Meet Pinobee.
About a year ago at this time, there were a million wicked rumors circulating about Sonic Team, ranging from the unlikely (Sonic Team splits into three divisions: the Naka division, the Ohshima division, and the Iizuka division) to the unearthly (Sonic Team breaks up). But as with any rumor, it all stems from a (usually) harmless truth, and the truth in this scenario is that a number of key Sonic Team players left Sega to form their own development house: Artoon. 
Green Gibbon (who originally revealed this) isn’t sure at this point exactly which members of the Team defected during the upheaval, but the big word going around is that Naoto Ohshima is among the list of traitors. Actually, it kind of makes sense. Ohshima’s style of direction is very mellow and fantasy-based, but the recent Team trend is towards off-the-wall, “wacky-cool” styles ala Samba De Amigo. It’s not hard to predict just what we can expect from Artoon…think along the lines of Sonic CD and Ristar, both of which were made by certain members of Sonic Team. 
Artoon’s first independent project, Pinobee: Quest of Heart for the Game Boy Advance, ideally reflects the sense of fantasy direction found in the aforementioned titles (as well as NiGHTS). Players control Pinobee, a robotic bee who dreams of becoming real. (The name is actually a play on “Pinocchio.”) Apparently, it’s an action platformer with luscious hand-painted backgrounds and rendered characters. Pinobee: Quest of Heart is being published in Japan by Hudson. Other titles from Artoon include a couple of cell phone games not really worth mentioning, but if you absolutely must know about them, you can read all the gunky details here (in Japanese, of course).
Source: Neo Green Hill Zone