Former SEGA devs look back in the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Many people believe Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the best installment in the franchise. I happen to think the third game is the best, but I still love the second! Turns out the dev team has fond members of the game as well. Game Informer sat down with some of the people who helped bring the game to life in order to revisit the development days.

Yuji Naka

"The development team moved to San Francisco when developing Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and we were able to recognize the great [power] of our title in the U.S. and hear opinions from children. I think it was good influence for the development team."

Al Nilsen, former director of marketing at Sega of America

"The thing about sequels - whether it's a book, a movie, or video game - is that sequels don't always deliver and in a lot of cases they suck. What stayed the same was Sonic's pursuit to speed. In Sonic The Hedgehog 2, we lifted up the limit of speed from the previous title. I think this proved our passion for speed. This game also had a 2P mode that we tried to install in Sonic The Hedgehog at the later phase of development. I'm very glad that we continued this and achieved it in the sequel."

Former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske

"The game probably could have been three times the size if we left in everything that was there. Naka and team really did a phenomenal job of editing what was going to be in the game, and weren't afraid to say, 'I've been working on this for four months, it's not working. Let's take it out.' [In] a lot of games, that isn't going to happen. It was just a great management of the project."