Sonic Superstars wants to give fans a classic 2D game with new surprises

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Sonic is returning to his 2D roots … again. But Sega is giving him and his friends a few new ideas to play with.

I had a chance to play a couple of levels from Sonic Superstars and interview series head Takashi Iizuka during Summer Game Fest Play Days. This new entry in the series combines Sonic’s classic 2D gameplay with a few new twists, including new powers that you unlock when you collect a Chaos Emerald. In the demo, I got an ability that turned me into a blob of water, which let me travel up a waterfall.

Superstars releases this fall for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. I talked with Iizuka about Sonic Team’s new approach to a 2D in my interview (done through a translator).

GamesBeat: We’ve seen a few different approaches to doing 2D Sonic games in recent years. What was the motivation for familiar-yet-new style?

Takashi Iizuka: Last year we released Sonic Frontiers, and that was really the big advancement, the new and innovative way that we took the modern series and made something new with it. In a similar way, the classic series, everyone has thought of it as retro. It’s always been about the old, old, old.

I wanted to do something new with that classic series. Yes, it’s the same 2D side-scrolling game format, but we wanted to challenge ourselves and say, hey, how can we take this to the next level? How can we make something new, interesting and innovative in that classic series format? That’s Sonic Superstars.

GamesBeat: I played the Game Gear Sonic games, so I was excited to see Fang come back. I was curious about that decision. We’ve seen cameos from him