Well, my memories are a bit fuzzy, but I’m going to do my best to remember those days.Īt the time, the Mega Drive sound chip only allowed for six FM channels (one of which could be switched to PCM), one PSG3 channel, and one noise channel, so switching from that to the Mega CD, which could use CD-DA, really broadened the horizons of what was possible for us as sound creators. According to Ohshima, the final images, composed by Kazuyuki Hoshino, were not rendered using authentic CG technology and were instead manually drawn to mimic the CG of the era. Drawn by Naoto Ohshima, a concept sketch that served as the basis for the famous key poses used on Sonic CD’s Japanese & PAL-region box art and other promotional images. In any event, it became a big part of Metal Sonic’s overall design. I imagined it having so much force, that only a super high-tech computer would be able to properly control it. The way a drag racer emits a huge cloud of smoke when it dashes off the starting line-with that picture in my mind, I created this huge booster engine for Metal Sonic’s back. Metal Sonic is a robot, so there were a lot of possibilities, but if it’s pure speed we’re talking about… yes-a jet engine! That has to be it, I thought. I thought it would be a little boring if they just raced against each other with the same exact abilities, so I searched and searched for some kind of alternative movement for Metal Sonic, drawing lots of sketches in the process. This was something I thought about later when I designed Shadow the Hedgehog, too, but seeing as Metal Sonic was a rival character to Sonic, I knew the best way to show that off would be with an in-game scene where Sonic and Metal Sonic directly compete with each other-and I designed Metal Sonic with that scene in mind. Metal naturally fit into our key visual concept for Sonic CD as well, and from the first moment that I imagined his red iris set against the darkness of his black eyes, I knew he would become a character with real, lasting appeal.Īs a result, Metal Sonic continues to appear in the newer Sonic games, and many people in Europe and America enjoy drawing fan art of him, for which I’m very grateful. When I first heard the words “Sonic’s Arch-rival” and “Sonic’s Doppelganger” in the design notes, an image for that character’s design immediately came to me, in almost complete form. As mentioned, Sonic’s 3D sprite in the intro was based on these 3D sculptures crafted by Taku Makino. Sonic CD’s title screen, as seen in the 2011 port. I think it was a success, in the way it clearly felt different from the previous Sonic games. To provide contrast and highlight Sonic himself, we made the emblem behind him look metallic, to provide an overall impression of “CG”. To create that image of Sonic turning to face you, we used a polaroid camera to take pictures of a Sonic figurine, scanned them, and used that as our base to create the animation. At the time, “CG” meant sparkling, sheen metallic surfaces that immediately jumped out at you and yelled, “THIS IS CG!”, and frankly, I thought that aesthetic was the height of cool.Īs Ohshima and I gathered up more and more CG reference materials, our excitement grew, manifesting in that title screen for Sonic CD-our first foray. Of course, the computing power and hardware of that era was pretty paltry compared with today, so we were never going to be able to create something that matched those ambitions, nor was anyone expecting that from us. There was a strategic side to it, too: this game would be for the brand new Mega CD, so we wanted to include new ideas distinct from the previous Sonic games. “whoa…! amazing, so this is a computer?!”-yeah, I was pretty green, and I had stars in my eyes for anything “high tech”. When I joined Sega, it was my first chance to work with a Mac. In terms of the graphics, our biggest theme for Sonic CD was “CG”.
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