SEGA Talks 3D Sonic the Hedgehog Challenges

In an interview with the team behind 3D Sonic the Hedgehog, the group discuss the difficulties porting the game to 3DS.

Rebuilding the original Genesis/Mega Drive title to the handheld isn't as a straightforward as one might assume, as the original 16 bit console is very different from the more contemporary 3DS design. The team didn't have time to build a "copy by eye" approach and the initial tests caused slowdown, and "didn't feel 3D".

The M2 team then started to apply 3D processing to selected elements of a level by hand, for example adding depth to the cloud, oceans etc and "a lot of things weren't working". The team couldn't simply create two separate screens as there wouldn't be new artwork on the left/right of each of the windows.

Going forward, the team decided to "include depth in rasterized areas" and build a stereoscopic 3D console dubbed "GigaDrive". The background layers were increased from two to four, giving each layer depth info. It meant the project was considered more of a "port" to new hardware, rather than patching up a MegaDrive game. Despite all this though, every stage had to revamped by hand.

For more, be sure to read the full interview.

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