Hey, Gotta Step It Up! A Sonic The Hedgehog Producer Quest

Created
Status
Ongoing
Watchers
130
Recent readers
191

Take control of Sega's Sonic Team, and see if you can give the Blue Blur a better trajectory than the people of real history were able to do.
4th Quarter 1994: The Start Of Things New

Small Nerd

Meganekko
Location
Out There
Pronouns
She/Her
It's just another ordinary day when you first come in to work. You are working at Sega, the company that rules Japanese arcades with an iron fist, but any job will stop being exciting once you've been doing it long enough. And you've been working here for a while. Though in hindsight, that's probably one of the reasons your day stops being ordinary not long after you come in.

A few minutes after you sit down at your desk, one of those people every corporation has to do busywork comes up to you and says that some of the company's higher-ups want to meet with you. You haven't done anything wrong, you're sure, but have you done anything good that would make management notice you? The only thing you can think of is...

[] Your work on all of the Sonic the Hedgehog games. You did all that work as part of a team, though, and you haven't gotten as much recognition as other members of the team. (You are Hirokazu Yasuhara, lead designer for Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, and & Knuckles. You are highly skilled at Design, with some skill in Appeal and a basic understanding of Technology.)
[] Your work on the Sonic the Hedgehog game that just shipped. It is a single game, even if you had to sell it in two separate pieces. (You are Takashi Iizuka, a game designer on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You are reasonably skilled at both Design and Appeal, though slightly more with Design, and you have a moderate understanding of Technology.)
[] Your work on Phantasy Star. You'd like to say your work on the Magic Knight Rayearth video game for the Saturn is good as well, but that project is still in its early stages. (You are Rieko Kodama, lead artist for Phantasy Star I and II and director of Phantasy Star IV. You are highly skilled in Appeal, with some skill in Design and a basic understanding of Technology.)
[] Write-in (Subject to GM approval; either someone who was working at Sega in the early-mid 90s IRL or an entirely original character)

The meeting with your superiors is surprisingly straight to the point.

"Yuji Naka has decided to leave his post with Sonic Team," one of them says once the usual greetings are finished. "We need someone to lead the group, and you're the one we want to do it."

Once you can find words again, you say, "I don't know if I can accept that promotion. I'm... not really a manager."

"Neither was Naka," your superior says. "And he was able to get games finished. You've spent enough time working on products that have gone out the door that you know how to work within a budget and on a schedule. That's what this company needs in the person responsible for keeping our mascot popular. Give the people more of Sonic the Hedgehog regularly, and make sure what you put out doesn't hurt the company, and you'll do the job well enough."

You don't really have it in you to argue more after that. It's clear that management wants you in the role, and you don't hate the idea enough to push back more than proper etiquette requires of you. Soon enough, you're walking back to... well, your old desk now to move your things to your new office. As you do, you think about what you want to do with your new position. You'll have to make sure the team knows you're in charge now and that there won't be any issues from that, but once the transition from Naka to you is done, you'll need to figure out the next step forward for Sega's mascot.

What will your first project be?

[] Sonic hasn't made much of an impact in Japan, and it isn't for lack of trying. Investigate what can be done to get Japanese audiences interested in the character.

[] The Saturn is about to come out, and the company mascot has to be on the new hardware ASAP. The console can do proper 3-D graphics, so you have the chance to win over a lot of people if you can get a 3-D Sonic game made before Nintendo or Sony can grab all the attention with whatever they've got in the works.

[] The Saturn is about to come out, and the company mascot has to be on the new hardware ASAP. The console can do incredible 2-D graphics, so you have the chance to win over a lot of people if you can make a Sonic game that looks like a playable anime.

[] Something else (Write-in)

A/N: Welcome to the quest! @Martin Noctis and I are collaborating on this, and we hope you all will enjoy trying to keep Sonic (and Sega) on top of the gaming world through the 90s and beyond.
 
