

So when Naka found out that the Sega office building in Tokyo’s Omori neighborhood, where he spent the formative years of his career, is scheduled to be torn down, he decided to stop by and take a few pictures of its iconic sign, and even brought his two kids along.

Still, there were some very good times along the way. Sonic has spent much of the last decade and a half as the butt of jokes because of the dismal quality of most of the franchise’s recent games, and Sega itself was beaten up so badly that it pulled out of the hardware business entirely, and now publishes games on systems owned by its former rivals Nintendo and Sony. Both burst onto the scene filled with energy and ambition, but eventually ran out of momentum and fell far, far behind their competitors. Sonic’s fate has largely mirrored that of the games’ publisher, Sega.

Still, it’s hard not to feel a little bad for the guy. Yuji Naka stopped by his old workplace with his kids, but the other people he ran into weren’t necessarily Sega fans.Īs the driving force behind the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog, Yuji Naka is one of the most important and influential video game designers in history.
