Some more archive SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis era material has come to light today, courtesy of former SEGA Technical Institute artist Craig Stitt. The latest drop comes in the form of some awesome original Sonic the Hedgehog 2 artwork, drawn by the creator of Miles ‘Tails’ Prower, Yasushi Yamaguchi.
Stitt shared an entire gallery’s worth of sketches and character designs on the SEGA Retro Gamers Facebook group, explaining that the images are photocopies made back during the development of Sonic 2 on Mega Drive. Stitt kept them as references for the level and environment designs he was working on (Hidden Palace and Oil Ocean) so that anything he created would “stay in sync with the game’s [overall art] style”.
Many of these pieces will be familiar to old-school Sonic fans. Some of the badnik profile drawings can be found in the instruction manual for the Mega Drive/Genesis version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, for example. But there’s plenty of unseen material here too – such as the super-detailed Mecha Sonic piece or the Death Egg Robot. And there’s a whole bunch of Sonic and Tails character artworks that may just inspire your next piece of fan art too.
This is just the latest archive material to surface from Stitt, after the veteran developer hit the Sonic community last month to reveal details of a long-lost Tails spinoff that never made it to retail, as well as a pitch for a robot character that was intended to be part of the Sonic universe (that reused Hidden Palace assets to boot).
There’s too many to go through piece by piece, so sift through the entire gallery below.
That third drawing from the top left, where sonic is standing without smiling, is the exact same art as a sonic air freshener I bought from gamestop which is still in my car today.
https://pm1.narvii.com/6463/db71fb1f3588b46224944fe4657950b19b00f0d0_hq.jpg
I had that same air freshner for years, it even bleached out on one side, been looking for another one but no luck
That’s really cool!!
Thanks for the mention of our SEGA Retro Gamers retrogaming group on Facebook; we have the largest crowd from Sega America that are part of our group. From Mr. Al Nilsen, game developpers, graphic artists to employees who were all part of Sega during the ’90s. We also have many other retrogaming community groups: http://www.retrogamershub.com
that first one in the gallery is used in the sonic 2 mobile version
Welp looks like I have a job to do *time to color them*