Like any long lasting franchise, Sonic is no stranger to its fair share of weird and
awkward and uncomfortably dark secrets.
In the first part of this list, we talked about dark ‘secrets’ that spawned from
hiccups or easter eggs interjected in the series by Sega themselves, and even some dark
hedgehog themed creations spawned by the fandom.
This time around we dive into a few Sonic secrets that have to do with the development
of the games, and some more that stem from the fandom.
So get prepared to be surprised and a little grossed out, with our list of the top 10 darkest
sonic secrets part 2.
10 Un-collectables Let’s start off this list with a bit of
a tease.
Did you know that some of the earlier Sonic games instruction manuals advertise items
that players can’t ever actually obtain?
In the Sonic 1 manual, there is an image in which an extra life icon appears.
Except the image is from a bonus stage that exists in an unfinished area outside of what
is playable.
It can be accessed through debug mode though.
In addition to that, the Game Gear manual for Sonic 2 mentions a pair of running boots
that are supposed to be available in the first level, yet no one has ever been able to find
them.
9 Reaction to Shadow wielding guns Less of a secret, more of a moment in Sonic
history that Sega would prefer you’d forget, let’s take a look at that solo game Shadow
received back in 2005 aptly titled Shadow the Hedgehog.
After the character’s debut in 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow rose in popularity.
Instead of being killed off like initially intended, Sega sought out ways to take advantage
of the newfound love for Sonic’s new antagonistic doppelganger.
So he got his own game, and the development team worked real hard to make it edgier than
a normal Sonic game, further emphasizing the differences between the two hedgehogs.
Unfortunately, this involved giving Shadow weapons that were guns – something the Sonic
franchise had never incorporated.
And the reactions were exactly as you’d imagine them to be.
Game Informer stated “not only is this new ‘adult’ interpretation of Sonic painfully
dumb, it’s also ill-advised and almost feels like a betrayal to longtime fans.”
The guns were also criticized for their poor integration into the game concerning mechanics
and “a lack of a target lock or manual aim, combined with an ineffective auto-aim.”
Ouch.
Shadow wielding guns has remained a joke amongst the gaming community as one of the dumber
inclusions in the franchise.
8 Reaction to Sonic Boom redesign If you didn’t think the reaction to Shadow
whipping around machine guns was all that harsh, wait till you hear what people thought
of Sonic Boom.
If you’re unfamiliar with it, Sonic Boom is a spin off franchise that included an animated
show, comics and three video games.
When it was announced that Sonic and co were getting a bit of a makeover, fans were curious
what that would involve.
But when the character designs were released in February of 2014, the internet practically
digitally vomited on them.
People viciously – but hilariously – began making fun of the fact that Sonic was wearing
weird bandages, that Knuckles looked like he was on steroids, and that Tails’ head
was the same height as Knuckles’ crotch.
The disproportionate limb sizes also caused quite the stir.
And so the memes began to spread like wild fire.
Poor Knuckles though, seems like he can never really catch
a break.
7 The Sonic Fanfic What would a mega successful franchise be
without a dose of sexually heated fan fiction?
Ah yes, Sonic is no stranger to being paired up with other characters in his universe.
And of course, fans out there have written up quite the steamy stories featuring him
getting his freak on.
This popular one in particular is called The Accident: Sonic and Amy’s Mistake, and features
the POV of multiple characters, along with sexually explicit descriptions of the two
getting it on.
Condoms involved.
While Amy is a particular favourite, Sonic has been paired up with others, or been the
butt of a sexual furry joke in other pieces of fanfiction.
Speaking of others,
6 The Shipping of Sonic/Shadow There is a massive sub community out there
who hard core ship Shadow and Sonic.
Take a look at this fan art.
Sometimes referred to as Sonadow, the speculation of this ship is due to the pair’s love hate
relationship.
Fans of the ship believe that Shadow is hiding his feelings for Sonic by being distant and
cruel to him, while Sonic “kills him with kindness”.
5 UFOS Moving back to development secrets – which
may be a bit of a relief to some of you – let’s take a look at another hidden piece of Sonic
history from the very first game.
The Sonic 1 beta had a pre-release phase in which footage captured of the game shows what
appears to be UFOs in the sky of the Marble Zone.
