Hi everyone, I have recently become fascinated by the development process of Sonic ’06. I find the ambition/promise vs how it actually turned out to be incredible and would like to learn more about it and how the team handled the various challenges thrown at them. It's incredible that this game released when it did considering the challenges of Yuji Naka leaving, breaking the team in half for SatSR, and pressure from Sega and Microsoft to release the game by Christmas. Most of the sources that I can find don’t elaborate much beyond stating the challenges I listed above. I've read most/all of the articles that come back for a simple "Sonic '06 development history" Google search. I’ve been scouring the web for a while trying to find additional sources or interviews from team members about what happened during this time but can’t seem to find much. I suppose this makes sense as Sega and Sonic Team members likely wanted to distance themselves as far as possible from this game after it came out. It seems that many other Sonic games such as the cancelled X-treme and the Adventure series have a well chronicled development history describing specific hurdles they faced. I wanted to know if more detailed sources/interviews exist about the development of ’06.
Matt McMuscles has a Wha Happun on it that I recently watched: I'd also like to know if there was ever any actual OST release for the game. SoaH has an MP3 rip of it that divides it into "discs" and are way too cleaned up to be standard game rips (correct artist attribution, looping, etc), but I can't find any listings at all, not even on Discogs, which lists stuff like not-for-sale CDr promos for bands and digital releases, which is extremely strange.
Unless I'm missing what you mean, there was an official soundtrack released which has two current versions, there's the digital version which is split up into 3 volumes on Spotify and other streaming services and then there is the original release which while I can't find it on Discogs does make an appearance on VGMDB.net and other databases. It apparently was published by Wave Master and SEGA Direct.
One thing that I rarely hear people bring up regarding Sonic 06's development is that Sonic Unleashed was apparently being planned out the same time. Considering Sonic Team USA was still around to work on Shadow the Hedgehog/NiGHTS JoD at the time, this would mean that Sonic Team was split up into four different parts!
Thanks for the pointers. Results: CD Japan somehow doesn't have it listed at all Wave-master.com has it listed but points to the JP sega store........whhhhiiiiich has it sold out. Typical. :/ Play-asia has a listing but it is naturally sold out (I don't listen to music on spotify) Nonetheless, this means I'll have a better time trying to find the release somewhere, anywhere. This is interesting because supposedly cut elements from 06 like having different hub worlds made it back into Unleashed...
As someone who's done tons of research regarding '06 over the past couple of years, yeah, quite a few '06 concepts ended up making it into Unleashed. These include: The night/day system The missions (e.g. find all the Chao, ghosts) The hub system The jump board model that was used in Unleashed is actually in the game's files Unleashed was basically a sort of apology for '06, so it's no surprise that Sonic Team used the game to include the concepts they weren't able to in '06.
I remembered I saw a video of someone showing off the OST release, and after a bit I found it. It also includes some more information about it if you are interested. Relevant info starts at 5:30
A couple things I want to add: ‘06 introduced a new set of sound effects for jumping, springs, etc that was reused in Unleashed, Colors, and Generations Eggman’s theme from ‘06 was reused in Unleashed and Colors. I find this in particular very interesting because the theme was meant for 06’s “realistic” Eggman in mind but it worked well for the more cartoony Eggman we saw in Unleashed and Colors
