Oh yeah, folks. It’s happening. That three-way collaboration between Sonic Radio, RadioSEGA, and our own SEGASonic:Radio, is happening this Sunday.

Hosted by Sonic Radio, the Sonic Fan Music Festival is gunning for its second year this 2013, right on June 23rd! Join us for a birthday bash to remember as we dedicate 12 straight hours of remix goodness to Sonic’s 22nd anniversary!

8:00 AM – 9:30 AM PDT - The Sonic R Show w/Sonic & Shadow Remix of Sonic Radio
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM UK

9:30 AM – 11:00 AM PDT – The Sonic Hour w/Dreadknux of SEGASonic:Radio
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EDT
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM UK

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT - ForeverSonic’s Random Hour w/ForeverSonic of RadioSEGA
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM UK

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM PDT - Radio Redux w/ArchAngelUK of RadioSEGA
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT
8:00 PM – 9:00 PM UK

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM PDT - SEGA Mixer Drive w/Rexy of RadioSEGA
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT
9:00 PM – 11:00 PM UK

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM PDT - Ultra Wave w/TallGuy-91 of RadioSEGA
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
11:00 PM – 12:00 AM UK

4:00 PM – 6:00 PM PDT - The Music Plant Zone w/VizardJeffhog of SEGASonic:Radio
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
12:00 AM – 2:00 AM UK

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM PDT - The Sonic R Countdown w/Sonic & Shadow Remix of Sonic Radio
9:00 PM – 11:00 PM EDT
2:00 AM – 4:00 AM UK

That being said, The Music Plant Zone and A/V Hijack won’t be airing on their regular timeslots this weekend (consult SS:R schedule here). The Music Plant Zone will be airing at the time written above this June 23rd on Sonic Radio; we’ll see if we can get a relay of the festival onto our stream, but just in case, tune in to Sonic Radio! Meanwhile, the upcoming A/V Hijack broadcast has been delayed to next Sunday.

If you have plans this Sunday, cancel them! …unless this is one of your plans this Sunday, don’t cancel that. Okay? Cool! Cool.

See you there!

Following the release of the game a few days prior, the famed fan-made original soundtrack to LakeFeperd’s Sonic After the Sequel is now available to the open public!

Featuring the combined works of artists Falk, Funk Fiction, James Landino (KgZ), and Andy Tunstall (Ristar/Tunners) of Before the Sequel 2012, along with newcomers Mr Lange, DJ Max-E, and Li Xiao’an, the incredible seven-man album clocks in at a total of 76 tracks! Be warned though, this 3 and a half hour beast of sound does go for about 420MB.

To those who’ve played the fan game and/or stalked the artists on Soundcloud, what are your favourite tunes from the OST? Landino’s blood-pumping Breakfast Time for Horizon Heights’ boss? Falk’s jazztacular Tea With Ellie for Cyan City? Lange’s tropical Turquoise Paradise of Foliage Furnace with nods to the Sonic OVA? Funk Fiction’s club-worthy Rocks Like This for Technology Tree? Tunstall’s spine-chilling Ghosts With Guitars for Moon Mansion? DJ Max-E’s frosty Neon Paradise for Parhelion Peak (…wait, that one sounds familiar…)? Or even Li’s harrowing Eye of the Storm for the final showdown? The Special Stage themes with remixes to Sonic Drift 2, or even Sonic R? Cutscene music? Share your thoughts down below!

In any case, you can either download the complete OST from the game’s website, or listen to it all on the music’s official YouTube channel. This is definitely a soundtrack worth looking into!

Have a preview!

Have you ever wanted to own every digitally released Sonic game on the PlayStation Network? Well now is your chance! For a limited time only, PSN will be selling the “Sonic Master Collection” for a paltry $29.99. This collection contains the following:

1. Sonic Adventure

2. Sonic Adventure DX Upgrade

3. Sonic Adventure 2

4. Sonic Adventure 2 DLC

5. Sonic CD

6. Sonic The Hedgehog

7. Sonic The Hedgehog 2

8. Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

9. Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2

This content usually goes for $61 collectively, so you will be saving a little over 50% in this deal. That is, if you haven’t bought these games already!