How Ideas Work New
When working on a video game, you will implement Ideas. An Idea can be anything that would be included in a game, including plot beats for the story, designs for a new character, new game mechanics, boss fight concepts, level aesthetics, what sort of music should be in the soundtrack, or anything else.

An Idea will require you to spend some amount of Time and Budget each turn to implement it, and both are finite resources. During the initial Prototyping Phase for a game, you can choose to investigate how much Time and Budget a particular Idea will need, as well as if you have the Technology to do it.

If you decide not to implement an Idea, you can choose to put it in the Idea Bank, to be used in a future project. An Idea in the Idea Bank can be implemented for less Time and/or Budget than you'd need otherwise, and the discount will change on a case-by-case basis. Deciding not to implement an Idea and putting it in the Bank can be done with Ideas you're currently in the middle of trying to put in a game as well. It won't refund the Time and Budget you've already spent on that Idea, but you won't spend more resources on it in future turns.

Polishing a game so that it isn't full of bugs, has nice presentation, and so on counts as an Idea for the purposes of deciding how to spend your resources, and you can't get a discount on it by putting it in the Idea Bank.
 
Last edited:
Character Skills New
In this quest, anyone working on a video game has three areas they can be skilled in: Design, Appeal, and Technology. Design is things like knowing what sort of game mechanics are fun and how different parts of a game can work together to make a good experience for the player. Appeal is knowing how to make visuals, art, stories, characters, and so on that draw people in to try the game and enjoy it even when the gameplay itself isn't very fun. Technology is knowing how the tools you have can be used to implement Ideas, or if the Ideas you have can be implemented at all.

For media that's not a video game, people working on those have similar skills that will be explained as they come up.
 
Last edited:
[X] Your work on the Sonic the Hedgehog game that just shipped. It is a single game, even if you had to sell it in two separate pieces. (You are Takashi Iizuka, a game designer on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You are reasonably skilled at both Design and Appeal, though slightly more with Design, and you have a moderate understanding of Technology.)
[X] The Saturn is about to come out, and the company mascot has to be on the new hardware ASAP. The console can do proper 3-D graphics, so you have the chance to win over a lot of people if you can get a 3-D Sonic game made before Nintendo or Sony can grab all the attention with whatever they've got in the works.

First 3D Sonic game before Mario 64? Count me in. I picked Takashi just to get Sonic Saturn out the gate in a non-buggy state, tho I could be convinced to go for Hirokazu.
 
[X] Write-in: Oda Daichi, a thirty-year-old author of two moderately successful mangas before taking an offer to work as an artist/designer for Sega. You'd designed the art of all of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, with Takashi Iizuka becoming a close acquaintance of yours during your time working on Knuckles. You have a knack for coming up with the most imaginative ideas, though sometimes you tend to go a bit... overboard.
[X] The Saturn is about to come out, and the company mascot has to be on the new hardware ASAP. The console can do proper 3-D graphics, so you have the chance to win over a lot of people if you can get a 3-D Sonic game made before Nintendo or Sony can grab all the attention with whatever they've got in the works.

@Small Nerd, is this write-in acceptable?
 
Last edited:
[X] Your work on the Sonic the Hedgehog game that just shipped. It is a single game, even if you had to sell it in two separate pieces. (You are Takashi Iizuka, a game designer on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You are reasonably skilled at both Design and Appeal, though slightly more with Design, and you have a moderate understanding of Technology.)
[X] Sonic hasn't made much of an impact in Japan, and it isn't for lack of trying. Investigate what can be done to get Japanese audiences interested in the character.
 
Last edited:
[X] Your work on the Sonic the Hedgehog game that just shipped. It is a single game, even if you had to sell it in two separate pieces. (You are Takashi Iizuka, a game designer on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You are reasonably skilled at both Design and Appeal, though slightly more with Design, and you have a moderate understanding of Technology.)
 
[X] Your work on the Sonic the Hedgehog game that just shipped. It is a single game, even if you had to sell it in two separate pieces. (You are Takashi Iizuka, a game designer on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You are reasonably skilled at both Design and Appeal, though slightly more with Design, and you have a moderate understanding of Technology.)
[X] Sonic hasn't made much of an impact in Japan, and it isn't for lack of trying. Investigate what can be done to get Japanese audiences interested in the character.
 
