Yuji Naka, credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game programmer, designer and producer. He is the former head of the Sega studio Sonic Team, where he was the lead programmer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog series on the Sega Mega Drive.
Naka also led the development of games including Nights into Dreams (1996), Burning Rangers (1998), Sonic Adventure (1998) and three games in the Phantasy Star franchise (1987–2000).
In 2006, Naka left Sega to found Prope, an independent game company. He joined Square Enix to direct the platform game Balan Wonderworld (2021), which reunited him with the Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima.
After the game underperformed critically and commercially, Naka announced he had left Square Enix.
In 2022, he said he was removed from Balan Wonderworld before it was released, and sued Square Enix. That November, Naka was arrested on suspicions of insider trading during his time at Square Enix.
Did Yuji Naka retire?
Not really, Sonic creator Yuji Naka confirmed his exit from Square Enix and said he may retire.
In a tweet, Naka said he left Square Enix at the end of April. Balan Wonderworld, which Naka directed and Square Enix published on multiple platforms in March, flopped at retail.
It sold less than 2100 copies in its opening week in Japan and failed to make the top 40 in the UK physical chart.
On his departure from Square Enix, Naka said: “I can’t talk about the reason now, but I hope I can talk about it when the time comes. As for future activities, I’m 55 years old, so I may retire.”
Why did Yuji Naka leave Sega?
On March 16, 2006, Naka announced that he would leave Sega to create his own game studio, Prope.
In a nutshell, Naka wanted to get back to real game development, away from that high-level managerial nonsense. He tells Gamasutra that he felt a need to “keep creating.”
“Before I left Sega, I was high enough up that I was looking at every game the company was developing,” Naka said. “Once I was in that position, though, I found that I wanted to get into the nitty-gritty details instead with the games, including Sonic — the whole ‘it’d be better if this bit were like this instead of that type of thing.”
At his new studio Prope, Naka says the concept for Let’s Tap was borne of Wii Remote experimentation and inspired by idle tapping. Clearly, Naka’s a high-concept kind of guy.
As for the future? “We’re actually planning on making a game like Sonic right now,” the developer says. We hope he means “like Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and less “like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).”