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born September 17, 1965, sometimes credited as YU2, is a Japanese video game designer and programmer. He is the co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.
Naka joined Sega in 1984 and worked on games including Girl's Garden (1985) and Phantasy Star II (1989). He was the lead programmer of the original Sonic games on the Mega Drive in the early 1990s, which greatly increased Sega's market share. After developing Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) in Japan, Naka moved to California to develop Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994) and Sonic & Knuckles (1994) with Sega Technical Institute.
Naka returned to Japan to lead development on Sonic Team games including Nights into Dreams (1996), Burning Rangers (1998), Sonic Adventure (1998) and Phantasy Star Online (2000). After Sega left the console market in 2001, Naka remained as an executive officer and oversaw its output for the next five years.
In 2006, Naka left Sega and founded the independent game company Prope. He joined Square Enix to direct the platform game Balan Wonderworld (2021), which reunited him with the Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima. Naka said he was removed from the project six months before Balan Wonderworld was released, and it underperformed critically and commercially. He left Square Enix in April 2021. In 2023, Naka was found guilty of insider trading at Square Enix.
During the Master System era, Naka wanted to develop games that were not possible on Nintendo's Famicom. Examples of this include the 3D dungeons of Phantasy Star and Porting of Space Harrier and OutRun, which ran on powerful arcade hardware. The Mega Drive was introduced suddenly, much like the Master System. It was only around the 32X's release in 1994 that Sega gave Naka information about hardware beforehand. Super Thunder Blade was the first game he programmed for the Mega Drive. He requested that sprite-scaling be implemented in future models of the console. However, he was told that it was not possible at the time. He also requested a 6Mbit cartridge for Phantasy Star II, which was approved. The Mega Drive was Naka's favourite hardware, and he said that he could have kept working on it forever just by making the clock speed faster.
During a visit to the 1988 Amusement Machines Show, Naka was impressed by the ability to move diagonally on slopes in a demonstration of Capcom's game Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Hoping to recreate it, he asked his supervisors at Sega to allow him to port the game to the Mega Drive. Capcom provided him with the source code and ROM data. As he was developing the port, he experimented with aspects such as the speed of the main character to understand how they interacted with the environment. He also altered the slopes and was able to create a functioning 360-degree loop. Sprite-scaling was still a technique that Naka wanted to improve his skill on with a game called Metal Lancer, but it was cancelled halfway through development.
Sonic the Hedgehog was released in 1991 and received acclaim; it greatly increased the popularity of the Sega Genesis in North America, and is credited with helping Sega gain 65% of the market share against Nintendo. Naka was dissatisfied at Sega, feeling he received little credit for the success, and quit.
Naka refused to develop another Sonic game with the American staff. A Japanese-only team was formed, led by Naka, and developed Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, both released in 1994. Originally, Naka wanted to make Sonic 3 a 3D game, with the Sega Genesis chip that was also used to port Virtua Racing to the Genesis. However, it took too long, and a McDonalds Happy Meal promotion was put in place, and to complete the game in time, it was decided that it to make a 2D game again. Once again, Naka had a specific hardware request with the lock-on cartridge technology of Sonic & Knuckles, which when combined would form the complete experience, as Sonic 3 was rushed to meet a deadline.
Meanwhile, in America, STI worked on Sonic X-treme, a 3D Sonic game. Development was hindered by numerous setbacks, culminating in its cancellation in 1996. Reportedly, Naka contributed to the cancellation by refusing to let STI use the Nights game engine and threatening to quit. The X-treme developer Chris Senn dismissed the story as speculation but said that, if true, he understood Naka's interest in maintaining control over the Sonic Team technology and the Sonic franchise. Sonic Team was developing its own 3D Sonic game using the Nights engine, which could have motivated Naka's threat. In July 2022, Naka denied that he had anything to do with X-treme use of the Nights engine and said it would have been useless because Nights was coded in assembly and X-treme was in C. He suggested that the developers invented the story to rationalize their failure to finish X-treme.
