IGN recently had the chance to sit down with Sega’s Yojiro Ogawa, director for Sonic and the Secret Rings. Some very interesting details were given about the game’s development. Apparently they could have ported the 360/PS3 game, but such a port would have to have waited until the 360/PS3 teams were finished, thus delaying the port significantly. Of course, after we heard several reviews giving Sonic Next-Gen scores of under 50%, we realized this was good for us fans.
Anyway, more of the interview talks about how the team handled implementing the motion controls to best suit the game, how the games art style came to be, and how the team feels the game turned out.
IGN: At its heart this game is more about running very fast and jumping, almost like the first game. Did you want to create something that was more like the original 2D Sonic titles?
Yojiro Ogawa: I did not think about going back to the past but perhaps somewhere in my mind there was some influence. I wanted a game with simple controls, so perhaps that’s where the similarities between Secret Rings and the original are. But I did not intend to have it like the first Sonic game, no.
IGN: From what we’ve played Secret Rings seems like a particularly hard game. Is the learning curve quite steep?
Yojiro Ogawa: Some stages that we showed off today are from later on in the game and they’re meant to be hard. But in the game you will learn all of Sonic’s different moves as you progress. So hopefully by the time you get to the later stages you’ll have mastered the controls. Sometimes you have got to make sure things aren’t easy though.
Head over to IGN for the rest of the interview. Sonic and the Secret Rings will be available February 20.
