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 Forever
The initial wave of games were from Sega's Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Gear, and Master System platforms, although they plan on adding games from the SG-1000, Sega Saturn, and Dreamcast platforms as well. During the testing phases of the system, Saturn and Dreamcast games did not perform satisfactorily, though Sega has on-going R&D efforts working on improving them in hopes of future release. Games such as "Panzer Dragoon" are being considered for the service, but could not be successfully emulated in the testing phase, meaning that such a release would hypothetically require a lengthy porting process instead. Sega is also open to releasing games that had not previously had English localizations, such as the Yuji Naka-designed game, "Girl's Garden".