Naoto Ohshima

Naoto Ohshima (大島 直人, Ōshima Naoto) (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.^[1][2] Although Yuji Naka made a tech demo around which Sonic's gameplay was based, the character in his prototype was a ball that lacked any specific features and was based on Ohshima's game proposal.^[3] 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.^[2]

Naoto Ohshima
大島 直人
Ohshima in 2018
Born	(1964-02-26) February 26, 1964 (age 61) Osaka, Japan
Other names	Big Island
Occupation(s)	Character designer, game producer
Employers	Sega (1987–1999) Artoon (1999–2010) Arzest (2010–present)

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.^{[citation needed]}

Works

Year	Game	Role
1987	Phantasy Star	Designer
1988	Space Harrier 3-D	Artist
	SpellCaster	Designer
1989	Phantasy Star II
	Tommy Lasorda Baseball
	Last Battle	Art director
1990	Fatal Labyrinth	Designer
1991	Sonic the Hedgehog	Creator, Character designer
1993	Sonic CD	Director
1995	Knuckles' Chaotix	Original character concept
1996	Nights into Dreams	Director, character designer
	Sonic 3D Blast	Advisor
1997	Sonic Jam	Supervisor
	Sonic R	Graphic advisor
1998	Burning Rangers	Director, character designer, graphic artist
	Sonic Adventure	Event motion designer, story event coordinator
2001	Pinobee: Wings of Adventure	Director, character designer
2002	The King of Fighters EX: Neo Blood	Art director
	Ghost Vibration	Game designer
	Blinx: The Time Sweeper	Director, game designer
2004	Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space
	Yoshi's Universal Gravitation	Producer
2006	Yoshi's Island DS	Senior producer
	Blue Dragon	Executive producer
2007	Vampire Rain	Producer
2008	Away: Shuffle Dungeon	Producer, character designer
2009	Ju-On: The Grudge	Chief producer
2010	FlingSmash	Senior producer
	Echoshift	Producer
2011	Wii Play: Motion	Director
2014	Yoshi's New Island	Development producer
2015	Terra Battle	Special character illustration
2016	Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games	Supervisor
2017	Hey! Pikmin	Development producer
2021	Balan Wonderworld	Development producer, character designer
2023	Sonic Superstars
TBA	Hypergalactic	Writer