Yu Suzuki

Yu Suzuki  (鈴木 裕 Suzuki Yū, born June 10, 1958) is a Japanese game developer, programmer and former employee of Sega who directed the developed of many innovative arcade games including Hang On, Space Harrier, Out Run, After Burner, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA, and the critically acclaimed Shenmue games. Suzuki has also been credited with pioneering 3D gaming and his career at Sega was so successful he is often regarded as "Sega's Shigeru Miyamoto". He was also the head of the AM2 division for 18 years. In 2003, Yu Suzuki was inducted into Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. In September of 2011, Yu Suzuki officially left Sega, where he was serving as Creative Officer to form his own company YS Net. In 2015, he made a mainstream return with an announced Kickstarter for Shenmue III at E3 2015.

Biography
Suzuki was born in the city of Kamaishi. He spent some of his early years solving block puzzles although, he never developed a specific love for games. When studying in college, Suzuki began to take programming classes, over time he began to find a passion for programming. When first entering the job market, Suzuki had two criteria for companies seeking to hire him, they must allow him to program and offer at least two days off per week.

In 1983, Suzuki first became employed by Sega. His first project was Champion Boxing, a game originally intended for the arcades, it ran well enough that it became viable for release on Sega's SG-1000 home console. Sega executives were pleased with the project and promoted Suzuki to work at Studio 128, giving him an unused prototype of hardware that looked similar to motorbike handlebars. They asked Suzuki to create an arcade game with the hardware. Suzuki, an avid biker thought a game where the player controlled a motorcycle would work well and began development on ''Hang-On. The Hang-On'' team were able to convert the prototype into a full cabinet that simulated the feeling of riding a motorcycle, using motion-control technology. They would also implement a psuedo-3D sprite scaling technique called Super Scaler to help the game appear more realistic. In 1985 Hang-On was released and declared a critical and commercial hit worldwide, praised for it's groundbreaking use of arcade technology and high frame rate.