Let's make something brand new with all-new levels,' that's where the start of the concepting happened after Mania, but everything came to a stop,' Iizuka said. 'A lot of the things that we talked about with Christian, you know, 'Let's make it a visually rich game that's not based in pixel. Let's not do the Mania thing of reusing stuff. It seemed that both SEGA and the Mania developers were aligned on exactly what they wanted a sequel to look like.

Takashi Iizuka recalls the original conversations that he had with Whitehead post-Mania that eventually led to a prototype using Evening Star's Star Engine 'that played with depth in 2.5D'.

Sonic Mania 2 was never in development, though, because we actually agreed early on that we should try to make something fresh, like hand-drawn 2D or 2.5D.' 'Evening Star did work with Sega to explore possible directions Classic Sonic could go after the success of Sonic Mania. 'When we started Evening Star, it was always our goal to move beyond 2D pixel art into 3D games, and develop all-new, original IP,' Whitehead continues. In reality, while it's very possible that there were some degree of creative differences during those early 'Sonic Mania' post-mortem discussions - and some of those differences may have had an influence on Evening Star's decision to develop its own game rather than work with SEGA - it's also clear that any such differences and decisions would have been entirely professional. The rumour - largely created by self-described, historically-haphazard 'gaming insiders' (linked in GameInformer's story) and circulated around social media for years - was arguably responsible for a significant shift in Sonic community discourse during the late 2010s, as fans argued on the assumption that SEGA had mistreated one of its development partners. Whitehead made it clear that Evening Star's non-involvement in Superstars - or indeed a Sonic Mania sequel - was not the result of any 'break up' or 'extremely unreasonable' attitudes, as had been strongly rumoured. 'Contrary to any rumors, we maintain a friendly relationship with Sega and hope fans are pumped to play both games once they release,' he said.

But, Evening Star had desires to develop its own 3D adventure in Penny's Big Breakaway, and so Naoto Ohshima's Arzest studio ended up on board the new project. In a fresh interview with GameInformer, Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka and Evening Star's Christian Whitehead discuss the conversations their teams had following Sonic Mania's success - ideas that eventually formed the basis for Sonic Superstars. SEGA and Evening Star have smashed long-standing rumours that there is 'bad blood' between the two companies, and that this resulted in a potential 'Sonic Mania 2' project from moving forward into development.

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