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Sonic Mania is heralded by lots of the blue blur’s followers as the most effective Sonic video games ever made. A sequel was a dream for a lot of — extra traditional phases revamped, extra model new ranges created, and people buttery easy physics making a good looking pixel artwork return. Nonetheless, Sonic Mania 2 by no means occurred, however we have got a clearer image as to why.
In an interview with Sport Informer — whose cowl story is the following 2D Sonic recreation, Sonic Superstars — Sega’s Takashi Iizuka put to mattress rumours of inventive variations between Sonic Mania’s developer Headcannon, headed up by Christian Whitehead, and Sega. Iizuka says that Sega labored with Headcannon and Whitehead “to contemplate ideas for the following technology of Traditional Sonic”, however the recreation by no means got here to fruition.
The most important facet of this appears to be Sega’s want to maneuver past pixel artwork, with Iizuka addressing this particularly within the interview:
“Whenever you make a 2D recreation utilizing pixel artwork, you sort of find yourself focusing on a really particular core viewers… We wished to convey this recreation to as many individuals as attainable and in an effort to actually make it appear and feel as interesting to a wider viewers, we would have liked to make use of the 3D belongings to essentially give it that present look. However we do know that core followers need that outdated Traditional Sonic look, they need that outdated traditional Sonic really feel, so we centered on ensuring the controls have been stable and the look and the texture was actually consultant of a traditional Sonic recreation.”
Whitehead, additionally talking to Sport Informer, echoed this sentiment. The developer is now engaged on a model new IP together with his new studio Night Star, Penny’s Huge Breakaway, which is a 3D platformer. Whitehead too wished to maneuver away from the pixel artwork he’d been working with for therefore lengthy:
“Night Star did work with Sega to discover attainable instructions Traditional Sonic may go after the success of Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania 2 was by no means in improvement, although, as a result of we really agreed early on that we should always attempt to make one thing recent, like hand-drawn 2D or 2.5D.”
Whitehead additionally reiterated that there is not any unhealthy blood between Sega and the crew at Night star, stating that “we keep a pleasant relationship with Sega and hope followers are pumped to play each [Sonic Superstars and Penny’s Big Breakaway] as soon as they launch”.
Whereas Whitehead and the crew weren’t immediately concerned within the recreation, Iizuka is adamant that Sonic Superstars is a continuation of the texture of Sonic Mania. “Once we kicked off Sonic Superstars with Ohshima-san’s crew, loads of the conversations that we had with Christian have been already in our heads”, he tells Sport Informer, and Sonic Mania’s success allowed them to consider the following technology of Traditional Sonic: “Sonic Mania helped us understand that followers nonetheless wished and loved the Traditional sequence.”