Yuji Naka | Code Like It's 198x

When Sega’s programmers were given the job of fitting its arcade hits onto the Master System, the man they relied on was Yuji Naka. Mutsuhiro Fujii, who managed the conversion of Space Harrier, put an arcade cabinet next to Naka’s desk so that he could play it whenever he liked. Mark Cerny, who worked alongside them in Tokyo, remembered “a magician in our little team, named Yuji Naka, who somehow could bring those state-of-the-art experiences to the home console”. Naka went on to program Sonic the Hedgehog, led Sonic Team for more than a decade, and put Dreamcast owners around the world into the same game with Phantasy Star Online. His later career ended in a court case.

Fast facts

Born: 17 September 1965, in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
Sega: from the mid-1980s to 2006, as programmer, then producer and head of Sonic Team.
Programmed: Girl’s Garden (1985), Master System conversions of Space Harrier and Out Run, Phantasy Star (1987), the Mega Drive Ghouls ’n Ghosts, Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992).
Produced: NiGHTS into Dreams (1996), Sonic Adventure (1998), ChuChu Rocket! (1999), Samba de Amigo (1999) and Phantasy Star Online (2000).
Later: founded Prope (2006); joined Square Enix (2018) and directed Balan Wonderworld (2021).
Conviction: insider trading, July 2023, with a suspended sentence.

A programmer without a degree

Naka taught himself to program and went straight into the industry instead of spending four years at university. According to Retro Gamer, Namco turned him down because he had no degree. Sega took him on as an entry-level programmer in the mid-1980s. His first game, the Australian magazine Hyper reported, was Girl’s Garden for Sega’s SG-1000 console, begun as a training exercise and judged good enough to finish and sell.

The Master System made his name inside Sega. He programmed its conversions of the arcade games Space Harrier and Out Run, which Cerny later called “amazing”, and worked on Phantasy Star (1987), Sega’s big role-playing game. Takashi Shoji, a younger Sega programmer, remembered the “smooth movement” of its 3D dungeons and Naka, “a senior programmer”, working on the dungeon animation in the next booth. On the Mega Drive he converted Capcom’s Ghouls ’n Ghosts. In 1988, Retro Gamer says, he moved to the new AM8 department, where he worked with the artist Naoto Ohshima on Phantasy Star II.

Sonic

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) was made by a group of about 15 in AM8, and its staff roll credits the program to “Yu2”, Naka’s nickname. Ohshima designed the hedgehog and Hirokazu Yasuhara planned the game and its levels; the Sonic the Hedgehog entry tells how it was made. The idea, Naka told Retro Gamer, came from playing the first stage of Super Mario Bros. and wondering why he could not get through it faster. Hyper summed up the design: the player, not the game, would control the speed.

Success did not keep him at Sega Japan. Unhappy with a pay system that rewarded seniority, Naka left, and Cerny re-hired him at Sega Technical Institute in California, where he and Yasuhara made Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992), Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles (1994). The Americans and the Japanese on Sonic 2 did not always get on, and Cerny recalled that “from Sonic 3 onwards, Naka just worked with Japanese staff”. Naka still gave Yasuhara his due: “Even now, we call the enemy layout of the traditional Sonic ‘the Yasuhara Setting’,” he told Retro Gamer.

Head of Sonic Team

Sega brought Naka back to Japan in 1994 as a producer, and with Ohshima he revived the Sonic Team name. Their first game was not a Sonic game. “It would have been easier to use Sonic,” Naka told Edge in 1996, “but we thought that people were expecting more, so we created a new character and a new world.” NiGHTS into Dreams (1996), with Naka as executive producer, came with an analogue controller the team designed because the standard Saturn pad could not give its flying the “smooth and comfortable” feeling he wanted; the analogue control entry has the story. Hyper later described it as the last game on which Naka was also lead programmer.

From then on he was a producer and a manager. Sonic Team made Burning Rangers (1998), Sonic Adventure (1998), the first 3D Sonic game, the puzzle game ChuChu Rocket! (1999) and the maraca-shaking rhythm game Samba de Amigo (1999). When Sega split its studios into separate companies in 2000, Naka became chief executive of SONICTEAM Ltd. That December Edge interviewed him about Phantasy Star Online, in which up to four players from different countries explored and fought together over the internet. The system that translated players’ messages had been “a nightmare for us”, he said, and his hopes for it were modest: “I’d like PSO to sell a million… but who knows.”

He kept thinking about playing together. “I hope that in the future network games are just called games,” he told Edge in 2003, when he was also running Sega’s quality control as general manager of its Development Control Center. Hyper found him in 2005 still president of Sonic Team, overseeing more than a hundred developers in Japan and the United States and wishing he could go back to coding.

Prope and Square Enix

In 2006 Naka left Sega to set up his own studio, Prope, with Sega’s backing; Retro Gamer dated the announcement to 8 May 2006 and reported that ten or more Sonic Team staff went with him. Prope made smaller games, several of them for Nintendo’s Wii. Edge counted Let’s Tap (2008), published by Sega, among the rare original ideas that used the Wii remote “without making you look a (complete) fool”; after Ivy the Kiwi? and some games for the iPhone, the studio’s Rodea the Sky Soldier was on the magazine’s wanted list in 2011.

