You probably thought that most of the Sonic Team Old Guard don’t really get on. Well, today Yuji Naka proved that this was not the case, as he posted photos on his Twitter account about an encounter with Sonic the Hedgehog designer Naoto Oshima! The artist, who left Sega shortly after Sonic Adventure to form Artoon, visited Naka’s PROPE studio and brought with him a little gift.
I think it’s fair to say we all want that picture. Yuji Naka then posted a Tweet with the following photo, adding that current Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka joined the pair for some dinner in a local grilled chicken restaurant. Beers in hand as well, it seems like. The Japanese work hard and dine hard as well, it seems.
This funky meeting of minds most likely served absolutely no purpose other than to have old friends sit down and have a few drinks – but no doubt the topic of Sonic will come up. We can just imagine Naka-san asking Iizuka how work is like, with Iizuka throwing his hands up and jovially exclaiming “oh you know, the same old. That crazy fanbase, eh?” followed by chuckles around the table.
All three developers have had a big hand in shaping Sonic into the gaming icon he is today – Naka-san programmed the original Sonic games, and led Sonic Team during the Dreamcast era, while Naoto Oshima designed the Sonic characters themselves. Takashi Iizuka, although he largely oversees development on modern Sonic titles, began his tenure at the studio working as a level designer for Sonic 3 and Knuckles, and was the lead game designer for NiGHTS into Dreams.