Yuji Naka Interview

Pretty cool interview, we'll see if Prope was such a good idea or not soon. I'm not too confident on how successful "Let's Tap" will be, but at least the theme is catchy as hell. It's still stuck in my head. It certainly looks fun, but I'm really not too confident on how well the general audience over here in the States will take it. I'm sure the casual audience will eat it up though. I guess that's where the money is being made nowadays.

I hope the best for him, and it's nice to see the guy spending more of his time making games. From the sound of it he didn't get much freedom working with Sonic Team as well, poor guy. No wonder he seems kind of sick of the Hedgehog lately.

 

Interesting article, thanks for the links. One question, though; does anyone know if he's still a racist jerk?

 

Yuji Naka's a racist jerk? What's that about?

 

I'd cite sources, but frankly it's been years and I just can't remember where I read that exactly. Must have been in the early to mid CulT days or so, articles popped up about him that seemed to indicate a certain bias towards westerners. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that it may have been in some interviews in relation to Sonic X-treme, but I'm really not too sure. Sorry if I'm wrong by the way, I'd hate to make a wrong judgment regarding that kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere.

 

Very nice article. It's cool to know that Naka still wants to do programming and still sorta is (read page 3 about the North Star Master System port to the Virtual Console - maybe the WAD has some patch information like Sonic 2 Master System did).

I really need to work on getting these interviews on the wiki again someday.

 

I wonder if he could program a good Sonic game.

I mean I know he's sick of Sonic (or so I hear) but damn, we need at least one genuinely good 3D game.

 

I get the impression that Naka didn't like dealing with the language barrier. I know he still doesn't speak much English, and I'm not sure that Yasuhara did at that point either. They had a pretty tight deadline going into Sonic 3. Then there's the matter that aside from Hidden Palace Zone, most of the levels drawn by the American artists were exceptionally bland.

As for the Sonic X-treme debacle, I think that had more to do with Naka having an enormous ego rather than being a racist. In spite of (presumably) making development on the Saturn much easier, no one outside of Sonic Team got to use the NiGHTS engine.

 

Gotta love how a Nintendo Power article says that Naka is best known for doing what Nintendo'nt

 

Yet he kind of leaves out the part where SoA saw Oshima's character sketches and flipped the fuck out.

Anyway this article mostly confirms the intent of Let's Tap: a "throwaway" introductory game to build up some capital and cred for their next project.

And that's not a wise turnaround since they used to be excellent at that and they've lost their rights to exclusive guides to Prima. They're still decent, just more forgettable.

 

Another interesting read. Does anyone know who that other character designer mentioned could be? The one that made the guy cringe?

 

Ok no. Stop. Leave it be anonymous, guys. There is some dirt in this world so pointless it's not worth trying to dig up.

 

Why? Was it you? I knew it, it was FlashTHD!

 

ffffffffffffff arrrrgh, and you should be ecstatic I don't show you what I was gonna replace the philthy blue jap rat with! Might make yer delicate fanboy faces explode!

 

When I work there I'm going to make sure that I don't fuck up like the rest of SOA. I'm starting a special division and I plan to keep my work away from the tainted hands of some other members of SOA who would gladly ruin my work's progression. I've got a few secret game ideas. I've shared one with some of you in the Knuckles thread, my other one however has been kept a secret due to fear of criticizism for his resemblance to a Sonic Character. In truth he is not. In fact I'm even going to make him yell "I'm NOT AFFILIATED WITH THAT DAMN BLUE HEDGEHOG OR HIS FRANCHISE! DON'T EVEN BOTHER SENDING US ANY LETTERS BECAUSE YOU WON'T GET A REPLY!" at the audience in mid game just for the hell of it.

Anyways, Naka is happy working away from Sega and quite honestly I don't blame him for doing so. Pretty much after he left, Sonic Games went downhill. (Heroes was borderline of course.) It was like a game of Jenga. (A game where you have to take blocks in a wooden tower and put them on the top. the more blocks that are pulled out the more unstable the tower is. The person to knock down the tower is declared the loser.)

Sonic Team is completely unstable and Violatile without Naka. He was a key ingredient to the Sonic formula and without him the games quickly became stale and distasteful.

 

There's a troll at the GHZ calling himself Dasher, if you and he were to be plopped in the same room I bet y'all'd have a grand ol time. Or kill each other.

Yasuhara departed after S&K, they seemed to get along with making Sonic Adventure kick ass without him. No one employee is absolutely necessary and losing Naka is among the least of the management problems right now.