One of the most influential creators in modern entertainment would rather ride a real roller coaster than play the games he built. This deep dive draws on translated Sega developer interviews, arcade cabinet blueprints, and gaming retrospectives to chronicle Yu Suzuki, who led Sega’s AM2 division for 18 years and pushed the industry into the third dimension by sheer force of will.

We follow him from a 1983 undergraduate thesis on 3D graphics and a first-year hit with Champion Boxing, through the taikan body sensation era of Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run, and the gyroscopic R360, to true polygonal 3D with Virtua Racing in 1992 and Virtua Fighter in 1993, the game that convinced Sony to rebuild the PlayStation around 3D. We cover how he compressed Lockheed Martin military texture mapping onto a $50 chip, brought motion capture from medical research into games, and then bet everything on Shenmue, the $47 million living world that drafted the blueprint for open-world games but could never make its money back on the Dreamcast.

• Doing 3D math in the background to scale flat 2D sprites years before the hardware could render polygons
• Riding prototype motorcycles for hours in the lab to calibrate Hang-On’s body-lean controls
• Nonlinear routes and a selectable radio in Out Run as the seeds of atmosphere over high scores
• The Icarus years: Shenmue Online’s cancelled $26 million, and a touchscreen fighter that burned players’ fingertips
• Founding Ys Net, the record-breaking $6.3 million Shenmue 3 Kickstarter, Air Twister on Apple Arcade, and Steel Paws for Netflix Games