As SEGA recently announced the release of sonic colors ultimatea remastering of one of the mascot’s most popular games for several platforms, nothing fairer than remembering a little about its original launch in 2010 for the Nintendo Wii.
After the release of Sonic Unleashed in 2008, SEGA’s superiors decided to put Sonic series veteran Takashi Iizuka in charge of producer. Iizuka had extensive experience with the mascot games, starting his career with Sonic 3 on the Mega Drive creating the level design, directing both Sonic Adventure and Heroes games, and being involved with several spin-offs.
Iizuka wanted to celebrate his return by creating a game that would celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary, reimagining the main stages of the games in HD, being the project that became the Sonic Generations. As the Wii didn’t have that graphic capability, he decided to create an unprecedented adventure to compensate for the nintendists, thus emerging the “embryo” of what came to be Colors. Therefore, even though Generations was released a year later, its production started earlier.
The producer came up with the idea of Wisps, which are the ETs that give the bluebird new abilities as a counterpoint to the werewolf from Sonic Unleashed, which was produced by someone else. For him, it was important to bring news to the series, but that kept the fast spirit that the bluebird was made to be since the Mega Drive era. With that, the Wisps gave new gameplay possibilities, but without losing the “Sonic spirit”. Because it was so successful, they returned in later games, even though they are no longer part of the story.
In addition, another point that drew attention at the time is that the game uses the gameplay “boost” from the HD version of Sonic Unleashed and, for that, they created an unprecedented engine “from scratch” just for this game.
And it also marked a new moment in the Sonic series in which the story becomes very simple and boils down to just defeating the enemy. Dr Eggman and “saving the world”, with funny and silly dialogues, being very easy to understand. This point divided opinions from those who liked a more elaborate plot, one of the few things criticized for the game.
Sonic Colors it was the farewell to the bluebird on the (already old) BigN console and has all the basic elements that make the mascot a success. Run and jump, beautiful visuals, great soundtrack, and the eternal fight against Dr.Eggman.
