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Sega people say Sega things on Twitter

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Ted909, Jul 26, 2022.

  1. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I went on a Prope hunt, because I hadn't been paying attention. And it's true, they didn't make any Sega games after 2009, but they were doing things in the mobile space right up to 2017. It's just a lot of it was Japanese only and nobody seemed to notice.

    My pick:

    [​IMG]

    "Wii Motion Plus Variety", aka Wii Play: Motion, 2011 sequel to Wii Play. Prope did one of the minigames (and know who else did some of the others? Arzest, aka Naoto Oshima's crew). So that's Naka and Oshima (kinda) working together on a Nintendo game of all things. The more you know.


    My understanding is Sega contributed 10% of the initial 10,000,000 yen capital with first right of refusal on publishing. It's an idea Sega had, where they'd pay a bit of money to fund smaller studios - I have no idea if they signed deals with any others, but the 20% comes from the maximum amount Sega were willing to fund should others come forward. With Prope it was only 10%.

    I can only assume Sega made its money back and stopped caring, because Prope released tons of titles without Sega (including two Digimon games... so not sure how that even works under the above arrangement). I also don't understand why they stopped - did Naka just get bored one day? The site's not dead and there's no reports of money or staffing issues. Weird, man.
     
  2. Gryson

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    This is not surprising coming from Naka, of all people. One of the main reasons he quit Sega in 1991 was because of the low pay. Then he got to experience how much developers got paid in the US. I'm not surprised he tried to push that culture in Japan.

    Oversimplifying the situation. There is no being known as "SEGA." Naka most likely butted heads with whoever his superiors were, and one of the issues was developer pay (likely related to staff retention). They retaliated by transferring him or promoting him to a paper pushing job (a common punishment in Japanese companies). Naka then quit. It is not possible in most contexts to fire a permanent employee in Japan.

    None of that would have prevented him from using his connections in Sega to score investment in his new company.
     
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  3. And some the only real reason why Naka went to the use was SEGA Japan looking to exploit tax breaks by sending staff oversea's, depending on who you belive that was one of the reasons why AM#1 staff were flown over to develop Die Hard Arcade 1 and 2, because other members of Sonic Team were flown over to SOA for Sonic 2.

    If you want to get rid of a member of staff there are other ways of doing it, much cheaper than looking to invest 20% into a new start up corp; SEGA Japan did have a form on this, not just with the way they treated Yu Suzuki, but one read stories on how staff were basically put in an empty office because SEGA Japan did not want to pay redundancy.

    Like with many ex SEGA staff it never worked out for Naka and I bet he most prob, regrets leaving SEGA: a place where he did have some power and influence.
    I thought the issues with Sonic & Sonic Team started to happen before Sonic 06. Sonic Heroes was ok, but the tech and art direction wasn't the best, PSU was in all sorts of trouble with Sonic Team worrying more about SOA not wanting to show belly buttons, rather than worry more about the gaming running at 3fps, not that PSO 3 before that, was that good either.

    Sonic Team really seemed to lose their way with SEGA pulling out of the Hardware to me. I thought with the move to Sonic Unleashed, was where Sonic Team started to get back on top of the tech side of things and make some good moves, that they get little credit for.
     
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  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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  5. Ted909

    Ted909

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    Also courtesy of Naka, long-standing Sega managing director Akira Nagai seems to have passed away yesterday at 79.

    I get the impression that he was most well-known over here for his cameo in Shenmue (as a yakuza boss, no less), but Nagai was an integral figure in the arcade business for many years during Sega's history. His involvement with them dated back to 1963 and the Nihon Goraku Bussan days, and lasted all the way up to the Sammy merger in 2004.

    If anyone isn't familiar with him, I'd highly recommend reading this translated interview on Shmuplations, originally published in Sega Arcade History - it gives a good flavour of the areas he exerted most influence on, and some great insight on the history of arcade operations in Japan.
     
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  6. Aesculapius Piranha

    Aesculapius Piranha

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    I had never known that the local Yakuza boss in Shenmue was actually an important figure in Sega. Very interesting and sad to know posthumously. Thanks for the articles.
     
  7. Wow, I missed all of this with Naka-san. Totally disappointing if it went down that way. A lot of his comments recently regarding Sonic and Sega did make it seem strange that he left the company. At first it seemed natural as a lot of Sega’s huge talent ended up leaving in the 2000s, either around the time of the Dreamcast going down or the merger (Ōshima, Mizuguchi, Suzuki, etc.), but he always struck me as someone with a lot of love for the company and its IPs.

    It’s too bad he left. I wonder what his problem with Unleashed was though… probably using more than two buttons lol.
     
  8. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    In that case, the only appropriate response:

    [​IMG]

    RIP Nagai.
     
  9. charcoal

    charcoal

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  10. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    So that's why his gloves and shoes have black bits. Fascinating.
     
