Sonic Mania Changed Sega’s Approach to Indie Developers

Takashi Iizuka explains how working on Sonic Mania with indie developers led to the birth of the new indie collaboration, Sonic Pico Park.

Sonic the Hedgehog is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. The only brand-new game announced thus far as part of the celebration is the indie game Sonic Pico Park. The title is exactly what it sounds like, a new take on Pico Park featuring Sonic characters. Now, Iizuka is reflecting on the benefits of working with indie developers and why he felt the franchise could use a game like Pico Park.

Speaking with VGC, Iizuka admitted that working on Sonic Mania with Christian Whitehead exposed him to the positives of smaller development teams. He also says this experience was helpful in green-lighting the Pico Park project. Also, he said that while the Sonic franchise has many single-player experiences, it lacks that cornerstone multiplayer experience where multiple players can yell at the screen and enjoy their time together.

“I was a little bit nervous, but then when I started really thinking about it, all of our Sonic games are standalone single-player games,” he says. “We don’t have those games where four people or five people or eight people are screaming and yelling at each other, playing together, in one screen experience.”

Reflecting on the Sonic Mania experience, he says that he sees the same level of passion coming from the Pico Park team as he did from those who helped make Sonic’s 2017 return to 2D gaming.

“We felt that same passion coming from the Pico Park team, being able to make something that maybe we inside of Sega wouldn’t make. They’re bringing this new, fresh idea to the IP into the franchise, so I thought of it as a new challenge, something that’s going to be really fun.”

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