Sonic Team studio head Takashi Iizuka wants to make a Sonic the Hedgehog role-playing game “at some point” before he retires from Sega.
In an interview with Good Vibes Gaming, Iizuka was asked if he would work on a Sonic RPG in the future, and said he was interested in doing so and shocked Sonic Team had yet to do it.
“Personally, I really like role-playing games,” Iizuka 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?!'”
Iizuka said he would “hopefully” get to work on a Sonic RPG before he retires from Sega, but made clear there was nothing “concrete” at this time. “So, I’d like to hopefully work on a Sonic RPG at some point before I retire from Sega,” he said. “But you know, that’s just a dream right now. There are no concrete plans at this point.”
The only Sonic RPG released so far was Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, a 2008 Nintendo DS game. However, Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer Bioware worked on the project and not Sonic Team.
In our review of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, IGN wrote: “There’s fun to be had, and the game does pick up after the first few hours, but we’d be surprised to see many DS gamers get behind Dark Brotherhood while there are so many superior role-playing games on the platform. There’s a good design in here somewhere; it’s just lost in the shuffle of it all.”
The closest that Sonic Team got to incorporating RPG-esque elements in a Sonic game was the blue hedgehog’s first 3D game, Sonic Adventure, which implemented some RPG elements. In a cut commentary for Sonic Adventure DX, Iizuka explained that after work on NiGHTs into Dreams, he approached Naka, proposing that Sonic Adventure should be an RPG-style game.
Despite Sonic Team not making a Sonic RPG, the development studio has worked on role-playing games including the aforementioned Nights into Dreams and the Phantasy Star Online series.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
