Translation of Famitsu’s interview with Iizuka-san on Team Sonic Racing at E3 2018!

News from 2018.06.13
Archived on 2018.06.13 on Tumblr

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Original Article 

チームで競う新基軸！ ソニック初の協力型レースゲーム『チームソニックレーシング』のアレコレを、プロデューサー飯塚隆氏に聞く！【E3 2018】 
https://s.famitsu.com/news/201806/13158584.html


Translation (in bullet points):

Team battle as a new standard! Producer Iizuka on Sonic’s first co-op racing game ‘Team Sonic Racing’! [E3 2018] 

 Mixing team elements to lonely racing game!

 - The project started as they talked to SUMO DIGITAL of GB, which produces 'SEGA All Stars Racing’ series, 2 years ago for developing a new game together again.

 - As SUMO is great at making racing games, they decided to take this advantage and make a 'Sonic’-only racing game.

 - This is the first time for a racing game for Sonic to be developed for stationary game consoles. (Sonic Drift from 1994 was for portable Game Gear)

 - Unlike 'SEGA All Stars Racing’ series, which is lead by SEGA of Europe and thus Iizuka-san had only been supervising Sonic part, he takes part to this newcomer to the Sonic series fully.

 - It took time to decide on the game concept, but eventually the idea of adding team co-op element to beat the opponents - similar to that of 'Splatoon’ or 'Overwatch’ - to a racing game was born.

 “In conventional racing games, you don’t cooperate with others and everyone other than the first place will be frustrated. However, with this 'team battle’ element, we think that the game will be fitting to this day and age.”

 - Additionally to the finishing order, total points of the team consisting of 3 players will affect the final ranking. Being the first and doing well as a team are both important factors for evaluation. 

- Co-op elements include for instance slipstreaming behind the top driver of own team for a speed-up, and exchanging items between teammates. Also, accumulating and using the team’s common gauge causes the invincible boost called 'Ultimate Boost’. This can be used by the members individually, but lasts longer when used by all three together. It is visible who is using the boost in-race, so at best synchronize it.

 - Also, teammates communicate during the race by telling their situations such as 'Give me items!’, creating a more realistic atmosphere of fighting together with your team.

 - As for the game style, it is an action racing in which one picks up items on the course to interfere your opponents while dashing on.

 - The game is playable from one person to maximum of 12 person (local: max. 4 person) with different game modes:

• 'Team Adventure Mode’ is so to say the story mode and has a brand new storyline. For this being a racing gamex the story won’t be a complex onex but it must be enjoyable too when playing alone. It will also be a good introduction to players who don’t know Sonic yet. 
• Other modes include 'Grand-prix’, 'Exhibition’, 'Time Trial’ ans more. All modes can be played on- as well as offline. 

 - Including the 6 characters presented at E3 (Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, Shadow, Omega, Rouge), there will be 15 characters in total. Each character has one of the three types: Power, Speed or Technique. Even though there are types, players can freely choose the characters for making a team of 3; it’s possible to have a team consisting only of Speed types, for instance.

 - There is no relevance to the type assignment from Sonic Heroes (which had Speed, Power and Fly types), but Heroes caused character creation depending on such type sorting, so it might have an influence.

 - There will be customization option for the racing cars. Proceeding with the game unlocks new parts for appearance and ability of the machine. "It would be boring to have same cars for everyone in an online game, so we let players to arrange their machines with their originality, both in appearance and ability. For example, you can take a Speed type as a base and adjust parameters towards Power type.”

- Iizuka-san is a great fan of cars himself and he took a huge part in designs of each character’s cars. He visited SUMO office in London and gave directions to the designer directly. Looks like he had a lot of fun with it! He wanted them to be unique - a stylish sports car for Sonic, a tough off-road type for Knuckles and so on.

 - There will be courses based on earlier works as well as brand new ones. At E3 they showed the Wisp Circuit, which is set in Planet Wisp of Sonic Colors. “Actually, this is the only course that is paved - other courses will contain surprises that make you say 'We are going to drive here!?’ - so please look forward to them.”

 - “This time, BGMs are done by Jun Senoue we know since Sonic Adventure. As it is a racing game, the sounds are hot and match his typical rock taste very well. ”

 - “As the first 'Sonic’ car racing game on a console, we want not only the fans of the series’ action games but also fans of racing game to play it. The title will be released worldwide at the same time, so I hope that you will play the game by connecting to many Sonic fans through network and enjoy the new experience of winning the races together.”

https://s.famitsu.com/news/201806/13158584.html

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