Namco Bandai. In the write up, they say that the producer is none other than Yuji Naka. Well, isn’t that something. The game is obviously set to appear on the Nintendo Wii.
The game will take the player to tropical island resorts, jungle lakes and other watery locations to catch over 200 fish and collect over 1,000 items. Included in the game are penguins, because Naka loves those little guys.

Didn’t know there was a huge market for fishing games, but just gives you a little hope for a Big the Cat fishing game from SEGA.

[Source: AndriaSang]

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SEGA Sequel Saturdays: Comix Zone

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This is my first time taking on the ‘SEGA Sequel Saturdays’ feature, I hope I do it justice. My pick is Comix Zone, it might have been a very hard and short game, but it still remains as one of my favorite SEGA Genesis titles of all time.

I think with PSN & XBLA games doing so well, it might be time for SEGA to do a proper sequel for this title. Move over Sonic 4, this is the Genesis game that deserved a sequel!

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Yuji Naka’s action game called Tenkuu no Kishi Rodea

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Yuji Naka has teased this action game before, and now in the latest issue of Famitsu he goes into detail about his latest creation. The game will be called Tenkuu no Kishi Rodea, and like we already know, it will be sky based. The story will be written by Takumi Miyajima (Tales of Symphonia/Tales of the Abyss).

The game will let you take to the skies and shoot enemies, and it’s also said to feature ‘non flying levels’. Even though Yuji Naka originally teased this as his ‘HD action game’ it is actually heading to the Wii/3DS. So another Nintendo exclusive.

Enjoy the scans! Game is being published by Kadokawa Games, not SEGA. Just to let you guys know.

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Yuji Naka, Naoto Oshima and Takashi Iizuka hanging out

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Those god damn hooligans. They are up to no good, with their blue spikes and their loud rock n’ roll music. Actually these photos where posted by Yuji Naka on his twitter, who was ‘chillaxing’ with Naoto Oshima (original designer for Sonic) and Takashi Iizuka (current boss over at Sonic Team).

Can you imagine what they talked about? Whatever it is, I hope its all three getting together for a game. Takashi Iizuka most likely has great ideas that evolve Shadow and aliens.

[Via: Sonic Stadium]

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Yuji Naka’s HD console game not published by SEGA

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[First scan/concept art of the upcoming game]

Yuji Naka’s upcoming game has been teased in Famitsu and it won’t be published by SEGA. The game will be published by Kadokawa Games. Never heard of them? I don’t blame you, all they have done was a port of RPG Maker for DS and some other girl anime game. But it seems the company wants to become bigger, first step is with the Yuji Naka HD game (along with a game by Grasshopper).

“The game itself is an action title that takes place in the sky. The action gameplay is what I’m focusing on the most with this project — interactivity is the most important attraction with any sort of game, and if that doesn’t evolve, then games won’t be everything they can be. Sonic was all about completely taking over the land, and Nights brought that same concept into the skies. I had always thought that action games that take place in the sky are too hard for players to cope with, but then I thought up a new method for dealing with it. That’s how this project got started. If I had stuck around at Sega, then I might have used this concept to make a sequel to Nights!”  – Yuji Naka (Prope)

It is most likely that SEGA passed on publishing Yuji Naka’s title. Most likely due to how poor a bigger known IP like NiGHTS did on Wii and how he compares the concept to that or it could be due to how poor Let’s Tap did. We will never know. We wish Naka luck with his new title and if its good, of course we will all be playing it, regardless of publisher.

[Source: 1up]

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