Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka says Sega was planning to end the Sonic series entirely at one point.
In an interview with One More Game, Iizuka was asked about the history of the series, which turned 35 this year.
“It has been 35 years, which means it has been longer than actually my children, so I look upon this franchise like sort of like my own son,” Iizuka replied.
He then noted that the series has had numerous ups and downs over the years, to the extent that Sega once wanted to draw a line under it and stop making Sonic games altogether.
“There had been good times, and there had been bad times,” he explained. “During the worst times, I was told by the higher-ups that we should cancel the entire franchise. I had to fight within the organization to keep the franchise as long as possible.”
Iizuka said it was the first live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which was released in 2020 and was a major critical and commercial success, which essentially ‘saved’ Sonic and changed Sega’s plans.
“The biggest milestone for me was the first movie,” he said. “That had been a great hit and definitely changed the course of this franchise.”
Shadow was supposed to be killed off years ago but fans kept him alive, Iizuka says
Elsewhere in the interview, Iizuka said that Sega had also planned to kill off the Shadow the Hedgehog character, but his popularity convinced it to change its mind – something that pleased Iizuka personally, because Shadow is his favourite character.
“Now the third movie is out, and the popularity of Shadow has been on the rise,” he said. “Before that, the most popular characters were Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, and it has always been that way. But now, Shadow has been rising up to the same popularity as Sonic.
“And me, personally… [Shadow’s] my favorite character. I want to have more places where Shadow can appeal more. I want to focus on him a little bit more.”
He added: “If you have played Sonic Adventure 2, people may know that Shadow basically sort of died at the end of that game. We were originally intending to just kind of [kill] the character [off], but the character Shadow was just so very popular that we decided to revive him in Sonic Heroes.”
Shadow got a rare starring role in 2024 release Sonic X Shadow Generations, which combined a remaster of Sonic Generations with an entirely new game called Shadow Generations.
