“How have we gotten to 30 years with no RPGs?!”
Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka wants to know why the hell Sonic Team haven’t made their own Sonic The HedgehogRPGyet. He sounds positively hysterical about it, hopping mad, which you know, mate, you’ve been running the show since 2008. You’ve been working on Sonic games since1994. I too yearn to bound through the Star Post portal and into a world where Sonic has to min-max his trainers and do companion quests for Big The Cat. The spinning ball of spines is in your court, Iizuka-san. The people of Mobius are ready. Mario has had that genre all to himself for long enough.
Iizuka made these innocent remarks duringa Good Vibes Gaming interviewat a Sonic x Shadow Generations preview event - this beingthe year of Shadow. They were subsequently pounced upon byEurogamer’s EdNightingale, who notes that Sonic Team have worked on RPGs in the past, such as Phantasy Star Universe, and as such, have no excuses save boring commercial ones.
“Personally, I really like role-playing games,” he said. “The RPG game format is a lot of fun and I’ve even thought to myself you know, for the past 30 years we haven’t done a Sonic RPG. And I’m questioning myself. Why haven’t we done a Sonic RPG in all this time? How have we gotten to 30 years with no RPGs?!”
“So I’d like to hopefully work on a Sonic RPG at some point before I retire from Sega,” Iizuka went on. “But you know, that’s just a dream right now. There are no concrete plans at this point.” Again, Mr Iizuka, I must loom sinisterly and remind you that you are the head of Sonic Team. Make those plans concrete. Yes, I know it’s more complicated than this, I knowSega aren’t in the mood for passion projects at the moment, but come now - the only extant official Sonic RPG isa third-party project for Nintendo DS, which I’m not allowed to write about or Graham will break my knees.
