years

Sonic the Hedgehog has been on a redemption arc.

It might not feel like the blue blur has ever really left us – and that’s because he hasn’t – but sometimes you need to reach the summit to survey that which has come before. It’s only when we consider Sonic’s current position when directly compared to years prior that the disastrous depths the world’s favorite hedgehog plunged becomes truly clear.

Sega knows it, too. For Takashi Iizuka, the Sonic series producer who first worked on the franchise just two years into his career, fresh out of university, he naturally ties the memories – and comparisons – to different periods of his life.

“Ten years ago, I moved from Tokyo to Burbank. At that time, the Sonic brand was not in a very positive space. A lot of people were bashing on the brand. They really weren’t happy with the things coming out,” Iizuka recalls.

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He’s right, of course. On the timeline he presents, he moved to the states after a bumpy time for Sonic. There was the decent Colors and Generations, yes. But then there was also the diabolical Sonic 4, the middling Lost World, and the infamously broken and unfinished Sonic Boom (which did at least produce a genuinely highly underrated cartoon, but even that struggled to find an audience). Times were rough.

It was in the wake of projects like this that Iizuka made his move. He ended up splitting his time between managing Sonic Team back in Japan and taking care of product development at Sega of America.

“When I moved over from Tokyo to Los Angeles, it was like an ‘oh my god’ moment,” Iizuka admits. “Like, we need to save the brand, or this brand isn’t going to be around for much longer.”

What began was a herculean fight back. The charge was led by a smart decision to pivot to the fans. That gave us Sonic Mania, where Iizuka supervised a team of folk who’d spent decades ripping apart the best Sonic games to reverse engineer them. Mania ended up the highest-scoring non-racing Sonic game in fifteen years.

Then the train kept rolling. Sonic Forces was a little shaky, but it laid groundwork for Sonic Frontiers, a bizarre but nevertheless compelling vision of video game open worlds interpolated through the traditions and tropes of Sonic.

Perhaps the confidence in the franchise is best represented, though, in the release of The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, a free visual novel released on April Fools Day 2023 that is actually, er, really good?! This is the sort of thing a Japanese publisher would never usually greenlight for a beloved cash cow mascot. But Sega is now thinking differently.

Yes, this is a real screen from a real game. | Image credit: Sega / Eurogamer

Then come movies, and Netflix, and even something of a creative renaissance for the long-running Sonic comics with a shift in publisher. In fact, as a British-based website we are contractually bound to note that the only true tragedy remains the continued dormancy of the comic’s excellent UK iteration, which died alongside Sega’s hardware-publishing aspirations.

British woes aside, this is now a sprawling transmedia franchise – and more importantly a critically and creatively successful one – with Iizuka at the heart of it. The thinking is now not just about games, but beyond – which perhaps explains why Sonic Racing Crossworlds is plying crossover shenanigans to let Sonic mix things up with some of the biggest brands in games – and, if leaks are to be believed, outside them.

Sure, Sonic is only the third highest grossing video game movie. But y’know what the second is? Minecraft. There ain’t a Minecraft racing game – but Minecraft stuff is in Sonic Racing Crossworlds. The strategy seems clear. Back in the 90s, Sega used to like to tout the dubious claim that Sonic was more internationally recognizable than Mickey Mouse. Even as a Sonic-obsessed 80s kid, I doubt that was ever true – but in Crossworlds, Sonic can at least have as many famous mates as Mickey.

There are still challenges, of course. At Summer Games Fest, Iizuka is quietly contending with an absolutely enormous leak of pre-release assets from Crossworlds, seemingly revealing unannounced crossovers and DLC plans for the game, which isn’t due out until September.

“This isn’t specifically in regard to Crossworlds,” Iizuka cautions when I ask about leaks. “But when the team is making a game, when I’m making a game, a lot of effort goes not just into the creation of the content – but also effort is made with publishing teams and marketing teams into how we’re going to present the game. There’s tons of planning. There’s tons of ideation on how to best present each title.”

Blue unto others as you’d have them blue unto you. | Image credit: Sega

“When people go online and say things about the game, when they spoil things, or when they give disinformation – it destroys that planning. It ruins a lot of people’s work, people who spend a lot of time setting things up in order to make people excited.

“Also, sometimes there may be deals going on with other partners or other people that fall through because people are out there saying things about a title that maybe are true, maybe are not – but true or not, it’s now associated with the title. So as a creator, I’d appreciate everyone not messing with it, and allowing the professional teams to do their jobs and present the product how they want to.”

I get Iizuka’s point. To be honest, those Crossworlds leaks aren’t the sort of thing we’d print on Eurogamer anyway. For one, it’s a load of copyrighted material that Sega doesn’t want out there, and a legal nightmare. But second, and more importantly, I’m not really convinced that spoiling something that we’re all going to see anyway in a few months is really capital-J journalism. But I do put a theory to Iizuka: that such leaks are in part a sign of Sonic’s revitalization. The Sonic fandom never went away, it’s true – but more people care now than a decade ago, which leads to more rabid fans digging out and sharing whatever information they can find.

In a sense, it all comes back to Sonic being back on track. What a difference a decade makes.

Miku’s joining the party alongside, well… who are we to say? | Image credit: Sega

“When I think about, like, ten years ago, what was happening ten years ago and what’s happening now? I can’t really believe some of the things that have changed,” says Iizuka.

“As a game creator, I was previously inside of Sega, working on games and managing teams, then everything started changing. Now we have Netflix content that’s being created, we have movies that are coming out… Instead of just looking at games, it’s like there’s 150% more stuff coming in.”

Iizuka is a charismatic guy. Like many bilingual developers he takes my questions in English, nodding enthusiastically, and then answers them in his native tongue to ensure clarity and comfort. When he answers about his games, he’s ever diligent and thoughtful – but talking about the success and upheaval of the last few years, even on day two of a presumably brutal gauntlet of media interviews, he beams.

“What I do at work has changed, the people I meet have changed… Even with things like working inside the entertainment industry… y’know, we’re all from the game industry, but now we’re working with movie industry people. They’re a completely different industry in the way that they think, that they act. How they create content is completely different. And then I got to walk on the red carpet for a movie premiere…!

“There’s so many things that are new. Ten years ago, I don’t think any of us could’ve believed this could become the normal reality. Thinking of it now, and us being successful… compared to ten years ago, it is like… 180 degrees. We were fighting to survive. It’s totally different now.”

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