Interviews// Sonic Team's Yojiro Ogawa

SPOnG: Sonic’s design has reformed somewhat in Sonic and the Secret Rings – he looks a lot closer to his classic Mega Drive design. It’s obvious you also had a lot of fun creating the world and the story surrounding it. Was this the intention with this game, to bring the series’ game design back to the drawing board and focus on a more lighthearted storyline and atmosphere?

Ogawa-San: I didn’t intentionally try to create something similar to the Mega Drive Sonics, but Sonic titles usually should have a very simple gameplay mechanic, maybe just by pressing one button to control. To have players feel the speed would be something Sonic titles should have too, and these were my basic concepts behind this particular game.

SPOnG: Some of the recent Sonic titles have been met with some negative criticism. What are your thoughts about this and are you happy with Sonic’s near future?

Ogawa-San: With regards to the opinions and feedback we got for Sonic 360 and PS3, we know some people are talking about the long loading times and other things, but for future games Sonic Team will try their best, so people will look at Sonic and perhaps feel more positive about it.

We also feel we had the PS3 launch coming up and we had to work on the XBOX 360 version in parallel so there were a lot of challenges that the team had to face and maybe that is why we ended up with what we see today.

SPOnG: Regarding that, one of the big surprises recently was the news of Yuji Naka leaving Sonic Team to form Prope. How did this impact any of the studio’s projects during that time, including Sonic The Hedgehog?

Ogawa-San: Internally, of course, everyone got concerned and worried, since Naka-san is Sonic Team, and Sonic Team is Naka-san. We had to face a lot of challenges after he left and maybe we would have had a different result if Naka-san was here for the 360 and PS3 versions, who knows? With the Wii specifically, the team and I have worked very hard so I feel that Sonic and Secret Rings has become a good game.

SPOnG: With the Wii’s interface, do you think there would be interest for a new version of Space Channel 5 or Samba de Amigo perhaps? The interface would be perfect.

Ogawa-San: Sunaga-san (points to Emiko Sunaga, Designer for Sonic and the Secret Rings, who is standing just behind us) was more to do with Space Channel 5 than I was but… a lot of people come up to us and say ‘we need this title for the Wii’ so the team might take it into consideration and start development. Some people have been saying Samba de Amigo might be good for the hardware as well so you never know.

The reason Sonic is still here today though is because of the fans, and there are more Sonic games made as a result. So if the fans request (a particular title enough) then we might see those games coming out as well.

SPOnG: Thank you for your time Ogawa-san.