If the name of the sparkling Yuji Naka is usually associated with Sonic, Phantasy Star or Billy Hatcher, former developers who worked on the Dreamcast have a completely different memory, much more bitter.
In 1998 SEGA could still sell dreams and promise miracles for its future Dreamcast. Among the titles presented at E3 1998 was a certain Geist Force, a 3D shoot’em up on rails that now has only a few trailers left, and for good reason: the game was discontinued before its release. And we just found out that this Trafalgar coup was no stranger to the famous Yuji Naka. The atmosphere.
“The other” Yuji Naka
Former Sega of America producer Mark Subtonick was a guest on the podcast a few weeks ago The retro hour, and he was given the opportunity to empty his pocket by telling the story behind the Geist Force Project and its methodical killing in favor of an entirely different cause. But let him arrange the chronology of events:
I was offered to work on a brand new game for a new console. Everything was new: the license, the team … it was a real challenge. Before the Dreamcast’s architecture was set in stone, we were up and running, and We got the green light to make a game called Geist Force … it was actually the E3 shooter, and it was even supposed to be a launch game. It was a bit of a Star Fox clone: I’m not going to say we had some great ideas, but the story was really cool.
And if we can easily imagine the strategic character of Geist Force, which is to appear on the shelves of American stores alongside Pen Pen TriIcelon, Power Stone, SoulCalibur or Hydro Thunder. And yet a visit from Yuji Naka, at the time developing a certain Sonic Adventure, would have been enough to change the Geist Force project in nature:
It is a sad story and a shame when the truth becomes disproportionate.
One day Naka and his team came to us to look at our tools and our engine. We’ve been working on a lot of pretty insane proprietary technology. Little did Naka know that some of the developers were fluent in Japanese. He spoke to his team and explained to them that he would get some of our technology for Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast and that when we were done we would all have to fire except for an engineer who would integrate the Sonic team. Everyone heard it and you can imagine how they felt. Naka was quite powerful at Sega at the time.
Competence transfer
Once that visit is over, Mark Subtonick can’t hold back his best folks, who are rushing to find a new studio to work on a Dreamcast game instead of being laid off in the coming months. The Geist Force site then fell behind, and the producer understood that he would never have the time to recruit the necessary engineers until the console launched on September 9, 1999 in the US.
According to the person concerned, this bitter experience led him to leave SEGA of America to finally join the ranks of Microsoft and work on a console with a still mysterious alias: the Xbox … No hard feelings? Nothing is less certain.
