Interview with Satoshi Yokokawa: New Sonic 3 and Mecha Sonic Mk. II info revealed

Sega Retro interviewer Ashley Rojas has published an in-depth interview with Satoshi Yokokawa, the Sonic Team artist behind Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles‘ enemies and bosses. The interview follows Yokokawa from his 1991 hiring at Sega CS1, where his first project was the Toshokan title 16t, to his transfer to the Sega Technical Institute in California for the development of Sonic 3. Yokokawa explains the thinking behind the game’s distinctive enemy designs and reveals the inspirations behind Mecha Sonic Mk. II‘s character designs. The interview goes on to cover his transition to 3D on Saturn titles like World Advanced Daisenryaku, the Gigas bosses of Eternal Arcadia, and his freelance work with Treasure on games including Astro Boy: Omega Factor, Gunstar Super Heroes, and Bangai-O Spirits.

IDW artists Nathalie Fourdraine and Mauro Fonseca, some of the creatives behind the comic’s Scrapnik Island special and the most current Sega artists to have officially reinterpreted the character, also join in with questions of their own.

Read the interview on Sega Retro

Back when I was working in Japan, there were several times when I stayed out drinking late with colleagues, missed the last train, and went home by taxi. The late-night scenery of the coastal industrial zone I’d see from the bayside road on those occasions became, as I recall, the image source for Chrome Gadget. Truss structures and clusters of pipes lit by countless lights, the silhouettes of factory districts emerging in the moonlight, the aircraft warning lights blinking atop the factories – I picked up the elements that had left an impression on me at the time and pulled the design together by combining them.