Sonic and the Secret Rings

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Interview with the director on Sonic's future

We get the scoop with Sonic Team director, Yojiro Ogawa

Words: Mike Jackson, CVG UK

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Sonic and the Secret Rings is almost upon us, gracing the high-speed hedgehog with a totally new gameplay style and setting.

We brought you the hands-on preview, and in-game footage you can see by clicking the Movies tab above.

Now read our chat with Sonic Team director, Yojiro Ogawa, about his first Wii project.

To kick off, the on-rails gameplay of Sonic and the Secret Rings was the game's biggest surprise for fans. Where did you get your inspiration for the on-rails gameplay?

Yojiro Ogawa: When we were first told about the Wii hardware, we realized the Wii Remote was going to be very unique. We tested many different controller configurations, including the standard way to hold the Remote. Our goal was to make the gameplay simple so that users could play it for a long time.

We realized that when holding the Remote in the standard "pointer" way you could move it on the X, Y and Z axis but the twisting motion of your arm is limited. So we tried holding it sideways and decided to use that configuration.

We also tried to use different buttons and gestures for different things. For example we wanted a shake of the remote to activate a speed boost, and the pressing buttons for different functions but we decided the horizontal tilting function worked better.

The reason why we didn't use too much motion control was because the way people shake the Remote is very different, and if there were several hundred people playing, they would shake the control in a hundred different ways.