Sega Technical Institute

History

In 1990 Mark Cerny, an Atari veteran who had joined Sega in 1985 and worked on Master System titles in Japan, proposed the creation of a new American development studio. Sega of America CEO Michael Katz and executive vice president Shinobu Toyoda supported the idea, aiming to develop games that resonated with American tastes. At the same time, Sega's head of research and development, Hisashi Suzuki, planned to send a group of younger but experienced arcade developers from Japan to the U.S., supplemented with American staff. Cerny convinced Suzuki to name the studio Sega Technical Institute rather than the originally planned 'Sega Institute of Technology,' to avoid pronunciation issues with the initials.

The studio opened with a hybrid team: Japanese programmers from Sonic Team, led by Yuji Naka, were paired with American artists and designers. The first major product was Sonic the Hedgehog 2, released in November 1992 for the Sega Genesis, which became one of the best-selling titles on the platform. But the collaboration proved difficult. Cultural differences emerged around working style: the Japanese developers worked through the night and slept in cubicles during crunch periods, while the Americans left at the end of the day and locked the studio behind them. Language barriers deepened the divide. STI artist Craig Stitt recalled Naka as 'an arrogant pain in the ass' not interested in working with Americans; another artist, Tim Skelly, observed that Naka would have preferred an all-Japanese team.

After Sonic 2 shipped, the studio split into two teams. Naka, refusing to develop another Sonic game with American staff, formed a Japanese-only unit and developed Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (released February 1994) and Sonic & Knuckles (October 1994). The American team, meanwhile, worked on Sonic Spinball (1993), Comix Zone (1995), and other titles. Mark Cerny left STI in 1992 to join Crystal Dynamics. The division he had proposed to unite two coasts had instead become two studios under one roof, each working independently. In 1996, Sega of America underwent management changes, and STI was closed at the end of the year. The studio had lasted six years — exactly long enough to prove that distance is not always a matter of geography.