  11. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    So Tails' shoes and gloves look like that because he admired Sonic before meeting even him and tried to imitate his look by wearing similar garments, but they were too big for him so he put belts on them? I thought it was SOA that came up with Tails' backstory? Does this mean that Tails' design was tweaked after his origin was decided? Or did some of that backstory come from the Japanese side of the team?

    Interesting how they experimented with making Super Sonic glow in 7 colors. Guess Hyper Sonic's design is yet another thing based on scrapped S2 concepts.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2022
  12. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I would think that with Sonic 2, everything would be a mixture of US and Japanese input, because it was a multi-cultural team. It's not like Sonic 1, where ideas would be sent over to Sega of America's marketing, who would dick around with things and send it back - I think Yuji Naka and friends were trusted by the time Sonic 2 entered development.

    Although I'd hazard a guess it was SoA that decided on the name "Tails". We've got it down as a collective Sonic 2 development team decision, but that doesn't explain why the name gets changed to "Miles" when the region is set to Japanese. We know Yamaguchi liked "Miles Prower", but he wasn't a programmer.
     
  13. Blue Spikeball

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    I'm talking about how Console Wars made a big deal out of the split between US and Japan, and narrated how it was the SOA side that came up with Tails' backstory and presented it to the skeptical Japanese side in order to convince them that the whole thing wasn't just Americans imposing their will on them for the sake of it.

    Here's the tale for reference, though I'm aware you and most of us are already familiar with Console Wars and its sensationalism.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2022
  14. Gryson

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    (to Blue Spikeball): Yamaguchi created the Tails character. What he's talking about in his tweet is less "backstory" and more the ideas that went into the character design. He had no control over what backstory SOA gave the character in their own media.

    In regards to the name: Yamaguchi decided on the name Miles Prower, but Al Nilsen and others at SOA hated it. They changed it to Tails. When Yamaguchi found out, he was pissed. I can't recall what interview this was from, but there was apparently some very big drama over it. That's why, when development began on Sonic 3, SOA insisted that Yuji Naka and his team sit down with Tom Kalinske and his team to agree on the character design of Knuckles before any work was done. But yeah, for Sonic 2, there were disagreements between the Japanese developers and the SOA staff over the characters. In Yamaguchi's tweet, he also says the SOA designers were creating character proposals for Sonic 2, but they were more focused on a rival-type character.

    What's also interesting about Yamaguchi's tweet is that Yuji Naka came up with the fox concept based on the fox character in Urusei Yatsura. Also, the whole Super Sonic thing (a blatant rip-off of Dragonball) was meant to be much harder to access in the game due to how blatant it was, but it was quickly discovered through the cheat code.
     
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  15. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    I'm aware of that, but he mentions Tails' design reflecting the fact he admired Sonic, something that was present in the Miles Monotail backstory proposed by SOA. Which makes me question how much of it actually came from SOA and how much from the Japanese side.
     
  16. charcoal

    charcoal

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    I feel like a kid sidekick admiring the main hero is a pretty common trope and Tails admiring Sonic was probably a guarantee no matter who created his story. It'd be weirder if Tails was created and didn't admire Sonic, that was the entire point of the character, after all.
     
  17. Aesculapius Piranha

    Aesculapius Piranha

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    Yasushi Yamaguchi (Judy Totoya) posted some badass Mecha-Sonic art on Twitter as part 3 of what seems to be a series for Sonic 2's 30th.
    FiF31icaEAAGFP_.jpg

    I might post the rest later (Yamaguchi has also posted Tails and Super Sonic so far) if someone else doesn't by then. Still, this is probably the best Mecha art we have from an official source.
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2022
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  18. Blue Spikeball

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    Nice. Not only do we get confirmation that Mecha Sonic was inspired by Mechagodzilla, but he reveals he was also inspired by Gigan, explaining his monoeye.

    He also reveals that Mecha was going to be a mid-boss back when Death Egg was planned as a full level.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
  19. Aesculapius Piranha

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    Also posted today replying to questions about the prototype, meaning it was the first robot made specifically to counter Sonic, but he doesn't know the chronological order past the game numbering.

    Kinda cool to me because it makes S3&K's Mecha (and Adventure's) seem like iterations on 2's mecha rather than the same bot rebuilt and Metal being a separate being entirely. I know these are assumptions you can already make but it just kind of strengthens the old story.

    Edit: Also posted that the Sonic 2 artwork for Mecha Sonic was drawn after the project was over and had better upgrades lol
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
  20. charcoal

    charcoal

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    https://twitter.com/judy_totoya/status/1595392743026888704?
    Apparently the reason Sonic 2's special stage sprite looks so weird is that Toyota wasn't given a proper reference for Sonic's spines, and was just eyeballing it from the Sonic 1 sprite sheet. It's actually a pretty decent interpretation with that context in mind, tbh.