Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (history and reception)

Sega's list of its Mega Drive software gives Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Japanese release as 21 November 1992, a cartridge listed as 8M at 6,800 yen; Famicom Tsūshin's cross review of that week gives the same day and price. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/release-japan

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Sega Visions, Sega of America's magazine, announced in its November/December 1992 issue that Sonic 2 would reach shops on "2's day", 24 November 1992, for the Genesis and the Game Gear. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/release-north-america

Disputed: The announcement is in the future tense, and no North American source written after the release has been found that gives the day. Masaharu Yoshii recalled in 2020 a 21 November release, timed to come just before Thanksgiving (yoshii-release-day). Game Developer's 2006 survey gives 31 December 1992 (sales-2006).

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The Independent reported on 17 December 1992 that Sonic 2 had launched in the UK on 24 November, at £39.99 for the Mega Drive cartridge and £27.99 for the Game Gear's. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/release-uk

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Masaharu Yoshii, the credited director, recalled in a 2020 interview that the game came out on 21 November, so that it would be out just before Thanksgiving, after which people take time off and the Christmas season begins. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/yoshii-release-day

Yoshii doesn't name a country; Thanksgiving places the remark in the United States, where Sega's own magazine had announced 24 November (release-north-america).

Game Informer's 2017 feature says Sega of America's marketing team, confident early, drafted promotions such as "Sonic 2sday" and a teaser poster reading "Are You Up 2 It?"; Al Nilsen, then its director of marketing, said Sega could have pulled the plug on Sonic 2sday up to May 1992. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/sonic-2sday

Game Informer gives Nilsen as "former director of marketing at Sega of America".

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Asked in 2020 who finally decided to launch Sonic 2 around the world at the same time, Yoshii said he thought it was the Japanese side, though it might have been the American side. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/worldwide-launch

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In the North American manual's story, Dr. Robotnik is trapping animals and turning them into robots to build his ultimate weapon, the Death Egg, and Sonic has to find the 7 Chaos Emeralds before him. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/story

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The North American manual introduces Miles "Tails" Prower, a fox with two tails who has dreamed of being like Sonic since he was a baby and runs after him; in a one-player game a second player can move Tails with the second pad, and the options also offer Sonic alone or Tails alone. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/tails

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Time Extension reported in 2022 that Tails's designer, Yasushi Yamaguchi, said in a Twitter thread that it was Yuji Naka's idea to make the character a beginner's character anyone could pick up rather than a rival, so that Naka could play with his younger sister, and that Yamaguchi added the second tail when his first design wasn't striking enough. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/tails-design

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The North American manual calls the spin dash the Super Dash Attack; holding still, the player presses Down and a button to rev up, presses again to rev faster, and lets go of Down to dash off. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/spin-dash-manual

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The table the end-of-Act results screen reads for the next Act chains the one-player game's eleven zones in twenty Acts, two Acts to a zone but three in Metropolis and one in each of the last three, from Emerald Hill to a last zone after Wing Fortress. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/structure

The order runs Emerald Hill, Chemical Plant, Aquatic Ruin, Casino Night, Hill Top, Mystic Cave, Oil Ocean, Metropolis, Sky Chase, Wing Fortress, and Death Egg (the disassembly's labels). The table ends the chain with -1 after Death Egg Act 1; whether the game reaches that entry, or ends by another path, isn't read here. The table still holds entries for Wood Zone and Hidden Palace Zone slots that the chain never reaches.

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The North American manual says that in a one-player game Sonic and Tails go through 10 Zones, with Dr. Robotnik attacking in a robot machine at the end of every Zone; its zone pages run from Emerald Hill to Wing Fortress. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/manual-zones

The game's own order has an eleventh zone after Wing Fortress (structure), which the manual doesn't list.

