>>538028325
SA1 and SA2 were Iizuka's passion projects. Iizuka was the one who conceived of it as a "Sonic RPG". And the inspiration from games like Final Fantasy 7

>3&K level designer
>Nights into Dreams lead game designer
>3D Blast Saturn special stages designer
>SA1 & SA2 director

Heroes nearly killed Iizuka and he was inspired by Jak II to make Shadow. That's two games he worked on which were critical flops and were victims of the Sonic cycle.

Heroes was so rushed Iizuka slept at the office and nearly died making it and the team at STI was burned out and barely cared making Shadow. Development moved back to Japan for 06 and SR and Iizuka became less involved.

In a way, Xbox is a continuation of the Dreamcast. Sega had to switch from a SA1/SA2 proprietary engine to Renderware to get Heroes running on a PS2 because Sony effectively forced them at gunpoint. Shadow, on the other hand, was made by an indifferent team with no passion left. Iizuka was phoning in here

>Heroes : first multiplatform entry. Tries to appeal to newcomers, Adventure fans and Classic fans, resulting in a very broad game
>Shadow : first character spin off in a while. Iizuka played too much Jak 2 and Ratchet 2, wanted to use the scrapped branching path system from SA2, plus appeal exclusively to western players

Iizuka just didn't have it in him anymore. He had been working on nothing but Sonic games since Christmas Nights in late 1996 and almost died making Heroes. Heroes got crunched so badly Iizuka (who was the level designer for Heroes) stopped eating for weeks until he got his part of the project done. Shadow the hedgehog exists because he played Jak III while recovering and learning how to eat again. Naka didn't care anymore either, having been reduced to an executive producing or chief producing many games per year, his days as programmer behind him