By 1996 the videogame industry was rapidly changing. 3D gaming was swiftly taking over the market and developers were scrambling to stick the landing on the leap into the third dimension. In spite of this, Sega quickly greenlit a sequel for BlueSky Software’s surprise Mega Drive hit Vectorman for the ageing 16-bit console. Meanwhile, times were changing within BlueSky as well, despite becoming a close ally of Sega Of America during the first-half of the Nineties, the studio backed out of a deal to be bought out by Sega, instead hoping to spread its wings onto other platforms. Furthermore, the studio split itself into numerous smaller internal teams, each taking on their own game. A majority of Vectorman’s original crew leapt at the chance to work on what was seen as more exciting projects on newer hardware. Nonetheless, BlueSky had its obligations and a small team, eventually dubbed Drooling Dog Studios, was formed to develop one of the Mega Drive’s final hurrahs, Vectorman 2.
While ’s team enlisted many fresh faces, a handful of veterans returned for’s pre-production phase, messy office politics at the time saw him pulled off the project shortly after development on the game began in earnest. But with most of the studio’s focus invested in other projects, Jason was able to take the reins back with the sequel as the lead designer. He decided to run the show differently than before this time around, avoiding what Jason amusingly calls the “Moses Design Method” where the designer disappears for a number of days before delivering a game design document unto the team to be reverently adhered to as the word of God.
