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Former Sega of America Vice President of Entertainment Marketing Mike Fischer has given a new interview to Sega-16, and one of the topics that comes up often is Yuji Naka.
Fischer doesn't have a lot of particularly pleasant stuff to say about the former Sonic Team leader, pointing out that Naka was quick to claim credit for creating Sega's most famous character:
"I was there for the birth of Sonic the Hedgehog, and when the memo came out, they said to every employee, 'We want to come up with the new Mario-killer mascot character. We want everyone to come up with an idea.' I watched them pick the winners. I watched Yuji Naka steal credit for it."
Fischer adds that he has been very keen to ensure that Naoto Ohshima gets his due credit for the creation of the character:
"I saw [Naka] at one point get up on stage and receive a lifetime achievement award for creating Sonic the Hedgehog. I saw him give an interview where he talked about why he decided to make Sonic blue, and, as you know, he wasn’t responsible for any of that. That was all [Naoto] Ohshima, and Ohshima-san is one of the most wonderful, kindhearted people you’ll ever meet in your life. The only reason that I agreed to talk to the guy who wrote Console Wars was because I wanted to set the record straight, and I’m really proud that it is now on the record... he just was so malignant in trying to rewrite history. You know that Ohshima-san worked on Blinx the Cat. When we had the Xbox One debut, he was there, and Naka-san was invited and refused to sit in the same row as Ohshima-san because he accused Ohshima-san of trying to steal his credit."
Fischer would also work at Namco, Square, Microsoft and Epic during his career, and actually worked at Sega twice – first between 1990 and 1997, and then again between 2001 and 2003.
That means he brushed shoulders with Naka both times, and his summary of the man is pretty damning.
"He is literally the most miserable person I have ever worked with in games or anything else in my life, just a horrible human being, and you can quote me on that," he adds. "As you know, he’s also now also a convicted felon."
It's not all bad, however; Fischer does have one anecdote which shows Naka's industrious side:
"I will say one of the few redeeming stories I’ve heard about Naka was he became aware that there was this team of pirates in China that was taking his Dreamcast games and making bootleg versions for PlayStation. So, he bought their company and hired them to do all of his porting work."