What happened to the Sonic Ripoff Games? #sonic
16,942What happened to the Sonic Clones?
When Sonic Blew up and got really popular in the 90s, a lot of studios rushed to make their own side scrolling anthropomorphic hero with a big attitude, in hopes of creating the next Sonic like character.
First and most famously of this bunch is Bubsy the Bobcat, first introduced in 1993, he is the most successful Sonic inspired character having 6 official releases, the most recent coming out 2019: Bubsy: Paws on Fire!
Next is Socket, which sounds like Sonic, but he is a Blue Duck not a blue hedgehog. He had 1 Genesis release in 1993 and that was the first and last time we saw him.
Then there is Aero the Acro-Bat, He kinda looks like a fusion of Sonic and Roughe the Bat, and we has first introduced in 1993, with HD Releases later in 2002, 2010, and even in 2024. While it was essentially the same platformer, it was pretty impressive how he was able to stay in the timeline off of 1 title.
And who can’t forget Awesome Possum, this released in 1993, and was one of the first titles to use Digitized speech instead of simple text boxes which was groundbreaking for 1993, There was only 1 title of Awesome Possum, but all of these mascots really attempted to be like sonic, not just with Games, but also merchandise and potential animated series that fell flat.
Lastly is Jazz Jackrabbit which came out in 1994, but in terms of mechanics, this one operates more like Metroid than Sonic, but the mascott being an Antrhopromoic rabbit during the gold rush of so many studios rushing to make Antrhopromoic gaming heroes was not a coincidence.