Sonic The Hedgehog in the Genesis Era, Part 2

Despite the game’s massive success, Yuji Naka was not happy. Known by some as a bit of a hot head, Naka did not like the fact that Sega of Japan prevented the development team from putting their credits on the game. Hiding developer identities was an old practice of game companies dating back to the days of Atari. In fact, the first Easter egg in a video game was in the Atari game Adventure and was a credit of the game’s programmer, Warren Robinett. The use of this was designed to prevent poaching by other companies. However, for Naka, it was beyond the pale for the company to celebrate such a success without giving credit. He would quit Sega, but his absence wasn’t long.

There are two versions of the story of Naka’s recruitment over to Sega of America. One version, as told by the Blake Harris book Console Wars unfolded like this: Shinobu Toyoda, Tom Kalinske’s right hand at Sega of America, and the acting liaison to the Sega of Japan, immediately traveled to Japan after he discovered Naka’s departure. Kalinske knew that Naka was an important part of the team, and gave Toyoda a lot of leeway in his efforts to re-recruit Naka. After a promise of better pay, recognition, and the ability to choose his team, Naka agreed to work at the Sega Technical Institute, headed by an old colleague, Mark Cerny of Marble Madness fame. Yasuhara, who was supposed to join the Sega Technical Institute a few years prior, joined Naka.

In the other version of the story, it wasn’t Toyoda who convinced Naka to join the Sega Technical institute, but rather Cerny himself, given that the two of them had worked together previously. As always, the truth in these accounts usually tends to fall somewhere in the middle, with Toyoda and Cerny working together to convince Yuji Naka to join.

Mark Cerny wanted to get moving on Sonic 2, with his biggest assets on his new team being two of the three creators of Sonic. However, when he pitched this idea to marketing he was told to hold off. In an interview with a fan site, Sega-16, Cerny said, “Bizarrely their response was…’no, it’s much too soon.” While they were waiting they began work on another game, only to have that development interrupted when SOA came back to the Technical Institute, telling them they indeed had to get to work on Sonic 2.

Sonic co-creator Naoto Oshima remained behind at Sega of Japan and in charge of Sonic Team. While the Sega Technical Institute produced Sonic 2, Sonic Team Japan’s responsibility was to create a “revamped” version of Sonic 1 for the Sega CD add-on system.  Sonic 2 would see the addition of the longtime sidekick, “Tails.”

The development of the two-tailed fox was one of the sore points between the American marketing teams and Japanese developers of Sonic Team. While the character’s design was universally accepted, his name was not. Miles Prower, a pun on Miles Per Hour. Al Nilsen hated the name and wrote a short story, as a method of proposing a new name, Miles “Tails” Monotail. The story warmed everyone’s heart, and eventually, there was a compromise. The official name of the fox would be Miles Prower, and Tails would be the nickname.

During the development of the game, the two sides of the studio found it difficult to work together. Cultural and language barriers prevented the Japanese and Americans from working together fluidly, except for Cerny himself who was fluent in Japanese. Craig Stitt, one of the American artists on the game felt that many of the American contributions to the game were either dropped or reworked simply because it came from the American side.

In Japan, development continued for Sonic CD. During the early meetings between Sega of Japan and the Sega Technical Institute, some of the ideas that were floated back and forth were considered for both projects, however as development truly got underway dramatic differences began to emerge. The most noticeable were the supporting characters. Where Tails was introduced in Sonic 2, a female character named Amy Rose would be added, as well as an additional antagonist in the form of Metal Sonic. Another idea that was discussed for Sonic 2 that would only be used in Sonic CD was time travel. This element gave Sonic CD its most defining feature, extremely unique level design, allowing for Sonic to travel to the same levels in different timelines. Past, Present, Bad Future and Good Future.

Another key difference between Sonic CD and Sonic 2 was the pressure. Oshima has been quoted as saying that because they were not making a “numbered sequel” the pressure was not as high as he felt it probably was on Naka, Cerny, and the rest of the Technical Institute. During the final days of development, the Sonic 2 team needed to fly out a large complementary group of programmers to finish the game. The reason of the pressure to finish on time, was because of the marketing of the game.

While Sonic 2 was in development, Al Nilsen, who had orchestrated some of the more effective marketing campaigns for the first game, and Madeline Schroeder, the “mother of Sonic” came up with an idea that was revolutionary at the time: A street date for the release of Sonic 2. Named Sonic 2s Day, the goal was to have the game released on the same day around the globe. Ultimately the game was released a few days earlier in Japan, but the rest of the world saw the game come out on Tuesday, November 24th.

As with Sonic 1, the music of Sonic 2 was created by Masato Nakamura, leader of the Band Dreams Come True. However Sonic CD decided to go a different route using music composed by Naofumi Hataya and Masafumi Ogata. At least, that was the case in the Japanese and European versions. To much dismay, the US Version was completely rescored with a different sound than the Japanese version, eschewing the electronica-dance sound in favor of a jazz fusion approach. The original Japanese soundtrack would be available in the 2011 re-release of the game.

