It has been a weekend filled with big video game news fromSummer Game Fest’s opening night to today’s Xbox Showcase, and everything in between.Sonic Superstarswas one of the event’s early surprises,an all-new 2D sidescrollerstarring the Blue Blur launching later this year. However, the bad news is that the team behindSonic Maniaisn’t on the project as many had expected.
Sonic Team’s Takashi Iizuka toldVGCat Summer Game Fest that despite speaking with the Mania team about the future of 2DSonic, plans to have them work on the next game fell through. There’s a silver lining though, and it’s a pretty significant one. While the developers behind Mania haven’t worked on Superstars, one of the minds behind the very first Sonic game has.
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“I’m friends with a lot of my old coworkers and I was having a conversation with [Naoto] Ohshima-san about how we should make a Sonic game together,” Iizuka explained. “He’s the original creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, and so we had a conversation about whether his company Arzest would be interested in working on a Sonic game.”
Ohshima was interested in working on a Sonic game, and Arzest, along withSega’s Sonic Team are the studios behind Sonic Superstars. Exciting stuff as not only did Ohshima work on the original Sonic game and Sonic CD, but he also designed some of the iconic levels in that very first game. Suffice it to say, even thoughno old levels will be returningfor the new game, it’s going to give off significant retro Sonic vibes.
It’s not only the return of Ohshima that will ensure that. Iizuka confirmed in the same interview that Jun Senoue has been working on Superstars too. Senoue was a composer for Sonic 3 and has been working on music for Superstars with the various teams connected to the upcoming 2D title.
Evidence suggests that Superstars will pull plenty from Sonic’s past, but as noted above, it isn’t simply going to be another Sonic game that recycles all the same stuff as the old ones. Not only will no levels be reused, a common trope in most Sonic games, butSuperstars will include co-opfor up to four players. A first for the series, allowing fans to play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, or Amy.
Sonic fans are alsoexcited about the return of Fang the Sniper. Peering out from behind a bush at the start of the Superstars trailer and then shown properly at the end, Fang will be appearing in a Sonic game for the first time since 1996 when he shows up in Superstars later this year. Yes, his likeness was technically included in Mania, but that wound up being an illusion so doesn’t really count, right?
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