Keep in mind the game we're getting as «Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love» is really Sakura Wars 5 in Japan, as the West have never before
received a localized version of the game, and presumably Nippon Ichi America doesn't want customers getting scared off by the lack of the other four installments.
- for Sonic's 25th anniversary last year, Iizuka
received a task to deliver some sort of product - the target was «dormant fans» who used to play the SEGA Genesis, but haven't really played any games since - Iizuka met Christian Whitehead, which lead to the creation of Sonic Mania - there was talk of another port, but Iizuka thought fans would desire something new from the old games - this is the first time Iizuka partnered with a team of devs spread across various countries - Iizuka said this team had a greater passion to create - this was in comparison to companies that set decisions on a pre-determined schedule (in meetings, etc)- the team had so many features they still wanted to add after the beta
version was complete - since there were only a few spots with text that needed to be
localized, they could bring the game to more places quicker - the game has Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish support - the Studiopolis stage is included due to
receiving the most requests from the Sonic Mania development team - Iizuka actually considered reducing the amount of stages at one point in order to meet the development schedule - Sonic Mania doesn't really have much in the way of cut content like scrapped stages - since Sonic Mania was only distributed digitally, the team was able to continue working very close leading up to launch - this let them put in practically all ideas, and there are currently no plans for DLC - Iizuka recommended Flying Battery Zone for inclusion becaues he likes the music - he also likes when the player goes inside and outside the ship - Iizuka likes Mirage Saloon because the stage structure will be different depending on the player character chosen - Puyo Puyo gameplay was added because there was a Puyo Puyo game released in the west for the SEGA Genesis - this game was originally called «Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine», and the team thought it would make a fun boss battle - Iizuka didn't have plans to feature Blue Sphere in the special stages - the Blue Sphere special stages were brought over to Mania as a test, but ended up staying for the final game - the team felt the need to continuously connect stages from various eras, which is doe with the Phantom Ruby story - for Sonic Mania, it was decided that the technological limit would be set at SEGA CD, - this is higher than the Genesis but lower than Saturn - in creating a SEGA CD - grade special stage, they would intentionally make SEGA CD - grade polygons
They also have to factor in how well they think each specific item of content would be
received in a
localized environment, be it costumes or My Room content or entire cross-platform
versions of the game itself.