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I don't know how many hours I've searched for that guy. I got everything from Yuji Naka's e-mail addresses to half done interviews. The guy is missing, he's just disappeared from our planet. Me and Kurairyu have together searched Japanese sites. We got his name in Japanese, but only one search hit! Damn, he knows everything... and he's nice, but still nowhere to be found. Searching for Yuji Naka in Japanese brings up 1000+ hits. How can this be? Sure Naka programmed Sonic, but without Yasuhara...
Here is his name in Japanese:
Okay, here is my Yasuhara collection, last time seen at SOA 1996, or was it 1997:
Will Sonic games ever be like they were, without Hirokazu Yasuhara?
Do what ever you can to find this person. he would probably be happy to tell us about the development process.
Here is his name in Japanese:
Okay, here is my Yasuhara collection, last time seen at SOA 1996, or was it 1997:
__SONIC R__ Travelers Tales Program Design & Implementation Jon Burton Head Artist Dave Burton Game Design Director Takashi Lisuka (Sega Enterprises Ltd.) Map Design Director Hirokazu Yasuhara (SOA) __SONIC R__end Executive Producer: Yuju Naka Co-Executive Producer: Hirokazu Yasuhara Lead Game Designer: Hirokazu Yasuhara. Lead Programmer: Yuji Naka -------saturn news Sonic X-Treme Team Increased Mr. Yasuhara, one of the men responsible for the original Sonic, was recently brought in to work on Sonic X-Treme. In addition to Mr. Yasuhara, Sega has doubled the amount of people that are currently working on Sonic X-treme. ------- Interview; Christian G. Senn; Sonic Xtreme Yasuhara Hirokazu took charge of designing levels. Since he'd completed the Sonic Blast designs, he went in the same style direction of designing new Sonic Xtreme levels. I loved his drawings - great designs. A few months after this was when the sh*t really hit the fan... Nakayama-san visited to check the progress and was outraged to see how much was left to be done. This was the day Ofer and I had planned to show him what the two of us had created on our own... Interview; Brenda Ross; Sonic 2 Q: Explain the process of how a level was designed: from concept to final product. A: That’s a question for Yasuhara, The game designer for Sonic. Interview; Craig Stitt; Sonic 2 My primary job on Sonic 2 was simply to 'paint' art (one pixel at a time!) that would bring the maps to life. Yasuhara was the primary designer on Sonic 1-3 (and he was the real magic behind the game and a really nice guy) Naka (the head programmer) had quit in Japan, but he was friends with Mark Cerny (who started and ran STI). Mark talked Naka into coming to STI. At the same time, but before anyone knew how huge Sonic would be, Yasuhara had signed-up to come work in the US. By the time Sonic went ballistic, STI had the two people most responsible for it's success, so STI got to do Sonic 2. I do know that there was no plans for Knuckles at this point since he wasn't even a glint in Yasuhara's eye yet. One bit of trivia for Spinball. It was the last day. We were all sitting around eating at the 'wrap party' when the Japanese came in from working on Sonic 3. Yasahara, while watching the opening sequence of Spinball, made an off-hand remark asking how we talked Sega into paying for the rights to the orginal Sonic Theme. We all looked at him very strangely since we didn't have a clue what he was talking about. It turns out that the group that did the orginal Sonic theme still owned the rights to the music. In the intrerm between Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 this band had become quite famous in Japan. When Sega approached them to use the music again in Sonic 2, they asked for a lot of money. Interview; Yuji Naka; Sonic 1 For example, when Sonic jumps, he needs to be fast enough to attack the enemy at the same time. These are just some of the aspects of the game design taken into consideration - an effort headed by Mr. Yasuhara. Anyway, we decided to create a cool, extremely fast hedgehog who could also roll up and jump. Hirokazu Yasuhara (Designer) Takao Miyoshi (Designer) *main force behind Phantasy Star* <s93220*0@.ws.ipc.fit.ac.jp> Takashi Iizuka (Designer) *Sonic 3 & K, Sonic Adventure* Naoto Ohshima (Designer) (Football player;) )
Will Sonic games ever be like they were, without Hirokazu Yasuhara?
Do what ever you can to find this person. he would probably be happy to tell us about the development process.
