Founded 1990 · Tokyo, Japan · Founders: Yuji Naka,Naoto Ohshima,Hirokazu Yasuhara · First game: Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
The Sega team that created Sonic the Hedgehog, took the character's name as its own in 1991, and went on to make NiGHTS into Dreams, Sonic Adventure and Phantasy Star Online.
Sonic Team began in 1990 as a group inside Sega built around three people: programmer Yuji Naka, artist Naoto Ohshima and level designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. Their first game was Sonic the Hedgehog, released in 1991, and the team took the name Sonic Team with its release. The game gave Sega the fast, modern mascot it needed for the Mega Drive and turned the company into a serious rival to Nintendo. Through the 1990s the team moved beyond Sonic. NiGHTS into Dreams (1996) was an original Saturn game built around flight and dream imagery. Sonic Adventure (1998) moved the series into 3D on the Dreamcast, and Phantasy Star Online (2000) brought online role-playing to consoles, letting Dreamcast players team up over the internet. In 2000 Sega reorganised its development divisions into separate companies, and the team became Sonic Team Ltd., with Yuji Naka as chief executive. After Sammy Corporation acquired Sega in 2004, the studio was folded back into the company as an internal division, and it continues to develop the Sonic series.
Most studios name their games; Sonic Team was named by one. The team's identity has been tied to the character ever since, even as it built very different games — a flying dream adventure, an online RPG — around the same core of Sega designers.