Yojiro Ogawa, in a new review with Gamespot, spills the beans on some of the games status. Though this is his third interview in a week, this is quite possibly his most in-depth interview yet.
First off, it seems that the game hasn’t been in actual development as long as people expected; they only started programing the game last January and only have had a little over a year to work on it. This isn’t exactly bad, though, cause they have actually pushed back the release date a few times to put in everything they wanted to. To make up for lost time, though, they doubled the development team on the game so more people could work on it. One half of the team worked on Adventure Mode (the game’s main mode) and the other half worked on Party Mode (multiplayer minigame mode). this explains why the multiplayer and single player seem like two totally different games.
He also revealed that the games unlockable powers (100 in all) range in three catagories- Speed, Attack, and Special. Speed will allow Sonic to go faster or slow down more effectively, whereas attack will increase the power of attack and the effectiveness of defense. The special one is really hard to explain in words, but you will be able to use the number of rings to do something different or special.
Finally, he reveals there’s 255 unlockables that aren’t powers, which conterdicts the American’s site that states 225. Take notice, though, the America site has been wrong on a few things before, so 255 is a more likely number.
Sonic Stadium will keep you updated on the game!