Sonic Lost World for Wii U wasn’t the only Sonic game impressing fans at the show floor. The 3DS version was on display as well, the first Sonic portable game to offer a fully 3-D world to explore.  While the game is technically very sound, how is it compared to its big console brother and can Dimps pull it off on both a technical and design level? Read on to find why Sonic Lost World on 3DS is two steps forward and one step back for Dimps.

The 3DS version of Lost World tries to copy the console version in quite a few ways. Although the level design is different, Windy Hill still has many alternate paths, walls to parkor on and quite a few new tricks. One of them is a new wisp power which gives Sonic the ability to turn into a tiny asteroid of sorts. He rolls into a ball with a gravitational pull that lets him smash through walls which then form a ring around him killing enemies with ease. Another new addition is a large catterkiller that tries to smash you as you run around him. The camera does a fantastic job of focusing right on the catterkiller as you attack him. At the end of the level a giant female version of one of these caterkillers chases you down, smashing the narrow path behind you as you run over a pit of poisonous water. The whole scene is reminiscent of the many chase scenes Sonic has been apart of other the years, though nothing beats a killer whale or a giant GUN truck.

The only negative thing I can say about the Windy Hill is the transition between the floating islands that make up the level. Whenever Sonic reaches the end of an area he bounces off a spring. The camera then cuts to Sonic suspended awkwardly in the air as the next part of the game loads. The transition is very jarring and just looks sloppy, completely at odds with the rest of Windy Hill’s presentation. If the camera had followed him from the spring to the next area instead of this odd camera cut, it would have fit and looked less sloppy.

The other 3DS stage is an all new, exclusive 2-D version of Desert Ruins 2 that looks nothing like the Wii U version. This time around Sonic is running around inside what looks like an Egyptian pyramid. Here, Sonic can run up walls using his speed dash and attack enemies with some kind of kinetic wave that comes from his hands. Kinda odd. You also need to position these sentient rolling balls that follow you and can damage you if mishandled. You have to get them on a switch and stun them with an attack so some stairs can drop and you can proceed further. There are also spots where you cannot progress further until you free some animals by smashing more badniks, which causes a lot of backtracking. Also, positioning and stunning the balls can be a bit of a pain. It ends up more frustrating than fun and an odd choice for a demo level to show off. It’s like in Sonic 1 when you go from Green Hill to the very slow Marble Garden Zone. The game suddenly slows to a crawl.

At a technical level, the entire demo looked great. The simpler visuals allow for a much better framerate on the 3DS as the game tends to run at 30+ FPS, which is a significant improvement over Sonic Generations. The controls work very well too, though in this version they’ve gone the more conventional route and have mapped the spindash to the Y button rather then a trigger. However, while Dimps does get all the technical stuff right, it’s their level design that needs work. At least if the demo is anything to go by. While I’m 100% sold on Sonic Lost World for Wii U as you can tell by my hands-on for SEGAbits, the 3DS version needs to have better level design than what we saw in the demo.

Sonic Lost World will be available on both Wii U and DS later this Fall.

Need to vent the urge to play a new Sonic game, and yet can’t wait for Sonic Lost World? Here’s the perfect fan game to help ease that nagging feeling!

After one year and six months since its announcement, LakeFeperd has finally released the highly anticipated fan game, Sonic After the Sequel!

A follow-up to his previous efforts, Before the Sequel (linking Sonic 1 and Sonic 2) and the “Metronic” BtS: Aftermath, the project is meant to tie together the events of Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, filling the gap between the first fall of the Death Egg and the discovery of a downed Angel Island.

As Eggman tries to salvage his heavily damaged Death Egg after his last showdown with the Blue Blur, Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles “Tails” Prower continue to chase the evil and determined Doctor Robotnik, and begin their journey in the Horizon Heights Zone. With the duo hot on his trail, Eggman’s sights are set upon a floating island, far off in the distance…

Sonic After the Sequel holds a grand total of 10 Zones for you to explore, with the narrative leading Sonic and Tails through locales such as the sunny then rainy greenery of Horizon Heights, the sweet tooth incarnate Sugar Splash, the crowded and bustling Cyan City, the haunted and ghost-riddled Moon Mansion, the frozen tundra of Parhelion Peak, and the Storm Station high above the heavens.

Each Zone is broken down into 3 different Acts, followed by the Boss Act. By finding Star Rings scattered throughout the stages, you can also reach a hidden Special Act! Be warned though, these special Rings are pretty well hidden, and might require numerous playthroughs in order to locate them.

