Noriyoshi Ohba

Noriyoshi Ohba (大場　規勝, Ōba Noriyoshi^?) (born February 20, 1963) is a Japanese game designer and producer best known for his role as head of Sega Studio OverWorks. Currently Ohba is working at Premium Agency with other former Sega designers.

Noriyoshi Ohba
Born	February 20, 1963 (1963-02-20) (age 48) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Game Producer

Career

Education and Start

Information is sparse on the Early Career of Noriyoshi Ohba his first game WonderBoy in Magic Land came out in 1988, and Ohba was born in 1963. From this information it is possible to infer that he was under 25 when he started work at SEGA.

1989 - 1998 Main Stream Success

It can be argued that Ohba San was at the height of his popularity during the SEGA MegaDrive era unfortunately designers at SEGA during those years were credited under aliases therefore Obha did not receive credit for his work on the system.

In 2002, while promoting Shinobi (PlayStation 2) Obha San revealed that he was involved with the franchise since Revenge of Shinobi (1989).^[1] In an interview with IGN he revealed that he was directly involved in the development of the critically acclaimed Brawler trilogy Streets of Rage (1991–1994).^[2]

During the SEGA Saturn era the development teams at SEGA decided to develop original IPs over sequels sequels, as evident by Yuji Naka lack of involvement in any new Sonic the Hedgehog games. Similarly work on Obha San's Streets of Rage and Shinobi games was outsourced to external studios (The Streets of Rage game was released without the SOR name),^[3][4] however a new Shinobi game titled Shinobi Legions was produced for the SEGA Saturn without Obha San's involvement. Notable franchises that Obha San helped create for SEGA Saturn included Clockwork Knight (1994), Blazing Heroes (1995), and Sakura Wars (1996) series among several others games. While his games were all critically and commercially successful in Japan former SEGA president Bernie Stolar decided against localizing most of his Saturn games.^[5]

1989 - 2004 OverWorks

In 1998, in order to prepare for the Dreamcast launch with a strong software lineup SEGA expanded their in-house R&D teams, giving them full creative autonomy outside the walls of SEGA. Along with Rieko Kodama (Creator of the Phantasy Star Series) started his own studio called OverWorks (word play on Ohba's name).

The studio continued work on the Sakura Taisen series which weren't given a Western Release during Ohba's career at SEGA, in 2001 along with Rieko Kodama Ohba produced Skies of Arcadia (Eternal Arcadia in Japan) for Dreamcast which was a critically acclaimed RPG similar to the Mega Drive Phantasy Star games.

Ohba then started work on the reimaginign of Shinobi on the Dreamcast while the game had progress significantly in development due to SEGA's decision to discontinue support for the Dreamcast development of the game was moved to Playstation 2 which caused a six month delay in release.

In 2002, Ohba supervised the development of the newest version of Shinobi for the PlayStation 2, followed by the sequel/spin-off Nightshade (videogame) (Kunoichi in Japan).^[6]

He left Sega in 2005 and joined GungHo Entertainment, where he became director of newly created GungHo Works. The subsidiary studio was shuttered in fall 2009 due to the mediocore press Ragnarok Online DS & Mimana Iyar Chronicles received.

Since 2010 March, Ohba has joined Premium Agency, a Japanese studio where the CEO is another ex-SEGA employee who also worked at Shenmue.

List of major works

Title	Year released	Platform	Role
Wonder Boy in Monster Land	1988	Sega Master System	Director
The Revenge of Shinobi	1989	Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)	Director
Streets of Rage	1991	Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)	Director
Streets of Rage II	1993	Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)	Producer / Director
Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master	1993	Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)	Producer
Streets of Rage III	1994	Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)	Producer
Clockwork Knight	1994	Sega Saturn	Producer
Blazing Heroes	1995	Sega Saturn	Producer / Director
Iron Storm: World Advanced strategy	1995	Sega Saturn (only Japan)	Producer
Let's Make a J-League Pro Soccer Club!	1996	Sega Saturn (only Japan)	Producer / Director
Sakura Wars	1996	Sega Saturn	Producer / Director
Daytona USA	1997	Sega Saturn	Producer / Director
Advanced World War	1997	Sega Saturn (only Japan)	Producer
Let's Make a J-League Pro Soccer Club! II	1997	Sega Saturn (only Japan)	Director
Sakura Wars II	1998	Sega Saturn	Producer
Skies of Arcadia	2000	Dreamcast	Producer
Sakura Wars III	2001	Dreamcast	Producer
Sakura Wars IV	2002	Dreamcast	Producer
Shinobi	2002	Playstation 2	Producer
Skies of Arcadia Legends	2002	GameCube	Producer
Nightshade	2003	Playstation 2	Producer
Dragon Treasure	2003	Sega Arcade (only Japan)	Producer
Lilliput Kingdom	2004	Gameboy Advance (only Japan)	Producer
Dragon Treasure 2	2004	Sega Arcade (only Japan)	Producer
Blood Will Tell	2004	Playstation 2	Producer
Sakura Wars V Episode 0	2004	Playstation 2	Producer
Sangokushi Taisen	2005	Sega Arcade (only Japan)	Producer
Sakura Wars V	2005	Playstation 2	Producer
Ragnarok Online DS	2008	Nintendo DS	Director
Mimana Iyar Chronicles	2009	Sony Playstation Portable	Director

References

1. ^ Official Shinobi website; now offline
2. ^ http://ps2.ign.com/articles/360/360651p1.html
3. ^ http://soronline.eden2-book.com/misc_sor4.htm
4. ^ Fighting Force
5. ^ http://games.ign.com/objects/027/027425.html
6. ^ http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id=115&title=History%20of:%20The%20Shinobi%20Series

Persondata
Name	Ohba, Noriyoshi
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	February 20, 1963
Place of birth	Tokyo, Japan
Date of death
Place of death