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Video game legend and former Sonic Team character designer Naoto Ohshima turned 54 today. Ohshima is best known for designing Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman, as well as directing Sonic Team classics like Sonic CD, NiGHTS into Dreams and Burning Rangers. After leaving Sonic Team following the completion of Sonic Adventure, Ohshima formed Artoon, where he would go on to create Blinx the Timesweeper (an attempt at creating a platforming mascot for the original Xbox) and act as a producer for a few Yoshi games.
These days, Ohshima serves as the Vice President of Arzest, a Japanese video game studio he helped form after leaving Artoon in 2010.
From all of us here at the Sonic Stadium, happy birthday Naoto Ohshima!
Sonic’s original design. He could throw items from his ears. Source: Sonic RetroDr. Eggman’s original concept art, when he was originally proposed as a game protagonist. Source: Sonic RetroDr. Eggman concept art from Naoto Ohshima. Source: Sonic RetroOhshima designed NiGHTS. Back in 2017, Ohshima posted this new piece of art of NiGHTS on his Twitter.Blinx the Timesweeper concept art from Ohshima’s Twitter account
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Not exactly pertaining to Sonic, but we all like to know just how well Naoto Ohshima is getting on since he separated himself from SEGA to form Artoon some years ago. Turns out the original character designer is teaming up with Mistwalker’s Hironobu Sakaguchi to create an action RPG for the Nintendo DS called Away.
Not a lot of details are known about the game, as it has just been revealed in the latest issue of Famitsu in Japan. What we do know is that it involves rescuing helpless villages from underground dungeons – with the environments changing every so often, forcing you to constantly adapt to your surroundings. Rescuing more people will expand the village and open up new events and secrets too, we’re told.
Sounds like an interesting concept, we’ll be keeping our eyes on this one.
The Sonic Stadium may link to retailers and earn a small commission on purchases made from users who click those links. These links will only appear in articles related to the product, in an unobtrusive manner, and do not influence our editorial decisions in any way.