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The North American manual's 2 Player VS competition is a split-screen race through 3 Zones and 1 Special Stage, Player 1 moving Sonic on the top half and Player 2 moving Tails through the same Zone on the bottom half, to see who wins in the most categories. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/two-player-vs

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Two-player mode's zone select offers Emerald Hill, Mystic Cave, and Casino Night, and its level-order table chains Emerald Hill to Casino Night to Mystic Cave, two Acts each, ending after Mystic Cave's second Act. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/two-player-zones

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In Game Informer's 2017 feature Yuji Naka said a two-player mode had been tried late in the development of Sonic the Hedgehog, and he was glad the team carried it on and achieved it in the sequel; he also said Sonic 2 lifted the first game's limit on speed. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/two-player-naka

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The North American manual says that touching a Star Post with 50 Rings or more makes a Star Circle appear, which leads to the Special Stage, a run around a chute collecting enough Rings at each checkpoint while dodging Bombs, with a Chaos Emerald for finishing it; the same Star Post can't be used again. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/special-stage

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The North American manual says enemies can't destroy Sonic while he has a Ring, that Rings Tails collects are added to the total, that a hit costs the Rings, and that 100 and 200 Rings each earn an extra Life. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/rings

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The ending credits name Masaharu Yoshii as director, Yuji Naka as chief programmer, Hirokazu Yasuhara as game planner, and Yasushi Yamaguchi as character designer and chief artist, with Hayao Nakayama and Shinobu Toyoda as executive producers, Masato Nakamura of Dreams Come True as composer, and among the rest Bill Willis as an assistant programmer, Carol Ann Hanshaw for the special stage, and Craig Stitt, Brenda Ross, Jina Ishiwatari, Tom Payne, and Phenix Rie as zone artists. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/credits

The credit text sits under an "EXECUTIVE / PRODUCER" heading for Nakayama and Toyoda, and "ASSISTANT / PROGRAMMERS" for Willis and Masanobu Yamamoto. Only one line differs by revision, Thomas Kalinske's name, misspelt in revision 0.

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Game Informer's 2017 feature says Sega moved development of the sequel to the newly founded Sega Technical Institute in the United States, led by Mark Cerny, and that key members of the first game's team, such as Yuji Naka, moved there to work on it. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/sti

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Mark Cerny, who founded the Sega Technical Institute, said in 2006 that by September 1991 he had brought Yuji Naka and Hirokazu Yasuhara to the institute; Sega of America's marketing told him another Sonic was "much too soon", then in November asked for it at once, so the team lost two months of an eleven-month schedule. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/cerny-schedule

Cerny's words put the start of the work about November 1991; Yoshii's put serious work from around the start of 1992 (yoshii-direction).

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Yoshii said he took over the Sega Technical Institute in the year Mark Cerny left, without remembering when, and joined Sonic 2 partway through, when he thought about half of it was done; he put the real start of development at around the beginning of 1992, with the game finished about a month before release. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/yoshii-direction

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Yoshii said that to make Sonic 2 quickly about five to ten development staff were brought from Japan, that at its peak about 20 people worked on the project, and that because this time the game was developed in the United States, in-house, everyone at Sega of America saw it as their own project. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/yoshii-team

Yoshii says the first Sonic was made in Japan, Sega of America doing only the text localization and minimal changes (p. 8).

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Sega-16's 2007 history of the Sega Technical Institute says Cerny's plan was to pair experienced developers from Japan with inexperienced Americans; that on Sonic 2 the Japanese staff arrived late over visas and language, culture, and working styles divided the two sides; and that after Sonic 2 shipped the group split, the Japanese staff working on Sonic sequels. It quotes former STI artist Tim Skelly saying everyone on Sonic 2 ultimately worked for Naka, who would have been happier with an all-Japanese team. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/sti-teams

The article also quotes Roger Hector, Cerny's successor, saying such tension was normal and that STI's teams were sometimes all Japanese, all American, or blended. Yoshii said in 2020 he enjoyed the American staff's calm and their dedicated bug testers (p. 14). Iizuka's account of a happy mix is iizuka.

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Yoshii said that shortly before release Sonic 2 ran out of room; it had been planned for two 2-"mega" ROMs, 4 in all, and Sega president Hayao Nakayama approved adding a third to make 6 rather than lose two or three weeks cutting the game down. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/cartridge-size

Disputed: Yoshii's figures don't match the cartridge as sold: Sega's own software list gives 8M (release-japan), Sega Visions called it "an 8 Mega spectacular", and the No-Intro dump (sonic-the-hedgehog-2-genesis-rom) is 1 MB, 8 megabits.

