Following on from our news report on the 18th March, the UK Nintendo Official Magazine that promises a full interview with Yuji Naka has been obtained since the magazine’s release in 14th February.
TSS and SONIC NEWS has had the magazine and full interview for a month or so now, but discussion has so far been limited to the SSMB Forums on this issue.
The interview is based mostly around the release of the new Sonic Team game, Feel the Magic XY/XX (Project Rub in Europe). There are also questions expanding on Sonic DS, more on Naka-san’s meetings with Shigeru Miyamoto, and a small tidbit on NiGHTS and Burning Rangers. The latter part of the interview sparked massive false rumours last month, particularly on GameSpot Communities, about a NiGHTS 2 and Burning Rangers 2 being developed.
We can reveal, with somewhat more common sense, that this is not the case. At least until it has been confirmed by Sonic Team or Yuji Naka – hypothetical conjecture by Naka-san proves that sequels are not being developed.
Here are some tidbits from the interview below.
You can view the scans of the pages here for yourselves.
NOM: Project Rub really demonstrates the innovative capabilities of the [Nintendo] DS…
YN: Yeah, it’s a launch title, so we intended to create something you want to show people. If we had made a Sonic game it would have been nice, but you wouldn’t have said: “Look, look – it’s Sonic running!”. With ‘Rub you just want to shout about what it can do.NOM: Can we expect to see Sonic on DS any time soon?
YN: Yes. We are at this moment working on a Sonic title for the DS. But because there are lots of things you can do with the DS like 3D, two-screen games and so on, it will take a bit of time.NOM: [Is the new Sonic DS game] related to the Sonic touch screen demo… or is that demo a seperate project?
YN: Yes, they are related.NOM: So it expands on what we saw at E3 last year…
YN: It doesn’t expand from the demo. More like the demo is just one aspect of it.NOM: Nintendo has had Mario racing… playing tennis… now baseball… [will we] see Sonic broadening his horizons on Nintendo in the future?
YN: Sonic mostly runs, but it’s not intentional that he has not done many different types of games. That’s just the way it has happened. But there are mobile phone games with Sonic playing tennis and soccer and stuff, so it is possible.NOM: Could [Mario and Sonic] ever be in a game together?
YN: There is a possibility because when I speak to Shigeru Miyamoto, we often toy with the idea. We always say it would be cool, but because of development timing it’s never actually happened. But yeah, it’s very possible. When the time comes…NOM: Have you had any early ideas on how it might be done? Maybe in a racing game, or Sonic being in the next Smash Bros.?
YN: Imagine Sonic in Mario Kart. Obviously Sonic wouldn’t need a kart because he’s so fast he could just run [laughs]. In that sense, you can imagine how hard it would be to fit them in a game together… We’d have to REALLY think about how we’d put them together otherwise these two characters would completely destroy the game. So when Miyamoto-san and I speak about it, we usually decide that seperate games are better. And that’s mainly why we’ve never gone ahead and made the game… [If it happened] they should really both have starring roles, like a Mario vs Sonic or something… [Having them as allies] would be alright, but I’ve always imagined a game of rivalry… like Alien vs Predator [laughs].
Yuji Naka also details the next Sonic game (the next canon, Sonic Team Japan developed Sonic game that is) and Sonic DS will be showcased in playable form at this year’s E3 event in May. He comments on how much pressure he is to make a sequel to NiGHTS, but states that IF he were to make such a project, it would take a lot of time to get it to the standard he would want it.
View the scans for much more informaton.