Sonic co-creator Hirokazu Yasuhara to speak at Digital Dragons

This year's Digital Dragons conference will feature talks from Vlambeer's Rami Ismail, Quantum Break director Sam Lake, and Hirokazu Yasuhara, whose many credits include co-creating Sonic the Hedgehog.

In a line-up of experienced developers, Yasuhara may just be the most impressive. Across more than a decade at Sega starting in the late 80s, he worked on Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic-R. He then moved to America, where he spent the next 16 years working for 2K Sports, Namco Bandai, Nintendo and, significantly, six years at Naughty Dog. While there, he was a game designer on the Jak & Daxter series and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

Other speakers at this year's event include Warhorse Studios' Daniel Vavra, who previously worked on the Mafia series for 2K Games. Joining Vavra is Hangar 13's Adam Bormann, who was design director on the series' most recent entry, Mafia 3.

Brenda and John Romero will also be speaking at the show, as well as Remedy Entertainment's Tatu Alto, lead development of the company's Northlight graphics engine, and veteran designer Brian Upton, who was lead designer of Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon at Red Storm, and worked on a variety of games in more than 14 years at Sony Computer Entertainment.

This year, Digital Dragons will be held at a new venue, the ICE Kraków Congress Centre, in Kraków, Poland from May 22 to 23.

For more information, visit the official website.