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Famicom Tsūshin's four reviewers scored the Mega Drive version 7, 8, 8, and 7, 30 of 40, in November 1992. The first found it a minor-change sequel with no big reform, though fans who had waited for it might weep for joy; the second asked why the partner is so useless in one-player play but called both modes excellent; the third found the split screen hard to see, recommended the special stage, and regretted that Tails isn't cute; the fourth found the split screen small and the one-player game a little harder than the first. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/famitsu

{
 "review": "Famicom Tsūshin",
 "of": 40,
 "score": 30
}

The scores are the large pale numerals behind each comment. The reviewers' names aren't printed on this page, so the comments are cited by position.

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Mean Machines Sega scored the Mega Drive version 96% overall in November 1992 and gave it its Mega Game badge; the comment signed JAZ called it faster, slicker, bigger, and much tougher than the original, so that none of the first game's criticisms applied, and another passage of the review called it nearly twice the size of the original and in places at least twice as fast. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/mean-machines

{
 "review": "Mean Machines Sega",
 "of": 100,
 "score": 96
}

The OCR doesn't print a signature beside the second passage, so it isn't attributed.

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Mean Machines Sega's review says the first game's rotating special zones were replaced in Sonic 2 by high-speed races between Sonic and Miles down brightly colored chutes, entered with fifty rings at a Star Post. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/mean-machines-special-stage

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Chip and Jonathan Carter's year-end list in the Chicago Tribune of 25 December 1992 put Sonic the Hedgehog 2 second, saying that with more time to play it they might have had a three-way tie for first. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/chicago-tribune

First place on the list is shared by Street Fighter II and The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, so the writers note Sonic 2 is "technically" third.

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The Independent reported in December 1992 that in the week after the UK launch Gallup's software chart put Sonic 2 at 48 per cent of all software sales, that the 750,000 copies sent to UK retailers went on the first day, and that Dixons sold 14,000 Mega Drives; it gave projected US sales of 1 million by Christmas, the same as the UK's. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/uk-launch

The US and UK figures are projections, not sales.

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Yoshii said in 2020 that he thought about a million copies had probably sold by the end of 1992, and that thanks to Sonic 2 the Genesis console itself began to sell well. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/sales-yoshii

The interview's questions are about Sega of America, but Yoshii doesn't name a region for the million.

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Daniel Boutros's 2006 survey of best-selling platform games for Game Developer gives Sonic 2's worldwide sales as of June 2006 as 6 million and calls it the best-selling 2D Sonic game. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/sales-2006

The survey names no source for the figure, and gives the US release as 31 December 1992, at odds with every period source found.

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Game Informer's 2017 feature says the game came to be considered one of the best 2D platform games of the 1990s by fans and critics, and that it lifted Genesis hardware sales until Sega was nearly Nintendo's equal in market share; it names the spin dash and the introduction of Tails among its lasting additions. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/legacy-game-informer

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Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team in 2017, who hadn't worked on the game, told Game Informer that, though it hurt him as someone who worked on Sonic 3, he felt Sonic 2 was the best of the classic series, and credited its mix of American and Japanese staff. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/iizuka

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Al Nilsen told Game Informer in 2017 that the game could have been three times its size had everything made been left in, and that Naka's team weren't afraid to take out work that wasn't working. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/cut-content

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Video Games Chronicle reported in December 2023 that the Video Game History Foundation had partly reconstructed a cut stage, Cyber City Zone (at one point Genocide City Zone), from artist Tom Payne's design documents and designer Hirokazu Yasuhara's map of it, and had shown artist Brenda Cook's VHS portfolio, with a cut desert stage, Sand Shower Zone, and a winter stage; VGC says Cook had said in earlier interviews that she worked on three cut zones. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/cut-zones

A report of the developers' own materials, not their words; Cook's earlier interviews aren't pinned here.

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TouchArcade reported in December 2013 that a remastered Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for iOS, made with Sega's blessing, added Hidden Palace Zone, which it describes as a planned stage cut shortly before the 1992 release. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/remaster-2013

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Sega's site for Sonic Origins, before its release, announced the collection for 23 June 2022 with remastered versions of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. sonic-the-hedgehog-2-history/origins

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