There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. The most famous bits you’ll likely be familiar with - the Sonic 2 prototype, Sonic Xtreme and the oddity that is Sonic Crackers are all well-documented. So we thought we’d discuss some things that have been discovered in the last few years, and aren‘t so well known.

One of the best ones is Honey. Who is Honey? She’s a cat character that has never made an official appearance in any Sonic game. That’s not to say she’s not ever been in a Sonic game, but that’s going to wait a bit. To get the full story on Honey, we’ve got to go back to a popular 1995 arcade game by AM2, Fighting Vipers. Created to provide an alternative to Virtua Fighter 2, this had some unusual characters never revealed to players: lead programmer Daichi Katagiri, Sonic and Tails. It’s typical of the in-joking you get during the development of a game, but this little bit of joking around led to the idea of Sonic the Fighters, and indeed provides the entire basis for it - it runs on the same engine as Fighting Vipers. Fast forward a bit and during the development of Sonic the Fighters, the programmer decided to do another joke, this time adding a character from Fighting Vipers to the Sonic game. The choice was one of his own creations, a character called Honey who used various feline-themed moves and was one of the more popular characters in Fighting Vipers. However, unlike Sonic and Tails (who were ported to Fighting Vipers as themselves), Honey got turned into Sonic-style character in the process, and what better character to choose than a cat? Here she is:

Honey, in her Sonic series form

However, despite her data remaining in the arcade game and being complete with a full move set and two costumes (both based on her Fighting Vipers colours), Honey was never playable in Sonic the Fighters. The only official evidence of this strange crossover is in the Saturn’s FMV introduction to Fighting Vipers, but everything went quiet and Honey’s cat form didn’t even appear in Sega’s classic Fighters Megamix, which was primarily a Virtua Fighter / Fighting Vipers crossover, but featured characters from other games - including an unfinished Virtua Fighter reject, and Sonic the Fighters characters. So how was all this additional information discovered? Ages spent sifting through the code of the arcade games and poking around with character values, after being given a helpful lead by Sonic Gems Collection. That’s the kind of thing that goes on at the Cult.

Now, I’m going to ask a simple question. What was the second Sonic the Hedgehog game? If you said Sonic 2, you were wrong - though we wouldn‘t blame you for saying that, since Sega seems to have forgotten the game we’re thinking of too. The answer is Sonic Eraser, an amazingly obscure puzzle game that was released over Sega Japan’s Meganet service. Back when the company was still making consoles, it always seemed to have a thing for the internet. Combine that obsession with Sega’s love for creating failed Mega Drive / Genesis add-ons, and you get the Mega Modem - a blisteringly fast 1200bps modem used to download small games (among other things). One of these games was a small two-player puzzler designed to promote Sonic, called Sonic Eraser. This title was unknown to Western gamers for about 13 years, eventually being found and documented in 2004 by Sonic Cult.

The one on the right is pretending not to know the drunk on the left...

So how can you play this? Well, you could do what we did and sign up to the Japan-only Sega Gamehompo (a legal Mega Drive and Mega-CD emulation service). The only problem is, that requires a Japanese address and a way of paying. If not, then you’re just out of luck - Sega hasn’t released it outside of Japan. Your only hope is that Sega will bundle it into a collection with Knuckles’ Chaotix and SegaSonic Arcade, pad it with the same old Game Gear games (and a few cool Mega Drive games that will inevitably be cut from non-Japanese versions), ignore non-Archie Sonic comics as bonus material, and put it on the shelves as a token gesture to long-term fans of the series. Not that Sega would ever do that though, right guys?

And there’s the strangest feeling of all for an anniversary - a sense that Sega perhaps doesn’t care about the fanbase that has been there from the start. The ones that have stuck there through the quiet Saturn years, the brief Dreamcast years and the rather disappointing recent years. Sometimes, you just get the feeling that the only reason you’re there is to buy ever-flimsier retro collections in an attempt to recapture the fast, exciting gameplay that drew you in. Of course, when someone gets it right, a Sonic game can be an incredibly exciting experience - Sonic Rush is more than enough proof of that - but the series has succumbed to financial concerns. The same old 3D gameplay (largely based on a design from eight years ago) is trotted out year after year, occasionally accompanied by a strange spin-off and a version of Sonic the Hedgehog on a plug and play console / mobile phone / retro download service (delete as applicable), with the seemingly mandatory new character for each new game. So we’d like to present a challenge to Sega: be bold.

A re-release of Sonic the Hedgehog, yesterday

Do something different. After all, wasn’t it a bold outlook that created Sonic and catapulted Sega to the very top of the industry? It certainly wasn’t exclusively targeting the under-13 audience (lucrative as that may be). So change the pace. There's a reason that the old games were so well-received, and continue to find fans. The fact it, some of us would prefer not to have a new character in every game, not to have to deal with hunting / shooting / telekinesis (delete as applicable), and not to complete the same game four times to see the ending. Shadow the Hedgehog has an average score on Gamerankings of just under 50%, and it can be bought for £13 new or £8 used, if you're that way inclined. It's clear that something is not going quite right. It might be a risk to change the formula - after all, the Sonic series is still selling well - but Sega has almost exhausted all the goodwill the back catalogue can provide.

So what can be done about this? Here's a little hint - don't just re-release the old games, learn from them. Those games weren't long, they were linear, and they were focused on a single type of platforming gameplay. Most crucially, the player was always in control. Maybe you’re thinking “wait, the modern console market wants long, varied, non-linear games", and you may well be right - I’m not denying that. But the gameplay people expect from a Sonic game always did suit a short, instant gratification style. If the demands of a console audience don't allow a design that plays to the strengths of the series, then sideline the consoles and look for a platform which people will expect to provide Sonic's trademark quick hits. If the best platform for the long-awaited continuation of the 2D Mario series is the Nintendo DS (oh come on, you knew someone was going to mention Sonic’s nemesis - let us not forget that without Mario, Sega would never have created Sonic to compete), why not have a similarly bold move for Sonic? Judging by the general warm reception Sonic Rush received, handhelds might be a good choice, and with the current hardware it can be done in 2D or 3D. Or to be really daring, why not do an arcade game? Think about it: the high-end graphical capabilities of Sega’s Lindbergh board married to a 3D embodiment of the Sonic Rush ethos - high impact, high speed, and high scores. No time for any new characters, no need to make the player trudge through hours of tedious replays or alternate gameplay just to make the player feel like they got value for money. With the advent of low-cost IC memory cards (which Sega uses for other games such as Ghost Squad), you can even make a relatively long game. It's a risk, sure, but if Sega wants to avoid low review scores and discounted stock then it has to try something a bit radical. Sonic games have been and can be great - give them the right environment, and "can be" becomes "will be".

The starting point for so many Sonic researchers, Hidden Palace Zone

For the 15th anniversary of Sonic, members of Sonic Cult will be celebrating the great Sonic games that we've played, the sense of excitement that comes with being first to the weird and wonderful discoveries, and the great Sonic games that we could be playing in the future. Above all, we'd like to invite you to join us in doing that.