The game was another smashing success for Sega, Naka, and company. Despite the short production schedule, they managed to create a sequel which managed to not just rehash the ideas of the original, but enhanced gameplay mechanics. Most magazines would give high praise to Sonic 2 as well, except for one, UK Based magazine GamesMaster which rated Sonic 2 a 65 out of 100. Perhaps harshness was because it was the first issue of the magazine and they were looking to make a name for themselves. Or perhaps the criticism of the game being too easy and being too derivative of the first one were their honest assessment. In editor Jim Douglas’s final assessment, he states: “Technical excellence alone, which Sonic has in spades, does not a good game make.” Despite this outlier, the game received mostly good marks.

Sonic CD would also be well received with its unique time traveling level design, however, given that the Sega CD was an add-on, it naturally had a smaller install base leading to lower sales of Sonic CD to Sonic 2. Sonic CD still managed relatively impressive sales.

The Sega Technical Institute would see some changes after the release of Sonic 2 with Mark Cerny departing and Roger Hector, a veteran of Atari, stepping in to lead the division. Yuji Naka, Hirokazu Yasuhara, and the Sonic Team that had taken residency at the Technical Institute would stay on to begin work on Sonic 3. However this would come with a caveat – Naka wanted to only work with the Japanese developers at the Technical Institute, to avoid the conflicts that occurred during the development of Sonic 2.

With each Sonic game, Naka and team were growing more ambitious. Initial concepts of Sonic 3 involved using an isometric point of view, which would end up shelved and used instead for Sonic 3D blast. As with previous Sonic games, Sonic 3 would see the introduction of a new character to the roster, Knuckles the Echidna. However, Knuckles would not be a playable character in the base version of Sonic 3. The problem was as they were developing the game, it was growing prohibitively too large, and it would be too expensive to manufacture the cartridge. Roger Hector the new head of the Technical Institute knew that there would be issues when he saw the list of ideas that were proposed.

Not only was the game too big, but it was also going to take much longer than anticipated. Sega had tremendous success with their holiday release of Sonic 2 and wanted to replicate that success. Sonic 3 would not be ready however but Christmas of 1993 though, so it fell to the American half of the Sega Technical Institute to create something to tide fans over. The result would be Sonic Spinball, a game that took the pinball elements of the previous Sonic games, and, well made them the entire game. Spinball is not a bad game, it has some fun features, but it wasn’t the true Sonic experience despite the best efforts of the developers.

The decision was made during the alpha stages of the game to split Sonic 3 into two parts. The second part was called Sonic and Knuckles and allowed Knuckles to be a playable character. Each game could be played as a standalone, or together. Playing them together gave the gamer the original experience that the team envisioned when designing the game. In a fun twist, attaching Sonic 2 to the Sonic and Knuckles, cartridge allowed the player to play as Knuckles in Sonic 2.

Aside from the lock-on cartridges, the most interesting piece about the development of Sonic 3 was the potential inclusion of Michael Jackson onto the team to provide the musical score. Dreams Come True had become relatively popular in the time between Sonic 2 and 3, and their cost had gone up significantly. Michael Jackson however, a fan of the game, was interested in taking on the job. However, he is not credited in the final game. There are multiple accounts as to what happened. In one version of the story, Jackson’s involvement in the project was terminated by Sega after the news of pedophilia charges came out. Another version of the same story posits that Jackson left the project when he became frustrated with the methods of creating the music, much like Nakamura was with Sonic 1.

Unfortunately, it would take nearly eight months to deliver the two halves of the game in the United States and Europe. In Japan, there was a delay in delivering the first half as the team attempted to jam both halves onto one cart. This plan was ultimately abandoned and the game was released with the “lock-on” technology that the other regions received.

While Sonic 3 was, well-received sales were noticeably down from the successes of the first two games. Each “part” of the game so to speak sold over a million copies, down from the multi-million sales of the previous games. There could have been several reasons for this to happen; perhaps marketing had run out of the magic juice to get people interested. Or perhaps simply it was a case of fatigue setting in as there were five Sonic releases between 1991 and 1994. Whatever the case the downturn marked a perfect timing for a break. When the next big Sonic game would arrive, it would be at a markedly different Sega.

Sonic and Knuckles would be the last “main” game to be released for the 16-bit generation. In the next video, we will start with the discussion of the 32-bit era for Sonic, or lack thereof, and continue to present day. If you enjoyed the video, please let me know in the comments below.  If I missed anything, please let me know on the pinned fact check comment. One of the difficult things with this project has been the number of sources that have slightly different versions of the same information. However, if you have another source for me to check out, let me know! If you enjoy this content, please consider subscribing with notifications. My name is Spoiler Kevin, and I will see you in the next video.