On the gameplay front, Sonic and Tails play no different than their 2D incarnations of the 90s. Sonic retains his ability to Strike Dash/Peel-Out by holding up and tapping the jump button repeatedly, Tails still flies, and the two Spin Dash.

However, there are a few twists to how you play as well. The Flame Shield returns in all its blazing glory; the Bubble Shield lets you both breathe underwater and double-jump, and there’s a shield that not only protects you from spike damage, but allows Sonic to drop straight down and retain his speed. If Kirby’s no stranger to you, then there are a couple of quirky yet amusing forms for you to toy with in Cyan City: Beam Sonic and Mirror Tails!

The game is split down between two modes; one is easy, the other harder but more rewarding. The easiest of the two is Story Mode, where you simply clear the complete game by going from Zone to Zone.

For the daring, Classic Mode plays much like the Genesis games. You’ll have to gather a certain amount of rings in order for a Warp Ring to spawn at the end of an Act, which then leads you to a Special Stage where you to chase after a Chaos Emerald. Collect all 7 and you unlock Super Sonic and the Good Ending! Each Special Stage bears a remixed tune, with variations of Sonic 2′s Special Stage, Radical Train’s The Chase of Sonic 2006, Hill Top Course from Sonic Drift 2… and the seventh one, well, you’ll have to reach it yourself to find out!

While LakeFeperd looked after the game’s development, the effort put into organizing the soundtrack was split between seven people! Returning from BtS’12 are Falk, Andy (Ristar/Tunners), Funk Fiction, and KgZ, with Mr Lange, DJ Max-E, and Xiao’an Li joining the fray.

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it: the game’s OST is beyond all levels of freaking amazing as each artist did an overall fantastic job at scoring After the Sequel. Keen eyed players will notice a nod towards the composers at the start of each Act, indicating which artists contributed the music for a particular stage. While the OST did hold back the game’s release significantly, it was SO worth the wait, believe you me!

The Sonic After the Sequel OST, however, is to be released separately, but it should be out by the week’s end. In that case, let’s see if we can get something like this going on again…
EDIT 19/06/2013: The soundtrack is out!

So, Lake, now that you can prepare Sonic Chrono Adventure for SAGE’13, what do you have to say about ATS now that it’s released?

“It’s out.
Enjoy.”

Aptly said!

Download the game through the button below, and share your thoughts in the comments! Be warned, it’s a hefty 150MB!

If there is one thing I both love and hate about the Sonic franchise, it is its tendency to innovate when innovation isn’t really necessary. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” isn’t exactly a saying SEGA lives by. It seems like ever since the Adventure series, every home console Sonic game has needed its own unique gimmick. A gimmick that, until a few years ago, always seemed to come at the detriment of the game play this gimmick was trying to improve. Now, after two great Sonic games that have built upon the foundation initially laid by Unleashed’s daytime stages, Sonic Team has thrown out everything they have been establishing over the last several years in favor of something completely different.

The single greatest issue that every 3D Sonic game has had is control. Whether it be control of the camera or control of the characters, Sonic Team has long been struggling to perfect Sonic’s movement in 3D. Over the course of Unleashed, Colors and Generations, Sonic Team has made huge strides in solving this problem, but they’ve done it largely by taking control away from the player or throwing Sonic into a 2D space. This has resulted in the best Sonic games since the Genesis era,  but has also turned Sonic’s 3D stages into on-rails obstacle courses, providing players with a variety of different paths to take but giving them little reason to stop and explore.

Lost World’s primary goal is to completely reinvent how Sonic moves in 3D. For the most part, the game succeeds at this beautifully. The new Parkour system allows Sonic to run along walls and up trees, making game play sections that would have been completely automated in previous Sonic games completely controllable by the player

This new system of movement is critical to the other big new idea Lost World brings to the table: the creative level design. Lost World’s 3D stage “Windy Hill is a series of cylindrical worlds suspended in the air. The scale in this stage is huge that not only allows for a lot of fun platforming, but also oozes with hidden paths and secrets. A quick run to the underside of the level reveals a whole new area ripe for exploration. A given area can have as many as four or five different paths to take, each of which test different skills. The default path in Windy Hill was the easiest, letting players just run forward and smash enemies. The other paths were more difficult though. Some paths have secrets like golden canons that will take you to new areas or red rings or animal capsules. One path was filled with spikes and enemies and was very difficult to navigate. Another path was very narrow and easy to fall off of, and yet another required the use of the wall run. During each successive play through of this stage I tried something different and found something new in the process. This exploration was further facilitated by the run and spin dash buttons, which give players an unprecedented amount of control over Sonic’s speed.

