IN THE KNOW
» PUBLISHER: SEGA
» DEVELOPER: SEGA TECHNICAL INSTITUTE
» RELEASED: 1994
» PLATFORM: MEGA DRIVE
» GENRE: PLATFORMER
DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2
SYSTEM: MEGA DRIVE
YEAR: 1992
SONIC SPINBALL
SYSTEM: MEGA DRIVE
YEAR: 1993
COMIX ZONE (PICTURED)
SYSTEM: MEGA DRIVE
YEAR: 1995
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was a game that really redefined the standards for a blockbuster videogame release – its extravagant hype campaign and co-ordinated international release were very uncommon at the time, but they paid dividends for Sega as the game sold millions of copies worldwide. But the creation of that game was fraught – a large number of concepts were scrapped outright, a prototype cartridge was stolen from a toy fair in New York and major changes were still being made during the final week of development. One of the big problems was the choice to develop the game at Sega Technical Institute in the USA, with a mixed Japanese and American development team – in Retro Gamer 175, game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara told us that, “Trying to establish a multicultural development team was meaningful, but it should not be done for a project with a very tight schedule.”
The result was that while Sonic development continued at STI, the American developers would split off to work on Sonic Spinball, while Sonic The Hedgehog 3 was developed at Sega Technical Institute in the USA with almost exclusively Japanese staff. Key returning staff from Sonic 2 included Yuji Naka, now a producer as well as lead programmer, Hirokazu Yasuhara, credited as director as well as senior game designer, and senior programmer Masanobu Yamamoto. Takashi Iizuka, today the Sonic series producer at Sonic Team, came on board as a senior game designer having previously worked on Golden Axe III. “I was living outside of Japan for the first time during Sonic 3’s development, so it was one culture shock after another on a daily basis for me,” he recalls. “I hadn’t even heard of Halloween before, so it was really surprising to see everyone at STI sitting down for serious meetings while dressed up in costumes.”
Just like , the third main game was also subject to major time pressures – in part because of experimental work that the was originally slated to use the same enhancement chip as . Speaking to Japan’s in 1997, with translation from , Yuji Naka said, “Up till about June of 1993, the development included the SVP. It featured isometric 3D graphics, and you could rotate and turn the game field.” Of course, this design was scrapped, with Naka continuing, “Unfortunately, in June we realised that development of the SVP chip probably wouldn’t be finished by the end of the year. So we abandoned all the programming and work we’d done up to then. In the remaining six months we had for , we had to start entirely from zero and re-do everything.”
