Sonic the Fighters (GameCube) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
3,261A playthrough of Sega's 1996 3D arcade versus-fighting game Sonic the Fighters. This recording is of the game as it appeared in the 2005 Nintendo GameCube compilation disc, Sonic Gems Collection.
Played as Sonic the Hedgehog on the normal difficulty level.
Sonic the Fighters (or Sonic Championship, as the original arcade game was called in the US and Europe) was the very first fully 3D Sonic game ever produced, pre-dating Sonic R by a fair margin. It was developed by the infamous Sega AM2 team and ran on the then-cutting edge Sega Model 2 arcade hardware, and was largely modelled after the core gameplay of Fighting Vipers.
Apparently Sega had planned a port for the Saturn, but later cancelled the project after deeming it too violent a portrayal of their family-friendly mascot.
The game plays a lot like Fighting Vipers and Virtua Fighter Kids, albeit in simplified form. You get your choice of eight characters from the 90s Sonic universe, though at the time, if you hadn't played Knuckles Chaotix for the 32X, you probably wouldn't have been familiar with the entire roster. If you've ever played Fighters Megamix, though, some of these guys should be familiar to you. You'll probably also recognize a few of them if you've been playing the new Sonic Forces game (which is excellent, btw, haters be damned).
Each character has a Chaos Emerald to collect, and upon getting all eight, you take on Metal Sonic and Dr. Robotnik (Eggman) to destroy the Death Egg II, which bears a striking resemblance to the Death Star (If someone had used it as a huge lollipop holder).
The graphics look great for a title from 1996. The cartoon style allowed for a lot of detail and expression in the characters, even if the rounded bodies do show evidence of the limited number of polygons being used to construct them (though those poly-counts were quite impressive for the time - the game is 21 years old now!), and the arenas show off some cool effects with real-time shadows and dynamic backgrounds. The sound is typical of a 90s fighter - it's loud, obnoxious, hyperactive, and intended to draw your attention. I gotta say, it does succeed on all of those counts. It's insanely catchy.
The gameplay is fun and fast, but it's a bit shallow compared to Sega's other fighting games at the time. The combo system is fairly limited, and though there are a ton of moves at your disposal, many of them are pretty redundant in their usefulness. There's definitely some strategy at play here, but there's a good reason why this never became a big exhibition-style tournament fighter. I enjoyed it for its goofiness and how easy it is to pick up and play, but it hasn't enough depth to really last long.
Sonic the Fighters is a pretty fun novelty, though, and the lack of any home port until the Sonic Gems Collection (and the later HD upscaled version on Xbox 360/PS3) means that it is one of the lesser known Sonic games out there, despite being the first 3D title in the series. If you like cutesy fighting games or Sonic I general, it's definitely worth a look!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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