[X] Your work on the Sonic the Hedgehog game that just shipped. It is a single game, even if you had to sell it in two separate pieces. (You are Takashi Iizuka, a game designer on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You are reasonably skilled at both Design and Appeal, though slightly more with Design, and you have a moderate understanding of Technology.)
[X] Sonic hasn't made much of an impact in Japan, and it isn't for lack of trying. Investigate what can be done to get Japanese audiences interested in the character.
 
It seems like we've got a win for playing as Takashi Iizuka and a first project of finding ways to make Sonic more popular in Japan. Let's see if any interesting random events happen.

EDIT: That's not good. But at least it isn't a crit fail.
Small Nerd threw 1 100-faced dice. Reason: Random Event Roll Total: 8
8 8
 
Last edited:
…that was below ten. Uh oh.
 
4th Quarter 1994: A Complication New
[X] Your work on the Sonic the Hedgehog game that just shipped. It is a single game, even if you had to sell it in two separate pieces. (You are Takashi Iizuka, a game designer on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You are reasonably skilled at both Design and Appeal, though slightly more with Design, and you have a moderate understanding of Technology.)
[X] Sonic hasn't made much of an impact in Japan, and it isn't for lack of trying. Investigate what can be done to get Japanese audiences interested in the character.

Random Event Roll: 8

Yuji Naka is being investigated for insider trading. It feels like a sick joke. He's not a flawless man, sure, but that kind of fraud... it's not something you'd ever imagined him doing. But the police don't investigate people for that kind of crime if they don't have a strong case, so there's a good chance he really did it. You think you know someone, and then they blindside you.

More pressing for you, all of Naka's former coworkers in Sonic Team are also being investigated in case any of them were accomplices. Since you have to cooperate with the police, the team can't get much work done in the last few months of 1994. There are some jokes about making a game where Sonic has to run from the police and clear his name of crimes he didn't commit, and you'll admit to being a little tempted to go through with actually putting that in a game, even if it might be a bit... out there for a Sonic story.

Similarly, you don't manage to figure out anything for how to make Sonic more popular in Japan. The only progress you manage to make comes from something a police officer says to you offhandedly during the investigation. He refers to Sonic as a "freaky animal person," which reminds you that characters like Sonic aren't very common in Japan. Japanese media tends to have characters that are humans with a few animal-like features or characters that are talking animals with no human-like features at all. Sonic, walking on two legs but still having a hedgehog's quills, falls into a middle ground you usually see occupied by Western-made characters like Mickey Mouse. You and the rest of your team are used to Sonic since you spend so much time working with him, but other Japanese people don't have that level of exposure to the character. It doesn't help that Sega in general hasn't been very popular in Japan outside of arcades, and Sonic hasn't had much arcade presence.

You can't just snap your fingers and change a whole country's attitudes towards character design, so you'll have to figure out how to get Japanese audiences to give Sonic the same free pass they give Mickey Mouse. Matching one of the giants of animation is a tall order, but you'll have to do it. Once you can think of a way how.

Not that you have much time to think about it right now, though. One last effect of Naka being investigated is that office politics have gotten worse now that there's a convenient way to "deal with" rivals by accusing them of being accomplices to insider trading. You and the rest of Sonic Team are already being investigated, so it's not likely any of you will be reported to the police by any rivals, but who knows how long that will last. You'll need to be very careful about navigating office politics for a while.

Result: Little progress on finding ways to make Sonic more popular in Japan, penalty to next roll for Time budget, Sonic Team generates an Idea for a story that might not be fitting for Sonic at this point in time, Sega of Japan starts a cold war against itself.

Vote:


What can you try to make Sonic more appealing to Japanese audiences?
[] Write-in (subject to GM approval)

You need to decide what Sonic Team's next game will be. Your subordinates haven't come up with much, and management's patience with you has limits. You might need to think of something yourself.
[]Write in pitches for games (subject to GM approval)

GM Note: Please vote in plan format.
 
