Notes on Christian Whitehead session at Sonic Revolution

These aren't supposed to be an exhaustive list of notes, just things I found interesting. There's some anecdotes that aren't related to the games so I didn’t include them.

16:00 Press Garden originally started as a paper mill stage. But Sonic Team really wanted an ice stage so they worked in the ice theme.

18:00 CW didn't think the Mean Bean Machine idea would be accepted. However, Iizuka thought it was funny.

20:35 At first it was up in the air over which characters to add for the DLC. Sega's guidelines considered Mighty and Ray as a pair who are friends that always go on adventures together. That stacked it in their favor to return. They did consider Amy or Metal Sonic at one point. CW wasn't too keen on Ray first but changed his mind when he saw the unique goofy personality he had.

Fang, Bark, and Bean are mirages created by Heavy Magician.

28:40 They had a board for Studiopolis that had a Robotnick pun that played homage to the misspelling of his name in Sonic the Fighters. The board read  "Robotonick: the fragrance from Eggmanpuri"

But Sega didn't want them to use the word Robotnick. Pressed for time, they replaced it with "Eggnog".

29:40 They had a Sega/Ages pun but couldn't use it for legal reasons.

30:54 CW would like to remake the Hot Shelter and Chao Gardens in 2D.
CW is a big fan of Hot Shelter because it (like the Egg Carrier in general) gives an insight into Eggman's private life.

46:00 Chemical Plant Zone 2 was originally more horizontal in its design. However, they took inspiration from Chaotix to make it more vertical which helped them to better accommodate the gimmick ideas they had.

50:00 They originally had a new bonus stage idea for Mania. But they didn't have time to implement it, so they re-used the Blue spheres from the Sonic 3 Remastered pitch.

53:00 Sonic 3 Remastered couldn't be done due to a company/licensing issue.

1:13:30 Iizuka didn't know how people would react to Mania when it was first unveiled.

1:15:50 Hard-Boiled Heavies discussion.
Sega wanted to tie Mania to Forces but didn't give much information about the Phantom Ruby. Originally Infinite was going to be in the game, but Sega didn't give much information about what Infinite was.

1:31:56 Mania Plus only had a short development cycle of around 3 months (the rest was all Q&A). CW wanted more original Zones, but Sega wanted a focus on alternative playstyles and modes.