Yuji Naka

Yuji Naka (中 裕司 Naka Yūji, born September 17, 1965), is a video game designer and head of Sonic Team, a group of Sega programmers/designers.

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He programmed the original Sonic the Hedgehog game, while Naoto Oshima designed the character and Hirokazu Yasuhara planned the stages. Naka has also produced several other titles like NiGHTS Into Dreams and Phantasy Star Online. In early games he was often credited as "YU2" (in reference to Yu Suzuki) and "Muuu Yuji".

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Naka also helped create a popular EyeToy game for the PlayStation 2 called Sega SuperStars.

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Naka is often viewed by the gaming public as Sega's equivalent to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto.

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Some in the gaming industry have been critical of Naka due to some of his actions. These include forcing Sonic team to change most of the Sonic R music from standard Sonic the Hedgehog sounding music to europop, and refusing to let STI employees use his newly created NiGHTS engine to make Sonic X-treme.

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September 17: September 17 is the 260th day of the year (261st in leap years). There are 105 days remaining....

1965: 1965 was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar)....

Video game: A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device. However, with the popular use of the term "video game", it now implies any type of display...