Takashi Yuda spares a brief few moments to talk about Sonic's next appearance...

Sonic is back again along with familiar friends and some new rivals. Billed as air boarding racing combining extreme sports with some really slick and fast racing, where tricks and stunts are plentiful, TVG's own mad cap racer managed a brief tete-a-tete with Takashi Yuda - Producer from the Sonic Team.

After the release of Sonic R why the decision was made to return to a racing title and is Sonic Riders a continuation of the original Saturn title?

Incidentally, Sonic Riders has nothing to do with Sonic R... The first reason we decided to develop a racing game was because a racing title had been long desired by the Sonic fans. Secondly, the fact we could now successfully create a convincing race game that incorporates the Sonic action elements well led us to the development.

The restructuring of SEGA's internal studios has been dramatic; can you tell us a little about the impact of these changes and the reorganization of Sonic Team after their implementation?

Certainly we underwent reorganization, but there was little change for Sonic Team itself except that our department name changed.

In Sonic Riders players can choose from a range of different characters to race including Knuckles, Tails, and of course Sonic himself. How do the skills and attributes differ between them, for instance does the relative size of the characters affect the speed of the board, or do the attributes come from the racing boards themselves?

The characters are basically categorized by three Skill types (Speed, Fly and Power); Speed-type characters can perform "Grind", the Fly-types can fly, and the Power-types can destroy obstacles. We prepared special tracks suited to each of the three skills and the game structure means the player has to think how they should complete stages by using the best character for each course.

Many spin-off racing titles feature their characters in a range of land based vehicles, why was the decision made to use hover boards in Sonic Riders and how does this decision affect the various aspects of the game's design?

The main feature of Sonic Riders is the Turbulence, a half pipe-shaped slipstream on which snowboards are the most suitable way of enjoying the tracks. This basic fact led us to the concept of an Airboard as a self-propelled board.

Is Sonic Riders fundamentally based around racing or tricks; perhaps you could elaborate on some of the techniques available to the player?

The title has a clear-cut principle that performing Tricks equals gaining speed, and this makes Tricks an essential element in pursuing speed. As for the Tricks themselves, they include some snowboarding techniques, but we also prepared a lot of original Tricks you can hardly imagine!

What would you say are the real innovations of the game and what surprises factors will excite gamers?

The game is very much characterized by Turbulence generated by the player running ahead of you. They make halfpipes in various places which means that the tracks change each time meaning there you can use diverse strategies to win the race.

With this, you can discover routes you cannot usually reach without successfully performing Tricks. This sets the title apart from typical racing titles where you just go around predetermined courses.

If there's one key criticism that's consistently appeared throughout Sonic's adventures in 3D it's that the camera isn't suited to the fast paced nature of the games; have you made any effort to rectify this with Sonic Riders?

This time we took a camera system totally different from that used in the previous Sonic titles. This was to enable the user to ride Turbulence and to seek to achieve high visibility on the tracks.

Do you believe Sonic's core gameplay and emphasis on speed can ever be fully realised in a 3D title?

We believe Sonic Riders realizes the core gameplay and speed of Sonic satisfactorily.

During the course of Sonic Riders' development, has the focus been on trying to push the technical envelope or has strong gameplay been the real prime factor?

Most of the emphasis for Sonic Riders during development was on gameplay as we know most Sonic title enthusiasts wanted to see a racing game in the first place.

What next for the Sonic brand; we know of Sonic's next-gen debut on the Xbox 360 and Playstation3, will this return the core gameplay back to its origins. How did you feel Shadow the Hedgehog was received and whatever happened to the original concept for Sonic on the Nintendo DS?

Unfortunately, we cannot give specific answers at this time, however, we can promise to create titles that will not disappoint users' expectations (So no Shadow sequels we take it - Ed). So, don't miss them!

TVG would like to thank Yuda-san for taking some time to answer our questions. For those that can't get enough of Sonic, Sonic Riders is slated for release during Spring 2006...