Original Sonic Boom Character Designs Much More Extreme

Sonic Boom, developer Big Red Button’s fresh take on Sega’s classic franchise, is a little out there compared to past iterations of the Blue Bomber. The game’s characters – especially the beefy Knuckles – have been given a makeover that not all fans are getting behind, but Big Red Button’s Bob Rafei recently told GameSpot that the other designs his team was looking at were much more extreme than the final product.

"We went pretty wide with the designs at first, and by going too wide, we lost some of the spirit of the character and had to rein it in," Rafei said. "Sonic Team and Sega were very open-minded about our approach, and accepting of a lot of things we were doing. Ultimately, because of some of our really wacky ideas, we did find the boundaries of things we could and couldn't do.

"We experimented with different colors and surface features on the characters, such as fur or scales, and quickly Sonic Team came back with their discomfort of that. They were great guardrails for us to understand when we were deviating too far from the character. Without their input, the character would have been a lot more alien and different from what Sonic is known for."

Takashi Iizuka, the current head of Sega's Sonic Team in Japan, came down to see the progress of the game from time to time. As you’d guess, he didn’t always share Big Red Button’s vision.

"Early on, when we had our first review of all the crazy things we wanted to try, Iizuka-san came down to Los Angeles and looked through all the different concepts,” he explained. "I felt sorry for the guy because sometimes he couldn't actually look at the screen–it was too traumatic seeing all the crazy stuff we wanted to do. Over the course of that meeting, when we were coming up with new ideas, we had a very sincere–just two adults talking–conversation about why a character should or should not wear pants, and that was a very surreal moment in my life and my career.”

Sonic Boom is expected to launch on the Wii U and 3DS, with other platforms possible down the line.