The GHZ Forum

I admit that I don't know a hell of a lot about the Sonic Team staff aside from what's shown in the Sonic Team section of this website. Not that I don't want to learn more about them, but I haven't actually seen a detailed rundown of the staff except for a few key players.

The reason I ask this is because a guy I know swears up and down that Sonic Team USA is precisely the reason why Sonic Heroes sucked, and is essentially made up of ST (Japan) rejects. Furthermore, that ST USA is being closely supervised by every other Sega branch so they don't screw up next time. All I know is that the game was directed by the same guy as always, Takashi Iizuka.

Is there actual truth to what he says? I, personally, have my doubts. If there's any more info about the people behind the scene and who's responsible for what, I'd appreciate it.

Sonic Team USA was formed right after the original Sonic Adventure. 12 members of the staff (including Iizuka) moved to the US and tweaked the game for its American release, then they developed Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes at Sega of America. As of the recent restructuring, the department is called Sega Studios, and Iizuka is still in charge, but I don't know how much of the other staff remain.

Righto, thanks. I'm just going to assume he's full of shit.

Still, it's a shame we don't have much info on most of the staff.

Green Gibbon! wrote:Sonic Team USA was formed right after the original Sonic Adventure. 12 members of the staff (including Iizuka) moved to the US and tweaked the game for its American release, then they developed Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes at Sega of America. As of the recent restructuring, the department is called Sega Studios, and Iizuka is still in charge, but I don't know how much of the other staff remain.

That’s means, Naka may have nothing to do with making Sonic adventure 2 and that’s the reason he doesn’t want a Sonic adventure 3?

Has Naka done anything other than produce and supervise since Sonic & Knuckles? He almost seems like a non-factor in the Sonic series today.

As far as I know, Yuji Naka has always been a programer, not a game-designer, so he never designed any Sonic game.

Naka had creative input as well as being the head programmer, at least to the extent of determining which ideas to accept and which to reject. That was the case for S3&K, anyway, based on a Roger Hector interview. Yasuhara is credited as game planner for the main Genesis titles.

Plus, back then, these dev teams were a tight-knit group. Programmers, artists, they all had hands in the design phase. It's not like they were just handed a sheet of paper and said, "Do this, when you're done, we'll call you for the next set."

Everybody was making suggestions, etc.

I beat sonic 2 the other day and there was American names in the credits. What happened to them? they get sacked?

Go to http://sost.emulationzone.org/ the answer is there