Sonic Team
The initial team formed in 1990 and was composed of developers from Sega's Consumer Development division, including programmer Yuji Naka, artist Naoto Ohshima, and level designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. The team took the name Sonic Team in 1991 with the release of "Sonic the Hedgehog" for the Sega Genesis. The game was a major success that contributed to millions of Genesis sales. The next "Sonic" games were developed by Naka and Yasuhara in America at Sega Technical Institute, while Ohshima worked on "Sonic CD" in Japan. Naka returned to Japan in late 1994 to become the head of CS3, later renamed R&D #8. During this time, the division took on the Sonic Team brand but developed games that do not feature Sonic, such as "Nights into Dreams" (1996) and "Burning Rangers" (1998).
Sega Genesis
30.75 million first-party Genesis units were sold worldwide. In addition, Tec Toy sold an estimated three million licensed variants in Brazil, Majesco projected it would sell 1.5 million licensed variants of the system in the United States, and much smaller numbers were sold by Samsung in South Korea. By the mid-2010s, licensed third-party Genesis rereleases were still being sold by AtGames in North America and Europe. Many games have been rereleased in compilations or on online services such as the Nintendo Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam. The Genesis was succeeded in 1994 by the Sega Saturn.