Space Harrier
is a Japanese game designer, producer, programmer, and engineer, who headed Sega's AM2 team for 18 years. He has been responsible for a number of Sega's arcade hits, including three-dimensional sprite-scaling games that used "taikan" motion simulator arcade cabinets, such as "Hang-On", "Space Harrier", "Out Run", and "After Burner", and pioneering polygonal 3D games such as "Virtua Racing" and "Virtua Fighter", which are credited with popularizing 3D graphics in video games, as well as the critically acclaimed "Shenmue" series As a hardware engineer, he led the development of various arcade system boards, including the Sega Space Harrier, Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3, and was involved in the technical development of the Dreamcast console and its corresponding NAOMI arcade hardware.