Sonic Team has worked on a lot of Sonic games. I mean, while they do make other games, the collection of talented SEGA devs has been formed largely to handle the future of everyone’s favourite talking, speeding hedgehog, but what game was the best to develop? According to Sonic Team lead producer Takahashi Iizuka, Sonic Adventure 2 holds that title.
Created with a significantly smaller team of developers and released just three years after the original, Sonic Adventure 2 has often been labelled the best 3D Sonic game of all time. After the first game, Sonic Team was largely downsized and moved to San Francisco, but Iizuka explains that this made development nicer instead of scarier.
“I have fond memories of all of them, but if I had to pick one, it would be Sonic Adventure 2 from 2001,” the producer told Japanese outlet Famitsu magazine and translated via Genki. “After finishing the previous game, Sonic Adventure, I took the staff with me to San Francisco to work on this game. While the previous project was a large-scale project involving over 100 people, development on Sonic Adventure 2 started with just 11 people.”
Going from 100 developers to just 11 developers is an incredibly scary prospect for any project. Despite the severe cut in staff and being shifted to the other half of the world, Iizuka loved working on Sonic Adventure 2.
“Just hearing this might make it sound like it was a tough development environment, but since we were a small team in a new location, I remember that we were all able to work together freely and enjoy the development while supporting each another both professionally and personally,” the Sonic Team lead explained.
As far as Sonic the Hedgehog games go, the second Adventure game certainly has the strongest story. In fact, the game served as the basis for the movie adaptation Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which excited the producer. “I was also really delighted that the story was adopted for the third movie,” he said.
It’s been 25-years since the release of Sonic Adventure 2, and it’s rightfully still held up as the pinnacle of the series’ 3D entries. Right now, fans are still waiting for a new 3D Sonic game—and we’re always looking for a third Adventure game—but SEGA has not confirmed what its next Sonic title is at the time of writing.
