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The latest reports have it that Yuji Naka is no longer with Square Enix. It's unclear if he was fired or resigned but it's safe to say it ties in with Balan Wonderworld failing. So once again he is off to whatever is next.
Yuji Naka has a spotty record and since leaving SEGA it seems he can't quite get his footing back. To be fair the same can be said about many once big names of the 90s/2000s. Even Yu Suzuki. Has Naka lost it? Did he ever truly have it?
Thoughts?
havnet played this new one & i know it's universally being panned...i've also not played much of rodea, let's tap etc so i can only speak so much on those.
but as someone grateful to see the mocking of the "sonic was never good" crowd in recent years, the idea that naka never had it is revisionist at best - didn't he design the incredible first person dungeons of phantasy star 1? sonic levels still deserve praise for the way they encourage/reward exploration, as well as speed in certain stages...and nights still doesn't get its flowers, but i play that one at least every christmas. i still think space harrier is easily the best of the SMS suzuki ports, burning rangers was ahead of its time, and i lost so much time to PSO and chu chu rocket, on and offline. i get that people can be past their prime, especially with smaller studios/resources, but if that man didn't have "it", few can say they ever did.
He once made one great tech demo that was the reason Sonic exists. Though he was not Sonic's sole creator afaik. So i'm not sure how much of the game is his own creation. Still, that was a big deal since Sonic pretty much helped Sega "beat" Nintendo. But that was then.
He is a great programmer, i can't argue that. Sonic was an amazing technical achievement in 1991. The sequel even more so.
But as a director/creative? Way overrated IMO.
How much of that was designed by Naka though? Did he do any of the level designs himself? I'm afraid the aspects you praise the most are made by people who nobody knows.Quote:
Originally Posted by IrishNinja
I don't know, the stuff he did as a director/producer at Sega was still pretty good. I think like most people he needs a good team working with him, as well as management above him to encourage his good ideas while curbing his more silly whims. For every good game Sonic Team made in the 90s and early 2000's, we don't know how many truly awful ideas that were pitched and got shot down.Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulis
eh, point taken - carol yas & hirokazu yasuhara likely deserve more credit, and it's fair to say no one person creates a game - but i do think it's fair to point out that we'd not have those masterpieces the way we got them without his vision. also? looking forward to the collection coming up, because 3/S&K are the series' peak and i never get why they're not often recognized as such.Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulis
You can say that about many games and their lead producers or directors none of whom usually level designers. Do you really think that Cory Barlog made GOW levels for example that Miyamoto designed all Mario levels?Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulis
I've always said Naka-san should never be made head of the Sonic Team and that role should have always gone to Yoji Ishii, Naka-san should have gone to work in SEGA technical dept, but that's way in the past
I respected his skills as a programmer very much mind, before Sonic many people were saying in the press, that the Snes was going to outshine the Mega Drive once it got more established and it was going to be tough for the MD. Sonic game along and showed unprecedented levels of Mega Drive graphics and speed, that the MD couldn't just match the SNES but outclass it too for platform graphics and his NiGHTS engine was super impressive on the Saturn and the DC and those 3D sections in PS were like magic on the MS back in the day
But Naka-san is too much of a cry baby to be a team player a lot of time and was never ever at Yu 'GOD' Suzuki levels for me and it seemed to me that he lost his mojo when he was no longer working on SEGA own hardware and I think that is true for a number of SEGA staff, while other's embraced being multi-platform That said I've never been the biggest fan of Nagoshi-san either and he's another one that's said hard to deal with at times
I don't agree with the outcry over Blam and its sad how many of SEGA big players just haven't been able to work their magic outside of the SEGA group. I'm sure he'll get a role somewhere maybe even back at the Sonic Team or maybe Naka-san will just call it a day.
Naka hasnt had a truly great game since Sonic 3 and Knuckles in my opinion. What did people expect? His Petty infighting with Sega over the NiGHTS engine is one of many moves that potentially derailed the entire company. Nights and Burning Rangers, though I played the heck out of both games, are not all that great, though they are creative. I hate the Sonic Adventure series.
