“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” – Shigeru Miyamoto
“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” These words from Shigeru Miyamoto perfectly summarizes what Sega has failed to follow since the beginning of the Sonic franchise. Time and time again, Sega has rushed the development of Sonic games and created games like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Sonic Forces (more on that one later).
In the first Sonic game, the Final Zone was meant to be an Act 3 of the Scrap Brain Zone instead of Labyrinth Zone: The Sequel.
Sonic 2 is a perfect example of wasted potential. The game was planned to have time travel (probably where Sonic CD came from) and a few new zones like the Wood Zone, Hidden Palace Zone (which was actually gonna be a place where you go to after collecting the Chaos Emeralds), and a desert-themed zone.
So where am I going with this? Well, in the first episode of season four for the Sonic Official, Aaron Webber, a social media coordinator at Sega of America, said that “Back in the day, it used to be like every year there was a new Sonic game. And as a result of that, there were a number of times when kind of because of that rushed production schedule the quality of the games wouldn’t quite be where they needed to be. And so, a couple of years ago we actually said, ‘Hey, that’s gonna change going forward. We’re gonna put probably more time into things as we go forward.’”
This leads to the Eggman in the room, Sonic Forces. Many would argue that the game took four years to make the game and yet it still ended up mediocre. Here’s the thing, the game was indeed rushed. Most of the development was spent on working on the new Hedgehog engine. In reality, Forces only took one year to develop.
But how do we know for sure that Sega is honest about this? After all, they admitted back in 2015 that they betrayed their fans and wanted to bring back their trust and look what ended up with that. Well, it’s already been two full years since the release of Forces. I don’t know if Sonic Team is working on something along with this next Sonic game but it’s definitely not another engine.
To conclude, has Sega finally learned its lesson? We don’t know for sure, but, unless the Sonic Team has not been working on the next main entry to the franchise since the release of Forces, it is starting to seem like that. Only time will tell.