Sega's Rieko Kodama and Yosuke Okunari & M2's Naoki Horii discuss the making of Sega Ages Sonic the Hedgehog 2, out on the Japanese Switch eShop tomorrow & overseas next week🇯🇵
why Sonic 2? they decided from the jump to include two Sonic & two Puyo games; they're signature games of the era & the second games of each series are the ones that really perfected their respective formulas, so they didn't hesitate to add both or overlap with Mega Drive Mini
Sonic Team moved to the US while making Sonic 2 in order to better capture American tastes; Kodama submitted art for Casino Night Zone from Japan but, given that she hadn't actually visited any casinos, it wasn't very authentic & art director Yamaguchi basically redrew it all
Sonic Team's Ohshima & others stayed in Japan to make Sonic CD; at that time, Sega kept Sonic-related projects under tight wraps so for a while, Kodama and others were barred from the team's development office and they had no idea what exactly was being made in there
on whether they considered later Sonic games like S3&K or Segasonic the Arcade Game: basically, no, but as always, if Sega Ages gets a second wave they'll consider more games
btw, they had no idea Mighty & Ray were being added to Sonic Mania until after the lineup was locked
btw, they had no idea Mighty & Ray were being added to Sonic Mania until after the lineup was locked
as with Sega Ages Sonic 1, they initially intended to include the Mega Play version of Sonic 2, but in this instance the Mega Play version had few distinct differences & they thought the lack of hi score listing & removal of special stages made it less fun, so they didn't bother
instead, they decided to add Knuckles from the S&K lock-on cartridge; one might presume this originally worked in a manner akin to on-the-fly patching but in actuality, the S&K cart basically contains a second ROM chip with all the S2&K game code, so it's more akin to brute force
even though they've ported both Sonic games several times before, the regular addition & maintenance of new features guarantees that every new port is a new challenge; modes like ring chain, ring keeper & Super Sonic mode were all brought forward, including for S2&Knuckles mode
Sonic 2 was being worked on for over a year, sometimes by just one person; Okunari ribs him about how there was a point where it was being made concurrently with Sonic 1, which came out September '18, & how they initially promised they'd have the entire lineup done in 6 months
Sonic 2's drop dash feature was implemented in June of last year; implementing it in Sonic 1 was tough bc unlike the spin dash, which programmer Naka personally added to the Saturn version, they didn't have anything to reference, & S1's impementation couldn't be reused for S2
director Hashimoto & M2's "rumble guru" Koga went overboard on implementing HD rumble and put in a ton of little variances for all the different objects, pinball bumpers, etc; Hashimoto tried to create rumble that'd make players want to spin dash everywhere for the hell of it
the new challenge mode isn't just about getting to the goal quickly, as you also have to have 100 rings collected or it won't count, so that alters peoples' routes somewhat; it's very competitive and it's the mode M2's people spend all their time playing in-house
the Sega Ages staff roll showcases the game's many enemies; when putting it together, Kodama was reminded of Sonic 2 art director Yamaguchi's talent—not only did he design & animate Tails but he drew many of the stages, & he was lead artist on Kodama's Magic Knight Rayearth
compared to the MD Mini version, the CRT filter looks more authentic due to the Switch's higher spec, and the wealth of extra features aren't just fun but they let newer or more casual players enjoy modern conveniences without being bound to '90s-era standards of accessibility
Horii wants to stress that the work that went into adding S2&K is basically like implementing two games, so think of it as a two-pack
Kodama has fond memories of working on S2 and beyond that, Knuckles is her favourite of the classic Sonic trio, so she's happy he was included
Kodama has fond memories of working on S2 and beyond that, Knuckles is her favourite of the classic Sonic trio, so she's happy he was included
oh, and addendum: Kodama mentioned at the very end that she did indeed travel to the US for a short while when working on S2—it came across like she was working from Japan but no, she just didn't visit the casino & thus drew "a JP version of a US casino"
slight correction!
they did also mention the other very obvious reason it wasn't on the short list: it's a trackball game and there's no simple way to accurately emulate that experience without an actual trackball
...and that's that, it's super late here so I might go over this again tomorrow to make sure I didn't miss anything pertinent