Yu Suzuki I think is more of a visionary because he stuck with what made his games unique and fun, as much as I find Shenmue boring. Outrun translated extremely well to 3D. Sonic needed two fan creators to bring the series back to glory. I think STI and Roger Hector deserve as much credit as Yuji Naka for making Sonic a global brand.
Yuji Naka is one of the greatest of all time, but yeah Balan Wonderworld was awful.
Wow - it's interesting how this story continues to grow ('derailed the entire company'? seriously?).Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
He didn't let the Sonic X-Treme team use a level editor. If the completion of your game (after two years of development) depends on someone else's level editor, then you're doing something seriously wrong.
Mike Wallis:
"they shipped us a NiGHTS editor, a level-based editor and our designers where familiarizing themselves with that, and after about two-weeks, Yuji Naka who was the designer of NiGHTS, and one of the original SonicTeam, had said "No"."
They never had access to the X-Treme engine.
It's seriously amazing that people are so willing to forgive the atrocious development of Sonic X-Treme and place all of the blame on Yuji Naka, who wasn't even involved in it.
Yes and he made the right decision by telling them "no". When a project has gone two years with little to show for it, it's time to cut your losses, not start over with yet another engine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gryson
Not putting all the blame on Naka here but SEGA gave them 1 dev kit. They had no experience with 3D. Deadlines kept changing. SEGA was just as much at fault as anyone. That said. Shows why one of their biggest competitors since day 1 is still making consoles. Nintendo stepped in on Retro Studios and fixed that mess. Nintendo shares dev tools across the company and is willing to pull any people needed from one place to assist in another. SEGA was just not very well organized. While Naka refused. SEGA didn't supply them with enough dev kits. Put inexperienced people in charge. Some got deathly ill. No one person deserves blame on Xtreme. Just a top-to-the-bottom shit show.
He made some popular Sonic games 25 years ago, was put on a pedestal by many as a result, and has made a mountain of mediocrity since. A similar career trajectory to that of other successful 16-bit console programmers who fizzled out as the hardware became more powerful and complex, and customer tastes changed.
Also, am I the only one who thought it was Yu Jinaka? (Like Yu Suzuki). I guess I've only heard people say his name, and not seen it written.
Naka is nothing compared to Yu Suzuki. Yu pretty much put Sega's arcade division at the top for nearly 2 decades.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
THIS!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Yu Suzuki put SEGA on the map and his 80's Arcade games made SEGA a powerhouse and brought in tons of cash that allowed them to expand both their consumer and Amusement divisions
I feel the same about Dave Perry in that he was also an amazing programmer in the 16 bit age but never could recapture than magic or just didn't seem cut out to run a team, Jon Burton on the other could do both to a top standardQuote:
Originally Posted by profholt82
It's sad also what happened with John O'Brien he was a programmer who most prob pushed the Mega Drive more than either Naka-san or Perry but ended up running his own cafe in Ireland, still as long as you are happy I guess :)
I was interested to read in Retro Gamer a couple of years back with both Job Burton and Kat's Sato confirmed and backed up what SEGA Europe Andy Mee said (way back in the day to mean Machines SEGA) Sonic X was cancelled because the game wasn't very good and didn't reach a decent standard. That shouldn't excuse Naka-san mind, the engine/debug belongs to SEGA and not to Naka-san and it's up to SEGA, how any of its engine made in House in SEGA, was to be used between the teamsQuote:
Originally Posted by axel
Not that it would make any difference mind, the game was in a mess from start to finish. The same game designed to run on 3 different systems (4 if you included the Mega Drive) using 2 different engines and the team split for the same game? and with nearly 2 years of work didn't even have what anyone could call a completed level with full enemy placements. To think that using the NiGHTS engine and debug unit was going to fix all those issues in less than 6 months is fantasy, never mind I've never seen a so called 'elite' team needed to go running to another developer to use their engine and set up because their own tech doesn't cut it back at those times.
I got the impression that his ego far outweighs his ability. Sonic games are well known for being buggy, and always had collision bugs even back in the Genesis days. Sonic 3 had it so bad the manual explicitly called it out that if you get stuck in the wall, it's a diabolical trap by Robotnik that you can only escape by reseting the console.