As Sonic has gotten faster and faster, he’s also become more unwieldy in more platform heavy areas. The run and spin dash buttons finally offer a solution to this problem. Anyone who has played Mario 3D Land will find these additions to be quite natural. The run and spin dash buttons essentially act like gears in a manual transition. Without these buttons Sonic runs about as fast as Mario would. At this speed Sonic can easily navigate platforming areas with precision. With the run button Sonic’s speed increases, allowing him quickly race through areas and perform Parkour moves. The spin dash button works exactly like it has in past games, allowing Sonic to quickly reach his top speed and blast through areas, though at the expense of the more precise movement of the lower speeds. If not for the run button, exploring the areas wouldn’t be nearly as fun.

This was the first Sonic game in a long time where I found myself exploring more than trying to improve my time. Of course, not all of the stages available in the demo were like this. The second stage, “Desert Zone 1”, the sweets filled level you guys have been hearing about, is a lot more straight forward and traditional. The level is completely two dimensional and feels closer to something like a side scrolling Sonic Colors level. Much like Colors’s 2D areas, this level also had plenty of secrets, hidden areas, and alternate paths. This level was a lot of fun, but didn’t really blow me away like Windy Hill did.

The final stage is somewhat reminiscent of the auto run game play of Sonic 06 and Secret Rings, though with significantly better controls. In this beehive themed stage, Sonic runs down a narrow path at top speed, smashing robots and trying not to fall off the path or smash into a wall. This stage feels much more reminiscent to something out of Generations, though it never really approaches Generations’s level of speed. The most notable new element on display here is Sonic’s ability to smash through a dozen enemies at once with a single, extended homing attack.

Speaking of the homing attack, the battle system of this game has also been changed significantly. The homing attack is now a lot more versatile, easily targeting and hitting enemies in any direction. It feels like a more polished version of what was used in Sonic Adventure, with a much quicker recovery time that allows Sonic to quickly hit a variety of nearby enemies in any direction. The actual range of the attack is a bit shorter now, though. I often found myself attempting to do it a little too soon as a result. In addition to the homing attack, there is now a bounce attack and a kick. I didn’t find myself using the bounce attack much, though it feels a little like the bounce from SA2. The kick I had to use a lot, though, especially on the snail enemies, which take multiple homing attacks to kill otherwise. It works a lot like the homing attack, except it is slower and has less range.

The many changes made to Lost World threw me off at first. I kept using the wrong attacks, I kept screwing up whenever I tried to use the Parkour system, and I died a lot. By the last day of E3 I was playing the game like a pro though and things that didn’t make much sense to me, like the inclusion of the kick attack and some of the finer aspects of the Parkour system, made a lot more sense. The kick attack is meant to test a players reflexes rather than simply mashing the A button. The Parkour system can pretty much be used to get up anything and really opens up these levels to exploration in ways that simply haven’t been done before in a Sonic game.

This game is very beautiful. It’s the first Sonic game I have ever played at E3 that actually had a consistently smooth frame rate. It remained at a steady 60 frames per second, and never had a moment of noticeable slowdown. Past Sonic games have always struggled to even maintain 30 frames, making the Lost World demo the smoothest 3D Sonic game I have played, period.

One thing I can say after this demo is that Lost Words is extremely polished and very fun. Though it lacks the speed of Unleashed, Colors and Generations, Lost World more than makes up for it in the exploration this slower speed now allows. I cannot guarantee that fans of Sonic’s faster games will enjoy Lost World, but if you are like me and you’ve been anxious for a slower Sonic game with meatier platforming levels, you are in for a real treat later this year.

The four games on offer are Sonic The Hedgehog, Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Columns, and Shining Force: Sword of Hajya. SEGA also promise that “more [is] on the way for the Nintendo 3DS”, so you can look forward to even more classic games hitting the Virtual Console in due course.

