Yuji Naka tells his story of offending Yu Suzuki in a recent interview
For a long time, Yuji Naka and Yu Suzuki worked tirelessly to deliver top notch video games for SEGA. At one point during their tenure at the company, there was a falling out between the two men. In a recent interview with Yuji Naka, he revealed the interaction between the two pioneers.
Naka: But one time we had a big falling out. I don’t know if I should talk about it though. [laughs]
Kato: Even just the part you’re able to. [laughs]
Naka: At one time, Yu-san was making Shenmue※, right?
217: I love it!
Naka: It’s great that he was making Shenmue. It also turned out to be a home console game; with just Sonic which I was working on, it was felt that SEGA wouldn’t be competitive. So Ijimajiri-san※ spoke with Yu-san and asked him to try his hand at making a console game, and what Yu-san started working on was Shenmue.
At the time, it was called Virtua Fighter RPG though. During that time, there weren’t any Yu Suzuki-produced arcade games, right? What a great pity! I love Yu Suzuki’s arcade games.
Kato: There’s a large number of arcade fans among SEGA fans.
Naka: To be honest, I felt extremely bad for letting everyone down. It was as if I was lacking, from the perspective of the home console game division.
And then the performance of the arcade division started to decline. At that time, at a certain big meeting, I said something to him along the lines of “I wish you could pull the arcade games division back up again.” Well, that really offended him. After my unfortunate comment, he didn’t speak to me for around 18 months to two years after that…
217: That’s a long time!