Well you're right, maybe that should have been up to management and not Naka. Sonic was probably one of the hardest characters to put into 3D, because it's not a Sonic game without speed and the early engines and hardware just couldn't keep up. It was easier to build a game around an overweight plumber or anthropomorphic bobcat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
LOL! At least they had the best excuse for a bug :rofl:Quote:
Originally Posted by zyrobs
I can't remember that happening to me in S3, I've gotten stuck in Knuckles Chaotix though where the rubber band physics will sometimes send you through a solid object.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leynos
Meh sounds like he's considering retirement from his latest twitter posts.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...lop-may-retire
Quote: "On his departure from Square Enix, Naka said: "I can't talk about the reason now, but I hope I can talk about it when the time comes. As for future activities, I'm 55 years old, so I may retire."
I consider most of his later stuff overrated anyway. He was a great programmer, but as others have said he wasn't solely responsible for how great Sonic 1,2,3 and Knuckles were.
FTFY, "Carol Yas" is Hirokazu Yasuhara, just as Yuji Naka is "YU2" and Naoto Ohshima is "BigIsland" and Rieko Kodama is "Phenix Rie". they were credited on the games using other names, I believe it was a tactic Sega used to prevent staff from being poached by other rival companiesQuote:
Originally Posted by IrishNinja
Actually it was 5 systems if you include the Megadrive/GenesisQuote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
32X/Mars
Saturn
Megadrive/Genesis
Nvidia NV2/ Saturn V08
PC
Yeah you can give Mark Cerny/STI a lot of credit certainly during Sonic 2 and Sonic 3/Sonic and KnucklesQuote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
LOL I totally agreeQuote:
Originally Posted by zyrobs
I think some of the old staff at SEGA needed to remember they were just employees of the company. A game engine made In House at SEGA belongs to SEGA not the team who made it and its up for SEGA's top brass on how thet engine is to be used or shared; I feel the same about some of these overpaid and overrated football players at Clubs, it's not for them to say what their Club should do or how it is to be run. Must say mind, I found the STI own game engine to be better looking than the NiGHTS engine, but I take it was about the debug and level editor that was giving issues for STIQuote:
Originally Posted by axel
Yeah, the speed of Sonic and needing to be able to hold big levels or stream them in for Sonic to speed through, must have been giving the teams nightmares for both Project Sonic and Sonic X on the Saturn
A total shambles from start to finish, never mind having 2 different engines and the same team split into two while working on what was meant to be the same game for the same platformQuote:
Originally Posted by stu
In his last statement, Naka sounds like he is retiring.
Erm yeah. That is what I said and was in the link I posted 2 days ago. :daze:Quote:
Originally Posted by Leynos
I tend to skip past text walls sorry.
what are chances the people who claim naka is overrated, are some weird techno luddite genesis-only sonic fans who coincidentally cling to the idealogy of tom kalinske being 100% in the right during his tenture at sega of america?
What does Tom Kalinske have to do with it?
Regardless. No CEO or Exec bats a 1000. He still had a better clue how to run them than SOJ did. Sonics best days were the 16-bit era but yes an odd game here and there since has been good. Just most have not. Not like Sonic started having problems post-Genesis either. Sonic 3D Blast was not great. Naka does have a spotty record. He overrated himself and many fans overrated him as a creator. He is not overrated as a programmer from the era tho.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leynos
Sadly Tom and SEGA America cocked up the main next-gen Sonic game and what could and should have been one of the most important Sonic games of all time.
to the mass majority who engage in discourse concerning naka (here and other game communities) innovative games don't matter. it's all about muh heckin nostalrino for the genesis sonic games and how the games after those betrayed me,
also, after reading stuff on here, kalinske can eat a dick, i never seen a bigger dick, that tries to take credit for the game dev's accomplishments
overestimated. I don't particularly like him because of his way of acting in the Sega Saturn generation, in fact all the big names in SEGA are unbilically linked to the company's failure from 95 to 2001.
Today I value much more secondary names like Nagoshi and the creator of crazy taxi, who know how to make games but also know how to make money.
@ Fr0zen Buttox
Yeah……that never happened.
