Trials are always unpleasant. It’s normal. No one goes to trial for fun and ending up in one always ends up being a significant investment of money and energy, both mentally and emotionally. That’s why it shouldn’t surprise us that, around them, peculiar stories always come out. When not terrible. And in some cases, we even reach the point where we wonder if they have a hilarious point.
Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, had not written on his Twitter since November 2022. Surprisingly, on Sunday, April 7, he decided to use his account again. And he did so to launch what can only be described as a clear attack on one of his Square Enix colleagues, Yu Miyake.
Recently, at Square Enix they moved Yu Miyake, producer of Dragon Quest since 1992, to lead the mobile games section within Square Enix. In his tweet, Yuji Naka states that he wishes they had moved Miyake much earlier than they did, because he is the type of person who can lie to a judge. Stating that the new president of Square Enix must be a good person, since he has relegated him from his position.
If this sounds alarming and out of place, it doesn’t get much better when put into context. Yuji Naka was arrested in November 2022, accused of trafficking insider information about the development of a new Dragon Quest mobile game. He was arrested again in December 2022, also accused of information trafficking, this time for the development of Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. In July 2023, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, suspended for four years, and ordered to pay two fines totaling 173 million yen, around one million fifty thousand euros, as it was considered that he made money in the stock market thanks to his insider information while working at Square Enix.
As of today, Yuji Naka remains under suspended sentence, with Miyake being one of the people who testified against him in court. Hence the tweet and his comment, which are not only out of place, but can also put him in an even worse situation with the law. That’s why, seeing that the return to the public eye of the father of Sonic has been to accuse others of throwing stones at him, we have no doubt that this story will still have many twists and turns before it is over.