In 1998, prior to the launch of Dreamcast, Naka and his team visited Sega of America to tour their development offices and observe their work on the game Geist Force, a rail shooter for Dreamcast. According to the producer Mark Subotnick, Naka told his team in Japanese which parts they would take to incorporate in Sonic games and suggested firing all but one of the engineers. Unbeknownst to Naka, several of the Geist Force developers understood Japanese and quit, contributing to the project's cancellation.
Shortly after the Japanese launch of the Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure, Naka was asked by the Sega chairman, Isao Okawa, to develop a flagship online game for the Dreamcast. Originally, Naka was unenthusiastic about the idea given his team's inexperience with creating online games. However, the other Sega development studios were preoccupied with their own projects, such as the Sakura Wars series and Jet Set Radio (2000). Naka and his team saw the creation of an online game for Japan, a nation of console gamers, as a serious challenge, akin to creating a new genre. This was further complicated by the perception of online games in the late 1990s having boring visuals and the per-minute fee for dial-up internet in Japan.
Naka split his team into three groups, all serving different purposes, before rejoining to develop Phantasy Star Online (2001). Two groups were focused on discovering the limits of the Dreamcast's capabilities, specifically in terms of graphical fidelity and the possibilities of online play on the system. The other group would work on various projects under Naka's supervision that would lead them closer to their goal. This would culminate with the release of Sonic Team's Chu Chu Rocket (1999), an action-puzzle game and the first game for the system to support online console gaming. Additionally, it was the only game directed by Naka at Sega as he would move on to become a producer, overseeing output from Sonic Team. Following Chu Chu Rocket
In 2000, Sega began to restructure its development operations as part of the dissolution of Sega Enterprises, transforming its arcade and console studios into semi-autonomous subsidiary companies. While each studio was given an unprecedented amount of creative freedom, Naka felt it important to preserve the Sonic Team brand name, and therefore the legal name of the company was SONICTEAM, Ltd. Naka was installed as the CEO of the new company."Sega's new beginning". Edge. No. 89. Future plc. October 2000. pp. 68–78. ISSN 1350-1593.
After Sega left the hardware market, Sonic Team began developing for consoles by other manufacturers; Naka became fond of the GameCube. He regretted that he did not bring Phantasy Star Online to the PlayStation 2, as Monster Hunter came out in 2004 and became popular.
Naka and Prope developed small games for the Wii and mobile devices, such as and Ivy The Kiwi?. This included a reunion with Sega as they published Let's Tap and Let's Catch for the Wii. Naka explained that while it was uncommon in the west, he always maintained a strong relationship with the company despite his departure.
The games helped finance their first large-scale production, Rodea the Sky Soldier, which finished development in 2011 but was not released until 2015. According to Naka, the publisher, Kadokawa Games, would not release the game until they developed a version for the Nintendo 3DS. Following the launch of the Nintendo Wii U in 2012, Kadakowa opted to create a Wii U version based on the 3DS version, delaying it until 2015. In November 2015, Kadokawa Games released Rodea the Sky Soldier on the 3DS and Wii U, while packaging Naka and Prope's Wii version as bonus bundled with the initial print of the Wii U version. In response, Naka used his social media following to request people prioritize playing the Wii version. Naka was awarded with the Bizkaia Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival in 2016.
Balan Company's first game, Balan Wonderworld, was co-developed by Arzest, a company which had previously co-developed multiple projects for Nintendo and Mistwalker. A key staff member at Arzest was Naoto Ohshima, a former Sega artist who created the designs for Sonic the Hedgehog and Doctor Eggman. When Naka joined Square Enix in January 2018, he considered making social mobile games, but was encouraged by Shinji Hashimoto to make action games for the new market, which was seeing a resurgence in classic action and platform games. Naka approached Ohshima about a collaboration, their first since Sonic Adventure in 1998.
Following disagreements with staff, Naka was removed from the project approximately six months before Balan Wonderworld was released. It received generally negative reviews and underperformed commercially. Naka left Square Enix in April 2021. On December 22, 2021, Naka released a free mobile game, Shot2048, similar to the games 2048 and Chain Cube.
