Why haven't Sonic Team made a Sonic RPG yet, asks Sonic Team boss

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka wants to know why the hell Sonic Team haven’t made their own Sonic The Hedgehog RPG yet. He sounds positively hysterical about it, hopping mad, which you know, mate, you’ve been running the show since 2008. You’ve been working on Sonic games since 1994. I too yearn to bound through the Star Post portal and into a world where Sonic has to min-max his trainers and do companion quests for Big The Cat. The spinning ball of spines is in your court, Iizuka-san. The people of Mobius are ready. Mario has had that genre all to himself for long enough.

Iizuka made these innocent remarks during a Good Vibes Gaming interview at a Sonic x Shadow Generations preview event - this being the year of Shadow. They were subsequently pounced upon by Eurogamer’s Ed Nightingale, who notes that Sonic Team have worked on RPGs in the past, such as Phantasy Star Universe, and as such, have no excuses save boring commercial ones.

"Personally, I really like role-playing games," he said. "The RPG game format is a lot of fun and I've even thought to myself you know, for the past 30 years we haven't done a Sonic RPG. And I'm questioning myself. Why haven't we done a Sonic RPG in all this time? How have we gotten to 30 years with no RPGs?!"

"So I'd like to hopefully work on a Sonic RPG at some point before I retire from Sega,” Iizuka went on. “But you know, that's just a dream right now. There are no concrete plans at this point." Again, Mr Iizuka, I must loom sinisterly and remind you that you are the head of Sonic Team. Make those plans concrete. Yes, I know it’s more complicated than this, I know Sega aren’t in the mood for passion projects at the moment, but come now - the only extant official Sonic RPG is a third-party project for Nintendo DS, which I’m not allowed to write about or Graham will break my knees.

I want a Sonic Team-made Sonic RPG for exactly two reasons: I think it might be great, and I think it might be awful. Sonic games have a habit of veering in either direction, especially those released after 2001, but perhaps those Mania people fancy another bite of the apple. Either way, it’s an entertaining prospect. Gotta go fast? No Sonic, you gotta go after Tails has his turn, and also, you’re out of mana, so no spin-dash for you. It’s just as well that we have Itch.io developers to fill the gap.