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 Blast
"Sonic Blast" was released worldwide in November 1996, and in Japan as part of the Kid's Gear brand on December 13, 1996, retitled "G Sonic". Worldwide, it was the last Sega-published Game Gear game; it was the system's final game outright in Japan. Though it has a similar title and was released around the same time, "Sonic Blast" and "Sonic 3D Blast" have little in common. The game is fairly common in North America, but "G Sonic" is extremely rare, costing almost 350. A port of the game was released for the Master System exclusively in Brazil in December 1997, distributed by Tectoy. The game had to be simplified to run on the Master System because of its lower graphical quality. Like "G Sonic", the Master System version of "Sonic Blast" is rare.