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Leading development on Wonder was Takashi Tezuka — who’s been making Super Mario for almost 40 years, starting with the original which he designed alongside Shigeru Miyamoto — and the much younger Shiro Mouri, who also directed the most recent 2D Mario Games, with this focus on mentorship and cross-generational work being an intentional part of keeping Nintendo’s approach to game-making alive. They also had support from Koichi Hayashida, who was central to the development of almost every 3D Mario game, and were able to solicit thousands of ideas for Wonder Effects from various staff.
By contrast, Sega is a vastly different company now than it was 30 years ago, having been acquired by pachinko giant Sammy in the early 2000s after being forced to stop making its own game consoles. It still produces several blockbuster franchises through its developers and subsidiaries, but it does not have the same bench of legacy talent or the strong mentorship of Nintendo.
Sonic is still fast, he just isn’t quite as cool as he used to be.
Sonic games have always had a dedicated fan base, but for years received middling receptions from players and critics as the entries of the 2000s and 2010s struggled to find a cohesive way to present the character in 3D. The highest-rated game in the series on reviews aggregator Metacritic is 2017’s Sonic Mania, a retro-inspired 2D game developed not by Sega’s Sonic Team but by a group of indies, led by Melbourne developer Christian Whitehead.
Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team, is on the record as saying he wants a strong future for both 3D and 2D Sonic, but that he doesn’t think pixel graphics or a retro approach are viable. Instead, he partnered with Japanese developer Arzest — founded by Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima — to create Sonic Superstars.
The result is a fast and fun Sonic with cutesy art that, for me, is missing the hedgehog’s trademark attitude. Having Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy all play differently is brilliant, and there’s a welcome mix of old and new when it comes to mini-games and abilities; you still collect hidden chaos emeralds for example, but now they give you superpowers like the ability to swim up waterfalls.
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The physics and controls are straight out of Sonic Mania, and there are plenty of interesting level gimmicks, but in contrast to the confident Mario, you can feel how hard the developers are working to try to and hold Superstars together. Intense spikes in the difficulty and uneven multiplayer modes bring the shine down a little in an otherwise very pleasant return to the sort of game that ruled the industry in the ’90s, albeit one that’s much kinder and more accessible. But in terms of moving the state of the art forward, Mario wins hands down.
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