Sonic Mania was a hit for the indie developers behind the project which included Christian Whitehead, Stealth from Headcannon and PagodaWest Games. It made a lot of older fans come back to the Sonic the Hedgehog brand with delight and soon we will be getting Sonic Mania Plus with added Ray and Mighty.
One thing a lot of hardcore fans want to know, will we see a sequel to Sonic Mania?
“Maybe the next one will be Sonic Mania’ (Dash) then [laughs]. Jokes aside, with the release of the physical version in Sonic Mania Plus, it feels like we did everything we could for the Sonic Mania project.” – Takashi Iizuka
You can check out the fully translated Famitsu interview over at Siliconera, where he even talks about how Ray and Mighty are ‘sealed’ characters that where never mean’t to be in a future game. Interesting?
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Iizuka is unbelievably toxic and should have been gone a long time ago. It’s dumbfounding to me that anyone is still being paid to listen to him within Sega.
I haven’t been keeping up with the studio politics, please elaborate!
Other than hipsters, who cares about Mighty and Ray anyway? I’m cool with them being in Mania Plus, but I wouldn’t want them to become recurrent characters.
Unless you were referring to his reply to the question regarding a possible Mania sequel, in which case disregard my comment.
I know. Why is Iizuka afraid to make a sequel to a game everyone likes that sold like crazy? Christian Whitehead wanted to make it with all new zones and since Iizuka limited him to just 4 with the rest being rehashed zones. If that’s the case, Whitehead has more ideas he hasn’t used yet. 😀 Enough to fill another game practically! Iizuka might just be jealous, because he still thinks Forces is a good game. Or maybe it’s Sega giving us the usual BS to sell us another unfinished mess. I’m sure they are aware of Force’s flaws. Makes me wonder what japan actually thinks of modern Sonic compared to Mania. Man what i wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall at Sega of Japan and get the real sales figures…
I interpreted Iizuka’s statement to mean “Yes, this Sonic Mania side-project has been cute, but there’s nowhere else we can go with it from here”. I don’t know about the internal politics surrounding the situation, I just think that his combination of consistently bad ideas, bad execution, bad judgment, and what comes across – at least in translation – as arrogance makes him seem pretty toxic to the franchise as a whole, and I don’t know what Sega thinks he offers them at this point.
I think maybe he was okay as an employee working under Naka, Ohshima, and Yasuhara, with the Sega Technical Institute team offering support and all that, but as the head of a studio he’s been awful and his track record reflects that.
Sonic Mania Plus is gonna be like… PERFECT!!!
Only if it addresses the original’s flaws and bugs. Otherwise it will be fantastic but by no means perfect.
Wishful thinking, but maybe what he means by “Jokes aside, with the release of the physical version in Sonic Mania Plus, it feels like we did everything we could for the Sonic Mania project,” what he really means to say is that Sega of Japan will mind their own business and let the actual Mania team do whatever they want for a sequel instead of mandating specific inclusions.
Frankly, I’d lose what faith I have left in Sega if they decided to let some fans “do whatever they want” with the company’s biggest franchise.
Ok, but it’s not really just “some fans”, they were employed by sega to make a sonic game.
Eiji Aonuma was a fan of Zelda growing up so I suppose breath of the wild is just a fan game.
Robbie Robbie Robbie why u so negative? lol.
Reminds me of “sonic forces won’t be sonic generations 2″… Then it was sonic generations 1,5.
The phrasing is vague and obscure. But if indeed it means what it means, that is really sad. I thought they were already deep into production of Mania 2.