A Closer Look at the Genius Behind the Sonic Team- By: Damian Cross

Description : The developers of the popular SEGA mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, are a group of developers working together to bring you the finished concept of the super hero. The Sonic Team are video game developers based in Tokyo, Japan. They were previously called by the name Sega AM8 but today the Sonic Team division based in Japan is often called G.E. Department Global Entertainment. The studio for the Sonic Team was a collaboration of American studios like STI and Visual Concepts with in house Japanese studios. They are best known for having created the Sonic games.

In 1990, when Nintendo’s Mario was very popular among video game addicts, Sega asked one of their in house departments to innovate a game based on a character that would be popular enough to compete with the rival Mario. It was this group of creative people who later came to be known as the Sonic Team that came up with the fresh and catchy Sonic the Hedgehog that happened to comprise the later developed Sonic games series. In 1991, AM8 adopted the name from their surprisingly popular success Sonic the Hedgehog series and called themselves the Sonic Team. Yuji Naka who is a famous producer and video game designer lead this Sonic Team. With his guidance this team flourished greatly and became one of the creative powerhouses of the entire world of video games.

Even though the Sonic Team was flourishing thoroughly in Japan, sick of the politics in the country, most of the creative bests of the team along with Yuji Naka shifted base to the U.S. branch of the same setup. The American programmers thus launched the second version of Sonic the Hedgehog with the help of these Japanese staff but language problems seemed to emerge thus causing much hindrance between staff from different countries. Due to these problems, Yuji Naka decided when innovating the third version of Sonic the Hedgehog, that only Japanese designers would work in the creative core team to help do away some of the unnecessary trouble.

Later the U.S. division of the Sonic Team was established in 1999 and ran up to the early months of 2008. While Sega had dropped the console race and was trying to concentrate only on game and software development, Sonic Team became Sonic Team Ltd officially in the year 2000. Today the Sonic Team is yet again a part of the international department of Sega after it was labeled as second party developer in 2000. The name too is not Sonic Team USA anymore. Instead it has been renamed to Sega Studio USA. However unlike many of the other units, Sonic Team still continues to retain its name and internal structure because the Sonic games will never die. Today, as the Blue Blur turns twenty, the team has had time to gather experience in the development and refining of the Blue Blur super hero. With highly specialized task in each department, the game series evolves separately in every aspect, as well as together, as a whole. The minds behind the creation of the sound mixes will contribute their work, along with the developers of background images individually, to be put together by the team leader, these are the makings of a project.

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