Sonic creator Yuji Naka has joined up with Square Enix.
According to Naka's twitter, he began working with Square Enix earlier this month. "I'm joining game development as before, and strive to develop games at Square Enix." he said. "I am to develop an enjoyable game, please look forward to it."
https://twitter.com/nakayuji/status/955385616971247617
Naka, 52, is a veteran of the gaming industry, known primarily for his work on the Sonic franchise since the early 1990s for Sega. He served as the lead programmer for the first Sonic the Hedgehog game and was the last of the three original members of the Sonic team (which included Naoto Ohshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara) to leave Sega.
In addition to the Sonic franchise, Naka worked on a number of games for Sega over the years, including being the director of the cult hit ChuChu Rocket! and Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. He is most notable as the producer for the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Advance games, as well as Shadow of the Hedgehog.
Naka would leave Sega in 2006 to found his own development studio, Prope, which would continue to partner with Sega through the late 2000s. Propes most notable games include the platform game Ivy and Kiwi?, Digimon Adventure on the PlayStation Portable and Monster Manor and Ultimate Angler for the Nintendo 3DS StreetPass games series, but perhaps their most famous game is the Wii title Let's Tap, which was a collection of mini-games that require players to tap a flat surface with their hands to play the game, using the accelerometer of the Wii Remote to pick up vibrations.
The last game made by Prope, outside of mobile titles, Rodea and the Sky Soldier, was released in 2015 for the Wii and Wii U.
It is currently unknown what Nuka will be working on at Square Enix, although he implies he will working in a programming capacity over a producer's role for the company.
What are your thoughts on all of this? Is Square a good fit for Naka? Leave your comments below.
