For those of us who grew up during the early nineties, this news might still be something of a shock. The man who acted as game director and did much of the level design on the original (best) Sonic game, Hirokazu Yasuhara, has joined up with Nintendo Software Technology.
My inner Mega Drive fanboy is reeling at this. I had stand up rows with lifelong friends about how much better this man’s levels were than those stupid cartoony Mario levels. And now he works for the agile plumber’s creators! Nintendo Software Technology is an American-based second party developer only partially owned byt the Japanese giant. They generally assist other studios publishing on Nintendo platforms but they have been responsible for some of their own releases, most notably Mario vs Donkey Kong: Mini Land Mayhem.
Yasuhara was with Sega from 1988 until around 2000 and has worked at various studios since, including a stint working on the Uncharted series with Naughty Dog. His latest gig was at Namco Bandai.
Source: Gamasutra
nofi
Sonic’s rubbish, Mario’s awesome. Simple.
Eldave0
+1, could never get on with Sonic games whereas Mario ones are consistently excellent
nofi
colossalblue
See? Sonic looks /fabulous/.
Kivi95
The old Sonic games where better then Mario. THE TRUTH!
nofi
They really, really weren’t. :p
KeRaSh
Rayman Origins > SMB3 > Sonic 1
Deal with it. :P
nofi
“Rayman Origins > SMB3 > Sonic 1”
Agreed.
Eldave0
Yup, agreed. Origins is awesome.
aerobes
I loathe Origins. Broken game.
mugsybalone
Oh Aerobes. You’re my favourite.
mugsybalone
On the plus side, at least you’ll be able to knock out the first few levels of the next Mario games in 30 seconds without really knowing what’s happening.
aerobes
It’s like a night on the sauce. Hours pass like minutes, you think you had a good time and everyone else tells you how awesome it was even though have no idea what happened.