In January 2018 Naka joined Square Enix, announcing that he was programming again for the first time in twenty years. There he directed Balan Wonderworld, a 3D platform game released on 26 March 2021, which Wireframe counted among the year’s most notable launch disasters. In April 2022, after he had left Square Enix, Naka said on Twitter that he had been removed as director about six months before release, that he had sued Square Enix, and that “it is a true disgrace that Balan Wonderworld was released in the state that it was in”. By his account, he was taken off the game after disputes over its promotional music and over the co-developer Arzest submitting builds with problems still unfixed.

Insider trading

In November 2022 Tokyo prosecutors arrested Naka on suspicion of insider trading, and in December re-arrested him on a second charge. While working at Square Enix, he had learned that the company was working with two other developers on mobile games: Aiming on Dragon Quest Tact, and Ateam on Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. He had bought shares in both companies before the games were announced. He pleaded guilty in March 2023. On 7 July 2023 the Tokyo District Court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison, suspended for four years, and ordered him to pay about ¥173 million in a fine and forfeited profits. Naka apologised in court for “harming the fairness and credibility of the marketplace”.

Sources

Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega, 1991), Mega Drive, in-game staff credits: “Program: Yu2”.
Steve Jarratt and Damien McFerran, SEGA Master System: a visual compendium (Bitmap Books, 2019): Mark Cerny’s foreword, p. 5 (Naka’s conversions of Space Harrier and Out Run); interview with Mutsuhiro Fujii, pp. 29–30 (the Space Harrier cabinet next to Naka’s desk); interview with Mark Cerny, pp. 53–56 (“a magician in our little team”; re-hiring Naka at Sega Technical Institute; Sonic 2 and the Japanese and American staff); interview with Takashi Shoji, p. 143 (Naka and the Phantasy Star dungeon animation).
Hyper (Australia) issue 136, February 2005, pp. 22–25, “The Career of Yuji Naka”: no university; entry-level coder at Sega; Girl’s Garden as a training project; Phantasy Star, Space Harrier and Out Run; the player controlling the speed; NiGHTS as his last game as lead programmer; president of Sonic Team with more than a hundred developers.
Retro Gamer issue 26, 2006, pp. 24–28: Sean Smith, “Company profile: Sonic Team”, with interview with Yuji Naka (Namco and the degree; Girl’s Garden on the SG-1000; Out Run and Ghouls ’n Ghosts; AM8 in 1988 and Phantasy Star II; the group of 15; the pay system and Sega Technical Institute; the return in 1994; “the Yasuhara Setting”; the announcement of Prope on 8 May 2006 and the staff who went with him).
Retro Gamer issue 100, March 2012, pp. 46–49: “Sonic the Hedgehog” (Naka and Super Mario Bros.).
Edge issue 35, August 1996: NiGHTS preview and interview with Yuji Naka (executive producer): the new character, the analogue pad.
Edge issue 92, Christmas 2000: Phantasy Star Online and interview with Yuji Naka as “CEO of Sonic Team” (the translation system; “One million”).
Edge issue 129, November 2003: “Interview: Yuji Naka” (network games) and his post as general manager of Sega’s Development Control Center.
Edge issue 176, June 2007: career summary (“2000: President, Producer, Sonic Team; 2007: Chairman, Prope”); Prope as “Sega-sponsored”.
Edge issue 231, September 2011: Rodea The Sky Soldier in “Wanted”, with Ivy The Kiwi?; Let’s Tap (Wii, 2008, Sega, developed by Prope).
Wireframe issue 63, May 2022: Balan Wonderworld as a launch disaster; Naka’s tweets about it.
SEGAbits, “Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka joins Square Enix, returns to programming”, 22 January 2018 (web, secondary). https://segabits.com/blog/2018/01/22/sonic-co-creator-yuji-naka-joins-square-enix-returns-to-programming/
Tom Ivan, “Yuji Naka says he sued Square Enix: ‘It’s a disgrace Balan was released in this state’”, Video Games Chronicle, 28 April 2022 (web, secondary): Naka’s account of his removal and the lawsuit. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/yuji-naka-says-he-sued-square-enix-its-a-disgrace-balan-was-released-in-this-state/
Wesley LeBlanc, “Balan Wonderworld director Yuji Naka filed lawsuit against Square Enix, reveals he was removed before its release”, Game Informer, 28 April 2022 (web, secondary): release date of 26 March 2021; Naka’s account. https://gameinformer.com/2022/04/28/balan-wonderworld-director-yuji-naka-filed-lawsuit-against-square-enix-reveals-he-was
Crystalyn Hodgkins, “Game director Yuji Naka given suspended sentence for insider trading”, Anime News Network, 7 July 2023 (web, secondary, citing Jiji Press, TBS and Famitsu): the arrests of November and December 2022; Aiming and Dragon Quest Tact, Ateam and Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier; the sentence, the fine and forfeiture; his apology. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2023-07-07/game-director-yuji-naka-given-suspended-sentence-for-insider-trading/.200058
Chris Scullion, “Yuji Naka gets a $1.2 million fine and a suspended prison sentence for insider trading”, Video Games Chronicle, 7 July 2023 (web, secondary): the two share purchases, the guilty plea in March 2023 and the sentence. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/yuji-naka-gets-a-1-2-million-fine-and-a-suspended-prison-sentence-for-insider-trading/
Wikipedia, “Yuji Naka” (web, secondary): date and place of birth; his departure from Square Enix in 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuji_Naka