Q&A: CREATING A SONIC BEATER

Mark Cerny on making that difficult second album

What pressures did Sonic 2’s short deadline create?

If I recall properly, the first game took 14 months. To try to create the sequel in nine months – with a culturally divided team – was really stressful.

Given the commercial importance of a sequel, did upper management take an unusual interest in the project? If so, how?

Sega Technical Institute had been set up as an independent studio; it was not located with any other Sega offices. My rationale was simply that I’d seen the growing pains that the US organisation had been going through and wanted to make sure that STI was isolated from them.

This isolation was very good from a creative perspective and meant we didn’t have much external pressure – but it also meant we couldn’t expect much support when challenges (such as creating a high-quality sequel in nine months) arose.

What were the key things that you and the team wanted to improve over the original

Mega Drive game?

We knew we needed a flashy bonus stage and ended up creating a pseudo-3d dash down a half pipe. Certainly, it was visually exciting, though I never could shake my feeling that the gameplay had been deeper in the rotating bonus stage in the first game.

We knew we needed more than that, though! Naka-san pulled off some technical magic and created a split-screen racing mode that turned out extremely well. And the team added another character: Tails.

Which achievements are you most proud of with Sonic 2?

I’m very proud that the Sonic series continued without a hitch, despite Naka-san’s departure from Sega headquarters. Had I not intervened, I’m pretty sure that there still would have been a Sonic 2, and that it would have been helmed by Naka-san – but I think it would have taken years for him to fall back into Sega’s orbit. Certainly there would not have been annual releases of Sonic titles, and the players and the brand would have lost out!