As previously mooted elsewhere, a thread for any notable stuff that Sega people, whether still working with them or not, have came out with on Twitter. A fair bit related to the company is indeed posted on there, and a lot has probably still flown under the radar of most - both can go here upon discovery, though quite how they can be documented and referenced on Retro besides external archives is another matter. For a new example of the former, Masato Nishimura has just recently put up some photos of Sega's former second HQ building, alongside one or two others. No real top secret revelations or anything, but there is one of the old human-sized Temjin statues which used to crop up in some places, and a snap of something I certainly haven't seen before - an offbeat version of this Norman Rockwell piece, altered to feature US Sonic 3 art: Mazin's thread has also prompted AM3/Rosso alumni Kenji Sasaki to recount an amusing old legend about the Sega logo marked into the ground outside having its own dedicated security cameras, presumably alerting top brass in the event of it being stepped on or damaged (?).
I might put it: There was an urban legend that Sega was secretly filming that giant Sega logo on the ground, and if any employees walked on it, they'd get in trouble. (dear internet: this is a joke, please don't put it on wikipedia) Here's an old one I came across recently from Yuzo Koshiro: When Ancient began work on Bare Knuckle II, Sega president Nakayama told him to make a game that would surpass Street Fighter II. Setting the bar high...! It would be cool to have a list of "who's who" on Twitter.
I added a "| twitter=" field We can use that to generate a big list if needed (someone will have to edit the people pages though).
We have full credits for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Loadstar, so there's an epic trolling opportunity for someone to create a page linking to Elon Musk's Twitter account.
Categorising the links to their accounts and generating one big compendium of them is all fine and well, but have been thinking more about finding a place for posts with info that can't really be found anywhere else right now - e.g. these further tweets by Masato Nishimura and a few others bringing up some early CS1/2/3 team production credits. If they delete their accounts and posts, or when Twitter inevitably implodes in the future, where else could these be accessible to reference but places like the Internet Archive, GDRI, and (hopefully) Retro?
I'll say it again, but I believe every single tweet by every single account even associated with Sega should be backed up using archive.today and (I guess) the Wayback Machine (It archives Twitter weirdly but WILL save videos unlike archive). i.e. SAVE. EVERYTHING. ALWAYS.
And make a note on the wiki somewhere. If you're not using the link as a refence, put it on Sega Retro:Todo so it doesn't get lost. It is physically impossible for me to keep on top of everything, so work together an ting
Following Area51_zek's post about their second book dedicated to cancelled arcade games, Kenji Sasaki was recently talking about unreleased titles he claims he saw in development at Sega (since they were not publicly shown even once or spoken of by him elsewhere, Sasaki seems to be saying these are not going to be in the book): - A Model 2-based vertical shooter was half-finished and personally approved by Hayao Nakayama - Despite his praise, said shooter was shot down by a development general manager and sales staff - Of roughly the same time period, a racing game in which players rode on an animal was also being made. Steven Spielberg was apparently a fan and even made a comment about making a film of it, but things never went further Considering the various Sega anecdotes flying around that say Spielberg essentially gave Shenmue the greenlight and ended up as the internal codename for the 3D Control Pad after testing both on his 1996 GameWorks negotiations visits, that last one in particular really doesn't surprise me much.
That is why I really really really really want this implemented. I am not quite getting this from these tweets
This is basically what he said: He worked on a vertical shooter for the Model 2 but it was cancelled partway in. The project had received approval after a presentation to Nakayama. It was in a semi-playable state when he presented it to Nakayama at a planning meeting, and Nakayama praised it (a rare event at the time). This was despite the head of the development division and the sales department saying it was crazy to make a vertical shooter for the Model 2. He doesn't say it was shot down by anyone - just that they initially didn't like the idea. We don't know why it was cancelled.
As the platform's well on its way to imploding spectacularly now, it's a probably good time to bring up any fairly important tweets here and archive entire inactive accounts (which I believe can be done by requesting the Internet Archive's Archivebot IRC). Without random JP posters, I wouldn't have ever known that one of the first notable things Hisao Oguchi did at Sega was apprehend an on-the-run criminal with a couple of other young developers - this is the kind of stuff we could lose access to here.
Yuji Naka just revealed on Twitter that Sega forced him out of the company in 2006. He said he loved the company so much he wanted to retire there, and that he would never have left of his own free will while development was still underway on Sonic 06 and Phantasy Star Universe. He said he was forced out because he fought to get salaries raised for all of the developers working under him. https://twitter.com/nakayuji/status/1588769777329524736
All I'm thinking is, "how would he have have withheld and frontmanned the reception of 06?" Doubt he could have salvaged that game lol
He's talked a bit about it in a 2016 interview. When asked if he's played any new Sonic games after leaving Sega, he said: "I played the first one that came out after I left Sega, but after about 10 seconds I got bothered by various things and decided I shouldn't touch it anymore. Since then I've just been watching over Sonic from a distance. I was involved in 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog, but I left Sega in the middle of development, and I was really bothered by the parts added after that. The reason we gave it that title was because we wanted to take the series in a new direction at the critical turning point of its 15-year anniversary. Upon release, reviews of the game were not good, and I have to apologize that I could not be involved until the end." https://www.famitsu.com/news/201606/24107383.html?page=4 I don't think he was even credited on 06, so I'm not sure how much input he had in the final product. He left Sega like 9 months before its release.
Naka probably was just kind of troublesome as we can all now imagine, regardless which rumors about him were true or not. It's interresting he probably would have not approved alot of things that would happen later on. Alone the more complex control schemes that go beyond 2 buttons in games later on...
It's hard to say, especially when we only have his word to go off of in this instance. The idea of pressing for higher wages for all your people... that can be viewed more than one way. I'm not going to try and guess in which context this occurred or who was right/wrong, but Sega responded the way they did for a reason. For some reason, my brain has conjured up a comparison to Jack Bauer pushing the limits constantly at CTU. What if Jack Bauer was forced to leave his job? Maybe he'd finally have time to use the bathroom. It's fun to think of Yuji Naka as Jack Bauer, because it makes Sega a lot more exciting If you read that and are totally confused, don't try.
I wouldn't want to claim any insider business knowledge, but it might be difficult to justify department-wide wage rises in 2005/2006. Aside from the fact the finances probably weren't very healthy anyway, new console hardware means big R&D investments, and the axing of Fifth Phantom Saga won't have gone unnoticed. Unless Fifth Phantom Saga and Sonic 06 are a result of poor staff retention, i.e. the expertise has jumped ship because they can get paid better elsewhere. Dunno.
I don't belive Naka-san on this one. If you were forced out of a company why would sign a deal with that company for 1st picks on any game you make, much less have that company invest 20% in your capital to start up your new company, All moves SEGA and Naka did with Prope. I think the main trouble with Sonic 06 was the silly 15th anniversary date and having part of the Shinobi team merge into the Sonic Team and Kumono-san being made producer and not up to the task of handling such a big team and budget.
"Sega fires Yuji Naka" wouldn't make good headlines. Prope achieves the aims of getting Naka out of the company, while still keeping him at arms length. It's an odd one, but Prope seemingly didn't make any games after Let's Tap and some iOS offshoots. There must have been a reason for that.
You don't invest some 20% in a company to get rid of a staff member IMO. SEGA could have just moved Naka and have him basically doing nothing, much like the terrible way SEGA treated Yu Suzuki. I think Naka-san wanted to leave myself
