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).
Vectorman
Vectorman is a series of run and gun platform games developed by BlueSky Software and published by Sega for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. The first game in the series was released on October 24, 1995 in North America and on November 30, 1995 in Europe. The games have since appeared on several game compilations, including the "Sega Genesis Collection" for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable, the "Sonic Gems Collection" for the Nintendo GameCube, and "Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection" for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. "Vectorman" was added to the Wii Virtual Console on February 27, 2007, in Japan and April 5, 2007, in Europe, and in North America on September 22, 2008. It was also released on the digital distribution service Steam as part of the "SEGA Genesis Classics Pack" and as a standalone title. Vectorman was ported to iOS and Android in 2018 as part of the Sega Forever service.