Sonic Superstars has new levels only, producer talks art style

According to Sonic producer Takashi Iizuka, Sonic Superstars will only feature new levels. The game will not be bringing back stages from past titles.

If there’s one thing we’ve seen from the Sonic series over the years, it’s been the reliance on levels going back to the franchise’s earliest days. At this point, fans are used to seeing areas like Green Hill Zone. However, in Sonic Superstars, it’ll be new content only.

Speaking with IGN, Iizuka explained the decision to offer new stages only in Sonic Superstars rather than past levels:

“In Sonic Mania, Green Hill Zone changed up a little bit. And even Sonic Origins, we did have Green Hill as part of Sonic the Hedgehog. But what we wanted to do with Sonic Superstars is really create something new and go in there and create these brand new islands that you get to explore as Sonic… We wanted to take Sonic to [the] brand new North Star Islands and have Sonic run around in this new environment. So we wanted to make brand new places for Sonic to go in this new title.”

Something else Iizuka also commented on is the game’s visual style. On that front, he said:

“It is that 2D classic Sonic game, but because we’re using 3D models to create the world and the characters. We’re able to do things inside of that 2D gameplay formula that we couldn’t have done before. So sometimes it’s going to be sending the character back further into the world. Maybe it’s going to be turning the character, spinning the character in a way that we couldn’t really do with the classic look and the pixel art. Or it could be a boss battle that we’re going to have in this kind of 3D space. There’s all these things we can do because we have 3D models, even though we have a 2D game style and a game format, we’re able to play around and do things that the classic Genesis and Game Gear titles couldn’t do.”

Sonic Superstars launches on Switch this fall.