Sonic Unleashed in Play Mag + Play Magazine Scans
Out of all the magazines to have a cover story on Sonic Unleashed, Play Mag takes the cake with their May 2008 issue featuring 10 pages of Sonic Unleashed goodness. In celebration of their lengthy publication, we’re going to recap a few of the things they mentioned about the game.
Oh yeah, and we have scans from the Sonic Unleashed Article in Play Magazine.
The real meat of the article was the exclusive interview with Sonic Team Producer, Yoshihisa Hashimoto (that guy we mentioned a few days ago). To get started, Hashimoto reveals to us that Sonic Unleashed is under new management, which ought to bring a sigh of relief to many of us losing faith in the series. While the Sonic Team is still in charge of development, the core development team in charge of design is completely new. What does all this verbage mean for you? A fresh, NEW Sonic experience, unlike any of the recent installments!
The team has decided to divide gameplay into two different views, which would be the 2D sideview, and the 3D forward view. According to Hashimoto, the two mechanisms are split about half and half throughout the game, and “fills the void” us classic Sonic fans have experienced ever since the hedgehog ever made his way into the 3D realm. Also, to put to rest any rumors about Sonic Unleashed being restricted to rails (ie: Secret Rings), he will have complete ability to roam around in immersive 3D environments.
To our delight, Hashimoto also revealed that “Silver won’t make an appearance in this game“. That’s one more excessive character we can mark off our Not Wanted list. Rather than focusing much on new characters, Sonic Unleashed will focus on “Sonic and his travels around his world in a big adventure“. Phew!
Sonic Unleashed will feature hub like stages (similar to towns in previous titles), that will act as a means of adding “color and background to Sonic’s adventures“. While we’re not entirely thrilled of this concept, Yoshihisa assures us that the hubs will not hinder the tempo of the game. SEGA has learned from their mistakes in the past, and are making sure they address them to provide us with an awesome Sonic experience, and so far, we’re impressed.
We highlighted some of Sonic’s new moves in Sonic Unleashed a few days ago, but we’ve been clueless as to how new moves are going to function in the title. Apparently, new moves can be found within stages and added to Sonic’s abilities as you are playing (versus a purchase system introduced in previous games). Some abilities mentioned in the article that we haven’t seen before include stomping and wall jumping.
What about graphics? We’ve heard that Sonic Unleashed is coming to 4 consoles, but how will each console compare visually? The team has been working for the past 3 years on the Hedgehog Engine, which is being used to power both the Xbox 360 & Playstation 3 versions of the game, while developers will be working hard to develop visuals that mimic the engine on the Nintendo Wii. This may come as a hard hit to Wii players who up until now have thought the Wii will be getting the stunning visuals we’ve seen so far.
For the full read, we highly suggest you go pick up a copy of the magazine yourself. It’s really worth the read, and we’ve only covered a portion of it here. Our hopes are high for more information coming soon!
Scans after the jump!
Sonic Unleashed Play Magazine Scans
April 29th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
awesome info, but like you said its a hard hit to me, as Im buying the wii version and it might not be that GREAT as weve seen, but Im sure they can pull it off, at least they say they will MIMIC the other versions, but if it is the main console we might still see great graphics
April 29th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
You know Ssonic22, just because the visuals aren’t as good doesn’t mean the gameplay won’t be fantastic. Personally, I can still be won over to get the Wii version if I find that it will offer something the other consoles can’t compete with in terms of controls or other features.
Visuals aren’t everything! And even saying that, Hashimoto makes it sound like the Wii will still look fantastic!
April 29th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
really amazing graphics there….
April 29th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
A new move called “Stomp”…
Does at remind anyone else of Sonic’s aerial A+Down move in Brawl?
April 29th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
They sure are. I’m just impressed without how stylized it is. Reminds me of the classic games, not in a sense that they are really the SAME style, but have a unique style of its own =)
At least that’s what I think…
April 30th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Missed your comment Mynameisonic, sorry about that. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that’s what the Stomp will look like… How confusing could such a simple named ability be?
Thanks for pointing that out! Don’t think I would have ever thought of that!
April 30th, 2008 at 9:01 am
[…] Play Magazine isn’t the only one with new info regarding Sonic Unleashed this month! While not as in depth as Play, Nintendo Power also published a short piece on Sonic Unleashed, with some new details in regards to the Nintendo Wii. […]
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:01 am
[…] Sonic Unleashed, complete with… well, actually it feels rather incomplete after going through Play’s writeup. New information has been pretty hard to come by as of […]
May 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
mimic the engine,does that mean the wii vesion isnt using the hedgehog engine
May 5th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
@ MTH - Correct, the Wii will not be using the Hedgehog Engine. It’s being worked on by a team of talented developers however that are doing their best to create a similar look.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:05 am
is it me or are some of the pages missing cuz i cant seem to find the page that comes after the first one,
and the last page also stops outta nowhere. there must be some kind of mistake.
and ofcourse thanks a lot i am a big sonic fan and im desperate to find new things about unleashed thank YOU!!!
May 11th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Well, as they’ve said, wii has more side scrolling, and thats probobly a good thing. i was hoping for puzzles and some new style simiar to the game, The NeverHood.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
double commenting is fun cuz it pisses people off
May 14th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Pretty artwork. Nice job, Sega.