In April 2022, Naka announced that he had sued Square Enix. He said he had attempted to negotiate to address problems with Balan Wonderworld, but was ignored, and said Square Enix and Arzest did not "value games or game fans". In July, Naka tweeted a photo of the Nights team with Ohshima's face blacked out, and expressed his anger over Balan Wonderworld.
On December 7, Naka was arrested again, accused of having purchased 144.7 million yen of shares of the developer ATeam before their game was announced. He was later indicted on insider trading charges by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. Naka admitted his guilt in March 2023. On June 1, prosecutors asked for a sentence of two and a half years in prison and a combined fine of 172.5 million yen. On July 7, a Tokyo District Court judge gave Naka a sentence of two years and six months in prison, suspended for four years. The judge ordered Naka to forfeit 171 million yen and pay a fine of two million yen.
Following the charges, Naka made no public statements for 16 months. In April 2024, he ended his social media hiatus to respond to the news that Yu Miyake, Dragon Quest executive producer, was being reassigned to Square Enix's mobile division by accusing him of lying during the trial. Miyake was credited as executive officer on Balan Wonderworld.
| 1985 | Girl's Garden | Game designer, programmer |
| Great Baseball | Programmer | |
| F-16 Fighting Falcon (Master System ver.) | ||
| 1986 | Black Belt | |
| Spy vs. Spy (Master System ver.) | ||
| Space Harrier (Master System ver.) | ||
| 1987 | OutRun (Master System ver.) | |
| Phantasy Star | Lead programmer | |
| 1989 | Phantasy Star II | Producer, lead programmer |
| Ghouls 'n Ghosts (Genesis ver.) | Programmer | |
| 1991 | Sonic the Hedgehog | |
| 1992 | Sonic the Hedgehog 2 | Chief programmer |
| 1994 | Sonic the Hedgehog 3 | Producer, lead programmer |
| Sonic & Knuckles | ||
| 1996 | Nights into Dreams | |
| Sonic 3D Blast | Advisor | |
| 1997 | Sonic Jam | Producer |
| Sonic R | ||
| 1998 | Burning Rangers | |
| Sonic Adventure | ||
| 1999 | ChuChu Rocket! | Director, producer |
| Sonic Pocket Adventure | Supervisor | |
| 2000 | Samba de Amigo | Producer |
| Phantasy Star Online | ||
| 2001 | Sonic Adventure 2 | |
| Puyo Pop | ||
| Sonic Advance | ||
| 2002 | Sonic Mega Collection | |
| Sonic Advance 2 | ||
| 2003 | Sonic Pinball Party | |
| Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg | ||
| Phantasy Star Online Episode III | ||
| Sonic Battle | ||
| Sonic Heroes | ||
| 2004 | Puyo Pop Fever | |
| Astro Boy | Chief producer | |
| Sonic Advance 3 | Producer | |
| Sega Superstars | Chief producer | |
| 2005 | ||
| Sonic Gems Collection | ||
| The Rub Rabbits! | ||
| Shadow the Hedgehog | Producer | |
| Sonic Rush | ||
| Puyo Puyo Fever 2 | Chief producer | |
| 2006 | ||
| Sonic Riders | Executive producer | |
| Phantasy Star Universe | ||
| 2008 | Let's Tap | Producer |
| 2009 | Let's Catch | |
| Ivy the Kiwi? | ||
| 2011 | ||
| Fishing Resort | ||
| 2013 | Digimon Adventure | |
| StreetPass Mansion / Monster Manor | ||
| 2014 | Digimon All-Star Rumble | |
| Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls | Voice acting ("Center-sensei") | |
| 2015 | Rodea the Sky Soldier (Wii ver.) | Producer |
| StreetPass Fishing / Ultimate Angler | ||
| 2016 | StreetPass Chef / Feed Mii | |
| 2017 | Legend of Coin | Programmer |
| 2021 | Balan Wonderworld | Director |
| Shot2048 | Game designer, programmer |
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