Development of Sonic the Hedgehog was “terribly controversial”, says PlayStation’s Mark Cerny, describing his time at Sega as “brutal”

The original Sonic the Hedgehog was a “horrible controversy” for Sega, according to PlayStation spokesman Mark Cerny, who detailed its development in a new interview.

Cerny was the lead system architect for Sony's PS4 and PS5 consoles, but began his career at Atari before moving to Sega and founding the Sega Technical Institute of America. It was this team that developed the sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 2after the original game was made in Japan.

When he first saw Sonic the Hedgehog, “it was obvious the game was going to be a success,” Cerny told journalist Simon Parkin on Podcast “My Ideal Console”.

Was there a need to find a mascot that could compete with Nintendo's Mario? “Our goal was to create a game that could sell a million copies,” Cerny responded, before describing the game as “terribly controversial” due to the increased resources focused on the game, which ultimately led to Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka's departure from Sega.

“Part of the idea was… Let's put a lot more resources into this project than we normally would,” Cerny said. “Like I said, business as usual? Three people, three months. So they were going, if I remember correctly, three people, ten months. But in the end they needed four and a half people for 14 months. I'm a little hazy on numbers these days. And although it was a success, they blew their budget so much by hiring a couple of engineers to do it that Yuji Naka just got yelled at and left the company.”

Cerny admitted that “it's paying off fantastically well for Sega” due to the game's success. “But Yuji Naka was pretty tired of this situation by that time.” Cerny described Naka as a “top tier creator making $60,000.” [after a bonus] in their best year and they got yelled at a lot. And he got it.”

As you know, the development of the Sonic series was divided after the success of the first game. Development of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 moved to the Sega Technical Institute of America, founded by Cerny, which included original developers Naka and designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. Meanwhile, in Japan, another Sonic game was developed by the co-creator of the original game, Naoto Oshima, which was intended to be a sequel, but ended up being Audio CD.

Cerny noted that “no one realized how big Sonic would become” either at Sega Japan or in America. “Sonic comes out and almost immediately I have a team ready to work on a sequel, and you want a sequel? And I got a rejection from Sega of America, it's too early. Make another game first,” he said.

This soon changed following the sales of Sonic the Hedgehog during its first Christmas period, which quickly led to the development of a sequel by STI.

Cerny generally described his time at Sega as “brutal”. “Atari was great and Sega was difficult,” he said. “It was a difficult environment with a tenacious president who was going to lead us to success. That doesn't mean there wasn't an incredible amount of filming with the people I worked with, but it was just brutal.” Nakayama [president of Sega Japan] would come and just give it to us if he didn’t see what he wanted to see happening.”

“Leaving Sega was a very rewarding thing,” he said, before adding: “Nakayama is amazing. He understood games like no one else… Just working for Nakayama was difficult, and seven years was enough.”

Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka has since fallen out of favor. After leaving Sega in 2006, he later developed Balan Wonderworld with Enix Square which was considered a critical and commercial failure upon release in 2021. He soon left the company and accused Square Enix of removing him as director six months before launch.

Then, in 2022, he was arrested for insider trading at Square Enixwhat led to suspended prison sentence.