While the UFOs don’t do much of anything except twirl around in the sky, turns out
you can access them in the debug mode of the iOS/Android version of the game.
4 Michael Jackson bailing on his credit for Sonic 3
If you’re a fan of this channel, you’ve probably heard about this fact in a few of
our other videos.
Back in the day, there was a rumour that Michael Jackson was responsible for the original soundtrack
of Sonic 3.
Fans had noted the musical similarities, yet in the credits, Jackson wasn’t listed.
Eventually it came out that the King of Pop was responsible for the music, but various
reasons have been given as to why he is not credited.
This includes Sega not wanting his name on the project due to the allegations that had
surfaced in 1993 about Jackson and child sexual abuse.
Another reason was that Michael didn’t think the sound processing of the Sony Genesis was
up to par, and the sound quality diminished his work, therefore he didn’t want any mention
of his name on the final project.
3 Sonic Feeder Fan Art While we touched on a generalization of odd,
disturbing and sometimes sexually explicit Sonic fan art on our last list, there’s
a certain breed of fan art that we feel deserves a number of its own on this list.
The Sonic Feeder Fan Art.
What’s a feeder, your sweet innocent mind may ask?
Well, according to urban dictionary, a feeder is, I quote, “Usually a male who likes to
encourage weight gain in his partner through the consumption of food.”
As many of you may know, Sonic has been endowed by many fetishes over the years, and the feeder
community is no exception.
While some images are more explicit than others, most contain an overweight sonic, or another
character from the sonic canon with an oversized body.
There is also quite the interest in pregnancy fan art within the Sonic community, but that’s
for a whole other video.
2 Sonic Tell-All blog Back in 2007, a blog post surfaced from someone
who went by the name ‘jpeg’ and claimed to be someone who worked in the video game
industry.
He had been blogging since 2006, but it wasn’t until this post that he became a bit infamous.
In this post, jpeg mentioned that he knew Sonic Team on a personally on a professional
level, and discussed what he knew about and his lack of faith concerning the game NiGHTS:
Journey of Dreams, a game being worked on by Sonic Team.
The blog continued onwards to discuss Sonic Team and their overall internal troubles.
One of the many things jpeg noted was this statement.
I quote, “Sonic Team are a relic from a past age who have overstayed their welcome.
” He goes on to say that, “They should be dissolved - It may already be too late
for NiGHTS, but for the good of the company’s image, for the future of Sega’s other prestigious
IPs and lastly for its iconic mascot, it needs to be done…before they release another Sonic
game with a transforming Evil ‘Night’ Sonic who looks like a werewolf and can stretch
his arms out Dhalsim-style.”
Where does that sound familiar, eh?
A month after it had been published, the blog was removed, with jpeg soon leaving the blog
all together.
Readers managed to find an archived version of the post, and it was revealed that this
anonymous poster was in fact a Sega employee named Ben Andac, and most of what he claimed
has since been confirmed.
It just goes to show that there are a whole lot of issues over at Sega, and that their
own staff are largely unhappy.
Perhaps that’s why we keep getting poor quality Sonic games.
1 Sonic 3D Blast cheated the system If you think the internal workings of Sega
are a bit questionable at best after our last number, this one really takes the cake in
terms of what employees are willing to do to just push a Sonic game out as quickly as
possible.
The game Sonic 3D Blast came out in 1996 for the Genesis, Saturn and for Microsoft Windows,
and after its release a notorious rumour began circulating – if you hit the game cartridge,
a secret level menu would appear.
Turns out Jon Burns, the founder of Traveller’s Tales, worked on the game, and would hide
error messages by turning what would normally appear as a glitch or a crash into a level
screen.
This meant that when the games were tested in the mandatory certification process for
each console, it would seem that these glitches were all part of the game rather than being
a bug that needed to be fixed.
Sneaky.
There we have it friends!
How many of these little secrets did you know about?
Let us know in those comments below.
If you dig this video, feel free to hit those like and subscribe buttons, and why not check
out some of our other gaming videos, like the part 1 to this list, or our top 10 sonic
playlist?
In the meantime, thanks for watching everyone.
Catch you all in the next one.