Welp, I think the Sonic running from the police will lead in well into the Adventure era, while Sonic in arcades would also be a good thing. Some sort of proto-Subway Surfers could work?
 
Okay, so to summarize, two significant factors are stopping us from having Sonic popular in Japan, and that is A) Sonic's unusual design and B) his lack of a presence in arcade games(Sega's only popular market in Japan, apparently).

The only solution I can think of for point B is to design more Sonic arcade games, but that might cut into time spent designing the next Sonic game(we could look into porting existing games into arcades). For point A) we might want to copy Disney and real life through the production of Sonic manga to draw up appeal with younger audiences and future generations since a lot of Sonic popularity in the US is tied to the comics (and mickey mouse and friends had a lot of comics over the years, which probably helped).

As for the game Idea's, mabye something to expand the cast? More characters means more opputunites for story-telling and marketing, and I believe the cast of characters is rather small as this point in time.
 
One thing about Sonic is the fact that, aside from the heroism shown in the gameplay, Sonic hadn't been given an ability to show off whatever personality he has. If I'm correct about that, that means we have the responsibility to make a good template, one that everyone could know. So shall we keep him silent for now, or give him a voice(or rather a text box) to show the world What He's Made Of?

For the actual prompt, maybe we could have a Sonic show off his style in an arcade machine, maybe with him getting his famous pair of gloves?(if he doesn't have them already) and maybe give classic some color in his eyes?
 
Last edited:
One thing about Sonic is the fact that, aside from the heroism shown in the gameplay, Sonic hadn't been given an ability to show off whatever personality he has. If I'm correct about that, that means we have the responsibility to make a good template, one that everyone could know. So shall we keep him silent for now, or give him a voice(or rather a text box) to show the world What He's Made Of?

For the actual prompt, maybe we could have Sonic show off his style in an arcade machine, maybe with him getting his famous pair of gloves?(if he doesn't have them already), and maybe give classic some color in his eyes?

Hmm... That's an interesting Idea.

Honestly, for the most part, Sonic was one of the original mascots with attitude back in the day, even if that aspect of his character has been diminished due to an oversaturation of similar characters.

The ideal scenario I visualize for showing Sonic's character is a game where he can snark against an authority figure and show some awkward compassion for someone he's helping (like how SATAM Sonic was). Maybe a sort of prequel where Eggman doesn't know about the chaos emeralds and is merely building a Badnik factory to invade Station Square? Sonic breaking into a mega-large factory and dismantling Badniks could be enjoyable, as well as playing into the 'rebel punk that follows no rules' gimmick he used to be advertised with.

Alternatively, we could play into the more modern take of 'free-spirited adventurer' and have a game that centers around exploring different world regions. We could also play into the idea of Sonic clearing up Badniks left from the Death Egg of Sonic 2/3 and meeting new friends.

(And if we're doing any gimmicks involving gloves, I'd personally go with integrating a wall-jumping mechanic.)
 
Fuck it, I'll make the first plan if no one else does.

[X] Plan Not! Subway Surfers
-[X] Work on bringing Sonic to Japanese arcade by making a game where he runs indefinitely, dodging random obstacles.
-[X] Make Sonic more appealing by giving him a human-like personality in his dialogue. Look into personalities of popular anime/manga protagonists?
 
[X] Plan Not! Subway Surfers
-[X] Work on bringing Sonic to Japanese arcade by making a game where he runs indefinitely, dodging random obstacles.
-[X] Make Sonic more appealing by giving him a human-like personality in his dialogue. Look into personalities of popular anime/manga protagonists?
 
[X] Plan Not! Subway Surfers
-[X] Work on bringing Sonic to Japanese arcade by making a game where he runs indefinitely, dodging random obstacles.
-[X] Make Sonic more appealing by giving him a human-like personality in his dialogue. Look into personalities of popular anime/manga protagonists?
 
Back
Top