Interview

Hardlight Studio working on ‘reinvention of an existing SEGA IP’

Hardlight Studios’ chief technical officer Chris Southall joined us during the latest SEGA Nerdcast to talk about many things, including the Sonic Dash global challenge to unlock Shadow the Hedgehog, whether Dash will ever make it to Android devices, a “big” update that’s coming soon for the game and much more.

However, the most interesting tidbit came when we asked Southall what we can expect from Hardlight Studios after Sonic Dash.

“It’s not a Sonic game. I can also say it’s not an original [intellectual property]. It’s a reinvention of an existing IP,” Southall said. “Coming from the SEGA Rally and SEGA Racing Studio heritage, during that period, we were getting good links with some of the guys in Japan. So what we’ve been doing is working with the original game director of quite a famous old IP.

“We’ve just gone past pre-production, and we’re entering production on that title,” he added. “So we’ll announce something in the next six months.”

But before you get your hopes up that it could be that game making a comeback, Southall was quick to shoot it down.

“Just to get it out of the way, it’s not Shenmue,” he said.

With Southall and several other members of Hardlight coming from previous development of SEGA Rally, we wouldn’t be too surprised if the game was a new Outrun or Super Hang-On.

Chris Powell

Chris is the editor-in-chief of Mega Visions Magazine and the co-creator of SEGA Nerds. He was the former managing editor of Airman magazine and has written for publications like Joystiq, PSP Fanboy, RETRO magazine, among others.
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