Turning Long Nights Into Dreams

Born in 1964, talented game designer and artist Naoto Ohshima has worked for SEGA, founded his own game development studios Artoon (which was eventually acquired by AQ Interactive) and, now, Arzest, his current company. Through the decades, Ohshima has ushered more iconic characters into existence than most other game developers combined. He’s responsible for the character and game design of the original Sonic the Hedgehog (and his nemesis Dr. Eggman), and he directed the Sega Saturn classic Nights Into Dreams as well as the Saturn fan favorite firefighting action game, Burning Rangers. He later created the cult classic and Pinocchio-inspired platforming game Pinobee, went on to create the feline Xbox platformer with a time-traveling twist, Blinx: The Time Sweeper, and supported the development of Mistwalker’s Blue Dragon series. 

Since then, his company Arzest has worked behind the scenes, developing or co-developing games for other publishers, like Yoshi’s New Island, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and Hey! Pikmin. He recently collaborated with Sega on their throwback Sonic revival, Sonic Superstars, and returned to the role of character design for Square Enix’s adventure game, Balan Wonderworld. 

We met with Oshima-san at Arzest’s Tokyo office to discuss the long history of his impactful career, his character designs, his reaction to seeing the movie version of Sonic’s pearly grill, and other sundry topics. It was a really special conversation, and we’d like to thank Ohshima-san for spending so much time with us to share his thoughts on his legacy.