Below are some descriptions to accompany each title which may help you decide which to download, as found on the SEGA Blog.

Sonic the Hedgehog – £4.49

Ah yes, Sonic. We know about this game, right? Blue Hedgehog runs fast, collects rings, thwarts plans, frees animals encased in unfeeling metal, is charged with the mystical energies of special emeralds. Classic!

Actually the Game Gear version is a slightly different spin on the original – it’s the same version as appeared on the SEGA Master System: half of the zones feature a different design than the 16-bit counterpart, and it has different level design and story elements.

Notably, the game also featured original music from chiptune wizard Yuzo Koshiro – the same musician who created the amazing tracks for the Streets of Rage series and contributed fifteen original tracks to Shenmue.

Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine – £2.69

Look, it was the 90s, and matching contortionist strings of goo-beans was just something that we did back then. It’s hard to explain if you weren’t there, but this game is a window into the culture of my people.

Oh! Also it is basically a Puyo Puyo game, which is to say exactly a Puyo Puyo game, but remade with a Sonic theme, because again, it was the 90s, and that’s how we rolled.

One neat thing about the Game Gear versions of Genesis titles is they often had something unique going for them – in this case, a “Puzzle Mode” that didn’t appear in its 16-bit cousin. Nineties! Yeah!

Columns – £3.59

Columns!

Seriously though, Columns. Yes, there is a fine tradition of games where the player arranges falling things in a desperate bid to make them disappear. It’s as apt a metaphor for life itself as video games have devised. The twist in columns – have you guessed it? – is the frenetic arrangements are all vertical, a metaphor for the chaos of our waking lives, and/or a metaphor for spinning falling gems stuck to one another that vanish if you line them up just so.

As is becoming a recurring theme here, Columns also had some fantastic music.

Shining Force: Sword of Hajya – £3.59

A rare gem from one of my personal favorite series – the original Shining Force games rank highly on my list of all-time favorites for their blend of tactical strategy and story-driven RPG.

Sword of Hajya takes place some 20 years after the original Shining Force, give or take, and continues the story of Guardiana. A handful of characters from the original – including Luke, Ken, Lowe, and the magical egg-shaped squid-creature (???) Domingo – return in this Gamer Gear exclusive.

To be honest, RPGs don’t always age well – they can be grindy and they can belong very much to their eras. Sometimes you take what you can get. But tactical RPGs and in particular the Shining Force series have always felt very much alive, and the blend of character progression, story, and tactical strategy still hold a primal appeal. I mean, I’m biased! But I like to think I’m biased for a reason, and those reasons say I am very excited to see this game (and all these games) show up for download on the 3DS.

Source: SEGA Blog

Well they certainly kept this one quiet! Pedigree Books have announced that they will be releasing a new Sonic The Hedgehog Interactive Annual which is expected in stores this August. However, this isn’t just your typical annual or yearbook, this one has a special party trick. It takes advantage of Augmented Reality.

If you have a smart phone or another device that can perform this party piece, if you hold it above certain pages, you’ll be treated to additional content such as stories, activities, annimations, puzzles and even extended character profiles. Pedigree claims 20% of the book will have the ability to do this.

The range will be sold alongside other franchises and be catergorised as ‘Super Interactive Annuals’ and will go on sale this August. No details on prices or if this would be released worldwide were given, however odds are you’ll probably find a comic book store or online bookshop that might be willing to import it for you.

As a bit of trivia, to my knowledge, the last time a Sonic annual/yearbook came out was back in 1992, twenty one years ago… if you are old enough to remember seeing these in bookshops, high-five… that was a totally radical time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Sonic Show begins a new series of indepth video reviews of some of the more interesting pieces in the world of Sonic merchandise.

Our new presenter, “JonoD” takes the first review back over a decade to check out the spectacle of the 10th Anniversary Crystal Cube! Rather nice don’t you think?

Would you want one? Is it worth the money? Share your thoughts below!

Iizuka (left) and his translator.

Sonic Lost World is a dramatic change in focus for a Sonic platform. Gone is the safe, well done engine from Unleashed to Generations and in comes a new game play experience. That’s a risky move considering many critics are just now seeing the improvement the Sonic games have been making. As me and Nuckles87 sit down privately with the head of Sonic Team Takashi Iizuka, he explains to us why this move was the right choice.

