GameSpy: Sega's Yuji Naka Talks! - Page 4
Interviews
GameSpy: We noticed that Sega has become personal sponsor of Hayanari Shimoda who had a great victory in Francorchamps with the Zytek racing team in the Le Mans endurance series. We also know you are into racing cars yourself. Have you ever raced against Shimoda? Also, have you ever considered making a racing game?
Naka I've seen him on TV, but I really don't know much about him, except that Sega is one of his sponsors. As for doing a racing game, I've given some thought from time to time, but I've never committed myself to it. At this rate, I doubt it'll happen anytime soon. But I have been finding endurance racing interesting lately. I hope that sometime in the near future I'll have a chance to participate in one of the 24-hour races. Sprint racing is nice, too, but endurance. It's really a test of one's strength ... ah, it'd be wonderful if I could participate. I just love racing so much.
GameSpy: Nowadays we're seeing more and more games that aren't really "games" in the traditional sense sell in huge numbers. Recent examples are the Sims 2 and Nintendogs. Do you think the market's tastes are shifting in this direction, and if so, why?
Naka I think it's just another market shift that comes from time to time. That's the sort of thing a lot of people are interested in playing nowadays. I've seen the market change a lot in this fashion throughout the industry's history. Back in the mid- to late-eighties, horizontal shooters were extremely popular, and now they're pretty much dead. After that came the rise of "mascot platformers." Today, about the only big ones still out there are Mario and Sonic.Whenever you have a new genre or subgenre come along, everyone likes to hop on the bandwagon. So I guess those sort of titles are just what's "in" right now. I think of Feel the Magic and its sequel as being a bit of an ambiguous genre title as well. I can understand why people are jumping on this new stuff. I mean, a lot of people have been playing RPGs, shooters, etcetera for almost twenty years now! When those sort of games start to become stale, they'll naturally turn towards the fresh and interesting new stuff.
GameSpy: You participated in Mario's 20th birthday celebration. Sega and Nintendo haven't always been so friendly, in fact, many people once perceived Sonic and Mario as enemies. How did you and the staff at Sega perceive the Mario games when Nintendo was a direct competitor: as something to admire, as something to beat, as inspiration, or something else entirely?
Naka I will go on the record here and state that we at Sega have always had nothing but the utmost respect for Nintendo and the Mario games. Even when they were our direct competitor in the hardware arena, we have viewed the games as a watermark of quality for us to strive towards. It is a pleasure and an honor for us to work with Nintendo as a third party today.
GameSpy: You drive Ferraris, so does Nago-san and a few others here. Why do you think so many people at Sega have Ferraris?
Naka Ferraris are the best cars out there, period! They're so special that not even everyone who wants one can get one. The design is amazing, the styling is amazing... it's all amazing.
GameSpy: OK, off topic, but this came to mind when we were talking about the Hidden Palace Zone ... there are entire fansites out there devoted to hacking Sonic games and finding all the things Sonic Team was working on, but never used in the finished product. What do you think of this?
Naka Wow, people do that? I didn't know. I guess I am pretty surprised at the level of dedication of fans on the Internet. But how do I say this ... there is a bit of a problem. I mean, I am glad that people really, really like the games, but if it gets to the point where they are engaging in activities that can hurt us or Sega in some way, that's not good at all. Like, way back when we had a beta ROM of Sonic 2 that was stolen by someone. That one even had the Hidden Palace in it.
GameSpy: There's actually a beta ROM with the Hidden Palace code that's been floating around the Internet for a while.
Naka What? You're kidding! Tell me more. I'd really like to get that back. *laugh* I guess we know what happened to that now... You see, back in mid-1992 we had taken a demonstration cartridge to a toy show in New York. It wound up being stolen, and although we searched and searched all over, it was never found. So that's probably where the data comes from. What's the Hidden Palace in this one like?
GameSpy: There's stuff in the stage, but it's impossible to play past a certain point.
Naka Yep, that sounds exactly like what we lost!
GameSpy: Was the Hidden Palace meant to be "hidden," then?
Naka Actually, no, the basic idea was about the same as it was in Sonic and Knuckles. You'd encounter the stage through normal play by collecting the emeralds. The idea behind the stage was, "Where do the Chaos Emeralds come from?" That's where Sonic was originally supposed to be granted his Super Sonic powers. We finally were able to use it in S&K, though it wound up being quite different from what we had planned in Sonic 2. But even from Sonic 1 we'd been throwing around those sorts of ideas. Still, when we were running out of time, we looked over things quickly trying to figure out what to dump ... and CHOP went the Hidden Palace. There's simply no way we could have thrown that in by the deadline at the rate we were going.It's the same deal with Sonic 3... Sonic 3 is literally half a game. Sega management back then wanted the game out at a certain time and we only had half the stages done, so we had to put the leftovers into Sonic and Knuckles. So when you bought S&K and attached it to Sonic 3, you got the whole of what Sonic 3 was planned to have been.