Nagoshi-san like to take credit for almost every SEGA game. He's like Miyamoto-san on that score, but to their credit, they also make games that sell.Quote:
Originally Posted by SegaAMD
I've always seen Masayosh-san as a real unsung SEGA hero.
That man track record is just brilliant and nearly every game he produced comes in on time and on budget. But making games is a team effort and all staff play their part
No producer likes to be criticized for their creations, they want to be artists and stars, I won't go into it but for a company sales are fundamental, the biggest challenge for a producer is to produce something different, innovative, but which also has commercial appeal , Toshihiro Nagoshi gave an interview where he said that the how difficult was it to make F-Zero GX because it was a Nintendo IP and it was imperative that the game be a commercial success, and it did, the game was successful on GCN and arcade, if Yuji Naka had made F-Zero GX, reception would be worse than the one with that Ivy The Kiwi junk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
SEGA's near bankruptcy was instrumental in getting rid of people like Yuji Naka, Yu Suzuki SEGA fired everyone but Takashi Lizuka is still missing. Although SegaSammy is a different company than CSK Sega I'm glad they have learned to profit.
I would have thought it's imperative that every game is made to be a commercial success that's to look over as in his role of the then chief creative officer and chief producer Nagoshi-san name is on some more of the questionable SEGA and even Sonic games.Quote:
Originally Posted by SegaAMD
I'm also not really in the business of slagging off former team members who find it hard setting up their own companies and not working under the sanctuary of In House funding and resources. Many SEGA members have found it hard and even once big names like Cliffy B have all found it hard
Also without wanting to be pedantic. The Big names that you mention were all there when SEGA was skint and Sammy was able to take over and remain in place for a number of years under Sammy. It instead was the likes of Mizuguchi-san and Nakagawa-san (one of the biggest losses to SEGA) who left just before the takeover and it should also be noted that thanks to Yu Suzuki and AM#2 that SEGA was even able to post a profit in 2002/3 before the takeover with the stunning success of VF4 in Japanese arcades sadly SEGA dept from console hardware was too much for SEGA to bare.
I've never been a fan of SAMMY but since Haruki Satomi has taken over the day to day running, there's been a marked improvement in SEGA's output and a far bigger focus on proper console games, compared to cheap mobile sector focus and SEGA over the last few years have made some brilliant games and where I again actually look forward to SEGA games coming out.
Its quite refreshing
I'm sorry but where are you pulling this from?Quote:
Originally Posted by fr0zenbuttox
ROFLCOPTER! https://kotaku.com/yuji-naka-sonic-h...ime-1849799553
HE GOT ARRESTED FOR INSIDER TRADING!
https://i.imgur.com/LFJezeS.png
I don't really see where Naka did anything wrong here. He bought shares of a company before a deal was announced? So what?
From the comments tho :rofl:
Quote:
When you mentioned the dude behind Balan Wonderworld was arrested I kinda assumed it was for child porn. Still wouldn't be surprised.
That is the very definition of Insider Trading, which is illegal. Legally a person with insider knowledge can't buy or sell stocks in this situation until a time period after the public announcement of an event which will affect the stock value. Even if you are not aware of the laws, you will be held accountable if caught.Quote:
Originally Posted by axel
Yes I get that it's legally a crime I just never understood what harm is being done. Some traders will always have more knowledge than others. It's just the government going after a guy for making a little money.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cafeman
Martha Stewart can attest to that. She served what, a year?Quote:
Originally Posted by Cafeman
FTFY.Quote:
Originally Posted by axel
Oh, I did not know that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barone
if naka was revealed something in the lines of the new dq being aimed at the 3rd wave-leftwing crowd of today, or revealing miyamoto as a puppetmaster behind the state of current vidya, then i'am on his side, it wouldn't matter if i'm upsetting anyone on the web for this message, the constant dogging on naka is an good example of why gaming sucks so much ass these days (among other things) bubububub the nintendoswitc-is dogwater, i bought a ps5 but sony are being cunts right now, the only i play on pc is abandonware and obscure/low-priced stuff on steam, whatever about xbux - halo is fun (even in it's current form) but the only thing going for it is backwards compatibly (which not even all games in the brand are) - we all deserve this industry for beating down on naka, the sonic series, and sonic team - not taking any of this back - sorry!