The game was developed from scratch in eight months, beginning in July 1995. It was originally titled "Sonic Spindrift". Burton, who served as lead programmer, implemented an exception handler where, should an error occur, the game would greet the player with a secret level select screen instead of crashing; this was done so the game could easily pass Sega's approval process for publishing games. Burton also gave the game a unique full motion video intro sequence, and used compression methods to make the video fit in the 4MB cartridge and appear higher resolution. The game makes use of some pre-rendered 3D models converted into sprites. The team decided to use 3D instead of 2D because they thought "it was time for something new." Inspiration for the isometric viewpoint was drawn from "Sonic Labyrinth" (1995) and "Super Mario RPG" (1996). The item collection was influenced by the 1984 "Flicky" game, and the graphics were inspired by "Donkey Kong Country" (1994). Sonic Team provided Traveller's Tales with game, level, and character designs. Burton remembered the partnership with Sega fondly, recalling that he greatly enjoyed "making a machine do something you haven't seen it do". Towards the end of development, Traveller's Tales began to expand its scope, and Burton passed the rest of programming to his employees.