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).
Sonic Adventure
During the early 1990s, Sega was one of the most successful video game companies due to its Genesis console. Sales for the console were driven by the popularity of its flagship franchise of 2D platformers, "Sonic the Hedgehog". During this time, series co-creator Yuji Naka worked with Sega Technical Institute (STI) in the United States to develop "Sonic" games. After the completion of "Sonic & Knuckles" in 1994, Naka moved to work with Sonic Team in Japan. STI began developing "Sonic X-treme" for the Sega Saturn"," which would have been the first "Sonic the Hedgehog" game to feature full 3D gameplay. "X-treme" suffered a series of setbacks and was canceled in 1997. The cancellation is an important factor in the Saturn's commercial failure; without it, the system had no original "Sonic" platformer. Meanwhile, Naka and Sonic Team developed original Saturn games, such as "Nights into Dreams." Due to the series' relative lack of presence on the Saturn, according to "Retro Gamer", "[b]y mid-1997 Sonic had essentially been shuffled into the background... it was astonishing to see that just six years after his debut, Sonic was already retro."