Sonic, SEGA’s mascot when the company was still producing gaming hardware is know for games that feature - along with a swift pace - bright and colourful landscapes. It’s also known for having some really awful modern games.
While fans mourn the long, slow demise of their beloved blue hedgehog there’s one thing they should be glad for; even though they’ve had to witness the anthropomorphic hedgehog making out with a human, they’ll never have to endure a photorealistic Sonic game.
"I don’t think Sonic will ever become photo-real," designer Takashi Iizuka told Eurogamer in an interview. "I think Sonic will always remain stylized and will have that bright, colorful world. What the high hardware spec will allow us to do is make that more convincing.
"For example, for Sonic Generations, in the Hedgehog Engine, we used Global Illumination – GI technology – for the lighting system. But increasing the hardware spec will allow us to have real-time lighting calculations, so dynamically changing lighting happening. That’s just one example of where the hardware is limiting us in doing what we really could do. So by having higher end hardware spec, we’ll be able to do, for example, the real-time lighting calculations. That will give more presence to Sonic.
"We’re not after realism. We’re after making it more convincing. So we’re still going for that stylized, bright and colorful Sonic look. We’re not going for photo-real."
That’s cool – but all the fancy new hardware in the world can’t make a Sonic game any good. You know, I used to punch kids who said sonic was cooler than Mario in the face…and that’s why I had to stop being a teacher.
Last Updated: March 16, 2012
