Yuji Naka

- Name: Yuji Naka
- Notable creations and work: Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star Online, Sonic Adventure, Nights into Dreams
- Born: September 17, 1965

Biographical Summary

Naka was born in Osaka on September 17, 1965. He was an intelligent child that entertained himself with the synthesized music of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. His love of this music led to to his initial interest in computers and in video games. His keen interest in games eventually led up to him creating his own games, and after high school (graduated 1983), he skipped college and jumped straight into the home computer business. As he furthers his goal in the video game industry, he suffers the denial to Namco due to his lack of a college degree, but continues to search for his way into the industry until he finally is accepted by Sega in 1984 as an entry-level coder. His first game was "Girl's Garden" which was more or less a Pac-Man clone. In 1991 Naka's claim to fame, "Sonic the Hedgehog" was launched. In April of 2000 Naka and the team that created many of the Sonic the Hedgehog game officially became SONICTEAM. In 2002 Naka International Game Developers Lifetime Achievement Award, then in 2006 left SONICTEAM.

Work

Naka spent many of his years in the gaming industry working with one character in particular: Sonic the Hedgehog. The spiky blue mammal established Naka in the video gaming industry, but was not the only star of the hits during his career.

- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- Sonic the Hedgehog 3
- Phantasy Star Online
- Phantasy Star Universe
- Sonic Adventure
- Sonic Adventure 2
- Nights into Dreams