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Sonic Team head talks Sonic remakes

Takashi Iizuka, the head and lead producer of Sonic Team, has spoken about how the team decides on creating a remake. Iizuka says it’s not just a matter of visual style the team has to nail but also updating the controls and level design for modern platforms. He said that the team plays close attention to requests, but he says that their main focus is on creating new Sonic experiences.

Sonic fans are very passionate, often calling for remakes or remasters. I would personally love to see Black Knight, Unleashed, or Sonic Heroes make a comeback. Are there any games that you would like to revisit?

It always makes me happy to hear that fans still care so deeply about these games. Each title has its own audience, and we pay close attention when people tell us which experiences they would like to play again.

For me, the challenge is that remaking a game properly requires much more than improving its graphics. We would need to reconsider the controls, level design, technology, presentation, and many other elements, so the experience meets the expectations of players today. In some cases, that could require almost as much time and effort as developing an entirely new game.

Because of that, my personal focus is usually on how we can use our resources to give players a new Sonic experience. That does not mean we have forgotten the older titles. Their ideas and lessons remain an important part of how we think about and shape Sonic’s future.

23 thoughts on “Sonic Team head talks Sonic remakes”

  1. I have always hated Takashi Iizuka. The Sonic Video Game Franchise has been at it’s Worst with him in charge. He has said snd done so many stupid and idiotic things since being in charge that, well its just unbelievable. He has been one of the key players in keeping Sonic’s Video Games bad to mid at best. He does so many horrible things with the franchise. Sega has needed to fire him and others since the 2010’s and higher real talent but they want to be cheap!

    1. Bro if I was before 2022 I would agree but now there is shadow generations and sonic racing crossroads so….I am no more hating him

    2. only ones to blame is the fans bro lol
      they gas up literally every piece of sonic media and then sega is like “this didnt do as well as we hoped”

      and then for some reason after crapping on sonic fans who like “serious stories” for years, everybody and their grandma’s LOVES sonic frontiers for its serious approach and “eggmans fatherhood” and they LOVE shadow generations…..boi. Same people btw. No goomba theory here.

    3. Shadow Generations and Racing Crossworlds. The movies. The upcoming fortnite collaboration. These are things that came out under his leadership as of late. Granted the last two are mostly done at the Sega corporate level.

  2. If you want to create the best Sonic experience as possible, you have to bring back the Adventure formula and used the Sonic speed simulator for open world mechanics. That’s how its done.

  3. I would love an unleashed remake. Both versions of the game (Hd and the Wii/Ps2) have advantages and disadvantages over each other. The HD one has much more fun daytime stages with some annoying nightstages. But the wii/ps2 version has a lot of small changes and different level designs that make the game more consistant with it’s nightime stages. But that version doesn’t look as good and the daytime levels aren’t as enjoyable. If we get a remake of unleashed with the daytime levels of the HD version and the nightime levels of the Wii/Ps2 version, that would be awesome!

  4. I always preferred Sonic Unleased on Wii to the HD versions. I loved most of Dimps Sonic Games. The Advance Trilogy, Rush Games, Unleashed on Wii, I also prefer Lost Worlds on 3DS to it’s console counterpart. Not including the Nintendo themed levels. Generations on 3DS wasn’t bad. Sonic 4vwas a mobile game that Sega decided to Call Sonic 4, that’l wasn’t on Dimps and if you Look at Sonic 4 for what it was, a phone game and compare it to other phone games at the time, it was amazing. Sonic 4 was designed early smart phones. Sega didn’t tell Dimps they were making Sonic 4.

      1. Which Dimps? The one giving Super Saiyan 3 a cooldown? or the only that became a port machine dev?
        The Dimps i know doesn’t exist anymore (Sonic Advance/Rush-era)

  5. Sonic the hedgehog (the one one 360 and PS3) desperately needs a remake. There’s a good game in there somewhere but without a remake we’ll never see it.

  6. If Izuka doesn’t want to do remakes, then why not trust them tl another team?

    Or better yet: pay a team of people in the sonic community to do the remakes and to give them the resources necessary?

  7. My man Iizuka, have you ever heard of porting games? Instead of full blown remakes how about porting some of these games to consoles like the Switch / Switch 2, Xbox and PS5? I’d assume porting would cost less and would make these past great games available on modern consoles.

    Other than that a Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 remake would be very nice.

  8. I don’t understand why developers don’t just create collections with emulations decently upscaled to HD. Call me low maintenance, but I feel like that alone is enough, so long as the titels are working properly.

  9. It’s exciting to hear the developers talk openly about remakes. Updating gameplay and level design for modern players is just as important as improving the graphics.

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