(born February 26, 1964) is a Japanese video game designer and artist, best known for designing Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Although Yuji Naka made a tech demo around which Sonic gameplay was based, the character in his prototype was a ball that lacked any specific features and was based on Ohshima's game proposal. Sonic Team considered numerous potential animal mascots before deciding on Ohshima's design, with an armadillo or hedgehog being the top choices because their spikes worked well with the concept of rolling into enemies.
After leaving Sonic Team, Ohshima formed an independent game company called Artoon in 1999. There he went on to work on such games as Pinobee (2001), Blinx: The Time Sweeper (2002), and Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space (2004). In 2010, Artoon was absorbed into AQ Interactive, and Ohshima and other key members of Artoon left to form Arzest. Early in his career, he was credited under the nickname "Big Island" in a number of games, which is a literal translation of his family name.
Works YearGameRole 1987 Phantasy Star Enemy designer 1988 Space Harrier 3-D Artist SpellCaster Graphic designer1989 Phantasy Star II Tommy Lasorda Baseball Last Battle Art director 1990 Fatal LabyrinthGraphic designer 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog Character designer1993 Sonic CD Director 1995 Knuckles' Chaotix Original character concept1996 Nights into Dreams Director, character designer Sonic 3D Blast Advisor1997 Sonic Jam Supervisor Sonic R Graphic advisor1998 Burning Rangers Director, character designer, graphic artist Sonic Adventure Event motion designer, story event coordinator2001 Pinobee: Wings of Adventure Director, character designer2002 The King of Fighters EX: Neo Blood Art director Ghost Vibration Game designer Blinx: The Time SweeperDirector, game designer2004 Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space Yoshi's Universal Gravitation Producer2006 Yoshi's Island DS Senior producer Blue Dragon Executive producer2007 Vampire Rain Producer2008 Away: Shuffle Dungeon Producer, character designer 2009 Ju-On: The Grudge Chief producer2010 FlingSmash Senior producer Echoshift Producer 2011 Wii Play: Motion Director2014 Yoshi's New Island Development producer2015 Terra Battle Special character illustration2016 Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Supervisor2017 Hey! Pikmin Development producer2021 Balan WonderworldDevelopment producer, character designer2023 Sonic SuperstarsTBA Monkey Quest Writer
References
Further reading
External links
Sega Stars: Naoto Ohshima