When you think of Sega, there's one spiky blue image that instantly comes to mind -- that of Sonic the Hedgehog. For over a decade, Sonic has pushed the game industry to new heights, and the group responsible for the phenomenon is the appropriately-named Sonic Team. One of Sega's most famous game houses, Sonic Team is responsible not only for the speedy hedgehog, but for other hits such as NiGHTS, Samba de Amigo, and Phantasy Star Online.

Sonic Team employs 72 people in two separate branches; one in Tokyo, Japan and one in San Francisco, California. The president of Sonic Team is renowned game developer Yuji Naka. Naka began his career as a programmer, and worked on Master System and Genesis games such as Space Harrier, Ghouls 'N Ghosts, and Phantasy Star I and II. He then teamed up with character designer Naoto Oshima to create a game that would help define the 16-bit era -- Sonic the Hedgehog.

Software Highlights from Credited Titles

Sonic Team's first work that SPOnG is aware of is the 1991 title, "Sonic The Hedgehog" (Sega Master System).

The company has been involved titles released on the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, DS, GameCube, GBA, N-Gage, Xbox, Dreamcast, Saturn, Sega Megadrive, Game Gear, Sega MegaCD and Sega Master System. Of these, "Sonic Unleashed" (PS2), "Sonic Adventure 2" (GameCube), "Sonic Heroes" (GameCube), "Sonic Adventure" (Dreamcast), "Sonic Heroes" (PS2) has been a best selling title.

The company's most recent involvement was on the 2009 release "Sonic and the Black Knight" (Wii).

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