Sonic Mania fans might not be ready for this revelation, coming from no less than Christian Whitehead and Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka.
As reported by Game Informer, we will just go straight to Christian’s words on this topic:
“Sonic Mania 2 was never in development.”
Yep, that’s real. So what’s going on here?
A few months ago, rumor spread that a hypothetical Sonic Mania 2 was cancelled because of a disagreement between Sonic Team and Sonic Mania’s lead developer, Christian Whitehead. In this new Game Informer report, Christian and Takashi definitely debunk this story.
So, what really happened was in the planning for the next Sonic game after Sonic Mania, Sonic Team decided they wanted to move away from recycling sprites and the 2D aesthetic. They wanted to take the gameplay design of Sonic Mania and bring it to a 3D CG style, to make a 2.5 D platformer.
Christian Whitehead and the rest of the Sonic Mania staff were up for it. Around this time, they decide to make their own independent game studio, named Evening Star, and create their own engine for 2.5 D games, called Star Engine.
The game studio Evening Star sent Sega some game proposals and prototypes, and Sega rejected them. And that’s it. Both Takashi and Christian make it clear there are no hard feelings, and the two sides moved on.
As we now know, Sonic Team would give their new 2.5 D Sonic project to Arzest, and it would be introduced to the public as Sonic Superstars. Evening Star, for their part, moved forward with making their own 3D platformer, which we now know as Penny’s Big Breakaway.
For his part, Iizuka wanted to emphasize that in spite of the change in studio, Sonic Superstars was definitely building on Sonic Mania’s success. In particular, Sega recognized the appetite for classic 2D Sonic, and they intend to meet that appetite with Sonic Superstars.
In Iizuka’s words:
“A lot of the things that we talked about with Christian, you know, ‘Let’s make it a visually rich game that’s not based in pixel. Let’s not do the Mania thing of reusing stuff. Let’s make something brand new with all-new levels,’ that’s where the start of the concepting happened after Mania, but everything came to a stop.
When we kicked off Sonic Superstars with Ohshima-san’s team, a lot of the conversations that we had with Christian were already in our heads, and we did start creating a new game already in a similar vein of, ‘Let’s make something new’ and ‘Let’s make something not pixel.'”
“During Sonic Mania’s development, I didn’t expect this level of fan reaction or success. That success created the opportunity to think about the next generation of Classic Sonic and led to Sonic Superstars. Sonic Mania helped us realize that fans still wanted and enjoyed the Classic series.”
So let’s forget about rumors of games that never even got proposed, and stick to the games that we know are on the way.
Sonic Superstars will be releasing on December 2023 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows on Epic Games Store.
Penny’s Big Breakaway will be releasing on 2024 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows on Steam.