TSS – How long has this game been in development?

Iizuka – We started prototyping the different geometries and stages during Sonic Generations. So, about 2 & 1/2 years.

TSS – Who is the main director on this game?

Iizuka – Morio Kishimoto who did Sonic Colors and Heido Bayashi (sorry if mispelled) for the 3DS version who was the same director of the Colors DS version.

TSS – Who is the music composer this time?

Iizuka – Tomoya Ohtani. He did the music for Sonic Unleashed.

TSS – We know you can use gadgets in the game to help Sonic. Are these Eggman’s gadgets or Tails?

Iizuka – Tails.

TSS – Was the unreleased Sonic X-Treme any influence on this game?

Iizuka – No. Not at all. Actually, the developers of this game don’t know about Sonic X-Treme so it’s all new.

TSS – What was the reason for going with more simple and whimsical visuals?

Iizuka – Basically, so Sonic Generations and Unleashed was very beautiful with detailed HD graphics. It was great, but it had disadvantages as well. The rings and enemies can be hard to see at times and could merge with the background a little. Also, since the visuals were so heavy, we were pretty much locked at 30 FPS. So this new style makes things pop visually, things such as rings and enemies are more more easier to track and gives us 60 fps and a lot more freedom in development on how we build the stages.

TSS – Can you give us more details on the Deadly Six?

Iizuka – Deadly Six are a new set of creatures never encountered before called “Zeti”. They live in a unexplored area of Sonic’s world “Lost Hex” and Eggman is trying to force them to work with him and he loses control of them and he has to team up with Sonic to try and take them out.

TSS – What was the reason for going exclusively with Nintendo on these three upcoming Sonic games?

Iizuka – When we were first developing Sonic Lost World, the Wii U was not even announced yet and we were developing it on PC. So, the Wii U was the right choice for a couple of reasons. First of all, the second screen gave us extra options and advantages also, we think the Wii U is where fans of action platform games are going to. Plus we’ve had much success with Nintendo in the past.

TSS – Can the game be played on the Pro controller or gamepad only?

Iizuka – Single player is gamepad only. With two players, you can be on the pro controller while the other is on the gamepad

TSS – What makes this game so unique compared to other Sonic games?

Iizuka – Probably the easiest thing is the different geometries as you can see. It’s tube shapes and other style of geometry. It’s not just a series of tubes (laughs). Another cool thing the graphics style allows us to do is the each stage has a very unique style and aesthetic to it. Each stage has it’s own visual style so there’s a lot more to it.

TSS – Many on the internet have been comparing the game to Mario Galaxy. Do you feel the comparison is apt, or what do you feel sets this game apart from it?

Iizuka – Basically, because we have these geometries with their own gravity you hop to, you can kinda see the comparison there, but if you play the game on the show floor I think you’ll see the biggest difference is that it still feels and moves like a Sonic game.

TSS – Can you tell us anything about the new Wisp powers?

Iizuka – As you’ve probably seen, the WiiU version has the Lazer power in the demo and the 3DS version has the new asteroid power and the drill power you’ve seen in the original version. Other than that we are not talking about new powers at this time, but we will in the near future.

TSS – What kind of unlockables does collecting Red Rings and freeing animals give you?

Iizuka – (Laughs) That would be telling. We’ll be talking about that more in the future, but one thing we can say is that rescuing the animals will have a positive impact on your game. Just to be clear it’s not just the animals in the cages there will be some hidden in the stages you can free as well. The more you free, the better the impact will be later in the game.

TSS – Sonic Lost World represent s pretty big departure from recent Sonic tiles. What made you decide to change the formula up so drastically?

Iizuka – Basically, we were proud of our accomplishments on Unleashed, Colors and Generations. But we felt we explored that style of gameplay quite a bit and didn’t want too keep playing in that same space. The developers wanted to explore new styles of gameplay and part of the goal there was to make pure platform action a bigger part of the experience this time. Unleashed through Generations, we are proud of them but focus was pretty much on speed and platforming would happen from time to time, but the developers wanted to make it more of a traditional platformer. Not that we want to lose the speed. That’s why there’s still plenty of running and such. It’s still a Sonic game, but we want you to have more control over the speed this time around.

TSS – Thank you so much for your time.

Iizuka – Thank you.

Sonic Lost World will be available later this fall.