Kazuyuki Hoshino on Sonic the Hedgehog CD Original Soundtrack:
Regarding the Visual of Sonic CD
The biggest theme in the visual aspect of Sonic CD was CG. I touched the Mac for the first time after joining the company and I was at the rank in which I said things like “Amazing, is this the personal computer!?”, so I had simple longing towards high-spec things, and what’s more, we had games of the new console SEGA CD strategically, integrating the elements slightly different from Sonic series up to that time, it was necessary to go on differentiating it. However, it is different from the art direction as we can see in the movies nowadays and as if we cannot distinguish between the CG made naturally, realistically and the real thing. Since it is a very dull era that the power of computers, as well as the equipment, does not become a comparison with the present, we could not make such things in the first place, so no one was thinking of making them. In those days, speaking of CG, the guy who said, “Sparkling and glittering CG indeed,” as you know, thought that the very thing is the coolest. As I went on collecting much CG information with Mr. Ohshima, our moods had also livened up gradually and we turned out to say, “First of all, let’s go with this from the title!” For Sonic who turns his face in the title screen, we took the photos of the figure with an instant camera and produced the animation based on the pictures captured with a scanner. As for Sonic himself, I think that it was completed as the feel clearly different from the things of Sonic series up to that time by making the highlights effective in the stress of contrast, making the emblem behind into metallic material, and uniting the entire screen in the quality of CG style.
Regarding Metal Sonic
In the moment I heard the settings known as Sonic’s arch-enemy and look-alike appearance, the image of the character design was almost ready already. I also adopted the metallic quality inevitably from the tendency of quality of CG style, which is the key visual concept of Sonic CD, so when I thought of the sanpaku eyes that redly rise to the surface from the black ground, it had a great effect that I believed in his long companionship with us afterward. Fortunately, I feel grateful that he appears in the latest game even now, and what’s more, there are also people drawing his illustrations in Europe, America, and others. It is also something I considered on the occasion of creating Shadow the Hedgehog later on, but since he is a rival character, I designed him thinking that the scene in which he competes with Sonic would probably be the best highlight scene after all. I thought that it would be boring for both of them to run with similar forms when they perform in a dead heat, and I proceeded with the sketch while looking for the ideas for making entirely different movements to them. Metal Sonic is a robot, so various possibilities had been considered, but in the case of simply pursuing the speed, I thought this would probably be the jet engine already. I made a big jet on his back and it’s the image that dashes after the gun is fired with a bang like the drag racing. It’s a powerful output to the extent that we cannot operate it if we do not control it with the built-in super high power computer. Designwise, it has also become his big characteristic, hasn’t it?