The latest issue of Retro Gamer goes behind the scenes of Sonic Generations and also examines the recently released Sonic X Shadow Generations. “From the very start of development, Sonic Generations was always intended as the ultimate celebration of Sonic and the franchise’s highest moments from its past in one fun package,” says Iizuka. “Combining both Modern and Classic Sonic made sense as we were honouring Sonic’s holistic history which includes both designs.”
One of the challenges that Sonic Team faced was creating a 3D look for the stages from classic 2D games that fans would find acceptable. “It was important to respect and pay tribute to the original beauty and fun gameplay elements of each stage we included, and it was equally important to preserve the design motifs of the Classic levels (chequered patterns in Green Hill, blue pipe routes in Chemical Plant, etc) when modernising the textures and graphics, so the worlds all felt correct in the 3D space,” Iizuka recalls. “There was a lot of trial and error as we explored how to do this before deciding on the final look, but once we secured the 3D design language and look of Green Hill, the rest of the stage designs all sort of fell into place.”
Iizuka also talked to us about Sonic X Shadow Generations, a remaster that updates the original game and adds plenty of Shadow-related content. “Different stages let Shadow show off his new abilities like surfing on water, gliding and completely transforming to move across different terrain,” Iizuka says, before explaining their role in the game’s new White Space hub world. “The White Space in Sonic Generations was a fun 2D platforming hub world, and we wanted to do even more for the Shadow Generations White Space, so we used elements from the Sonic Frontiers’ Open-Zone design to create a 3D White Space. One of the reasons why we went in this 3D platforming direction was to enable Shadow to use all his Doom Powers in the White Space and really push players to run around and explore the hub world.”
Outside of exclusive Sonic Generations coverage, issue 265 of Retro Gamer also includes a look at the games of Factor 5, the making of Tinhead, Project Eden and Riven, the excellent sequel to Myst and Ultimate Guides on the arcade hit Rastan and the underwater shmup X-Out, which receives a remaster in the new year. There’s also an exhaustive guide to the best games on the Amstrad CPC 464, a behind the scenes look at the recent CYGNI: All Guns Blazing and an interview with Mike Tucker about his interesting career, first playtesting and then making games.
