Interview with the director on Sonic's future

When the DS was first unveiled, Sega put together a Sonic tech demo which saw Sonic run through a 3D environment along a fixed path. Does Secret Rings bare any relation to that?

Ogawa: I never noted their similarity so no, they're completely separate projects. However, the team that worked on Secret Rings also worked on Project Rub on DS, so you might see some places or aspects that are similar in Secret Rings.

Project Rub has 2D actions scenes, and you might notice similar 2D action scenes in Secret Rings. You could consider this type of 2D-oriented action something I'm keen on and something I try to put into our games. I have previously worked on the Panzer Dragoon games so you can see the similarity there [in that it's on rails, we think he means].

Please tell us why you chose an Arabian Nights theme?

Ogawa: There was nothing in specific that inspired me to go with the Arabian Nights theme. It just came to me. One reason you could say I chose that theme is that I wanted to make the Wii Sonic game look very different from the Xbox 360 and PS3 Sonic games. When we started development on Secret Rings I wanted Sonic to go into a completely different world.

So I came up with the idea of having Sonic go into a story book, which I linked to Arabian Nights. Another reason I chose this setting is because it has is a lot of mysterious charm and we could add magic to the formula.