Naoto ÅŒshima

Naoto Ōshima (Japanese大 岛 直 人, Naoto Oshima, born January 26, 1964) is a Japanese video game designer. Until 2004 he was employed by the team at Sega belonging Sonic, where he designed, among other things, the character Sonic and cooperated in the game Phantasy Star series, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Adventure.

Sonic Team

In Sonic Team Ōshima worked among others with the following titles:

• Phantasy Star
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Nights into Dreams
• Sonic Adventure

In many of these games, he was a designer at Sonic Adventure, he was responsible for the videos (CG Movie Designer). In Nights into Dreams, he was also character designer. The figure Sonic the Hedgehog was not, as is often mistakenly assumed, designed by Yuji Naka, but it was Naoto Ōshima, who invented the blue hedgehog.

Artoon and Arzest

In 2004 Ōshima left Sonic Team and formed his own video game company called artoon 2010 or their successors Arzest, where he is vice president.

At the games Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 Naoto Ōshima Effect Programmer was.

In the credits of the games Naoto Ōshima is occasionally named as Big Iceland, which is a literal translation of his surname.