Something I'm interested in nearly as much as the Sonic franchise are fighting games. Specifically the 2D types, like Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Guilty Gear, Marvel vs Capcom, Skullgirls, etc.

And for the longest time, my mind's been swimming with concepts for movesets for Sonic characters if they were in a fighting game, and that eventually had grown into a full-on game concept that's been plaguing my thoughts all year round, I've already talked about some of my concepts on Tumblr as if it were a real game, but I thought it'd be best to share these thoughts here as well, as along with getting some more minds in this concept.

The working title here is...


Not the most original name, but I like it.

Mind you as well I'm a bit on the kayfabe that this is an actual game, so don't get confused if I start talking as if this is a real thing.

I'LL BE USING A LOT OF FIGHTING GAME TERMINOLOGY HERE. IF YOU ARE CONFUSED YOU CAN REFER TO THE FIGHTING GAME GLOSSARY FOR HELP.



This is a 2D fighting game that takes elements mostly from Marvel vs Capcom 3, Dragon Ball FighterZ and Skullgirls, but with Sonic characters! Fights are your typical one-on-one best-to-two, with a timer to stop fights from going too long. There are three attack buttons, Light, Medium, and Heavy, alongside a fourth "Unique Action" button akin to Blazblue's "Drive" button, a button reserved for character-specific actions such as extra attacks or movement options.

How the character moves depends on the specific character. Some characters get and air-dash, some get a double-jump, some get both or multiple of them and some get none. Though universally everyone has a super jump, a backdash, and a run.


The exciting part! And also the most complicated...

My vision for the roster is going semi-realistic. Which means keep it all within reason, like if they have a chance to be in a game or have any capabilities of fighting at all, so characters like Big the Cat or Sally Acorn are a no-go despite how much I want the Freedom Fighters in this biz.

While I have a pretty extensive roster in my head, I'm abridging it all so the first post isn't all too bloated. Plus I can just add in details and mention other characters later.

Sonic the Hedgehog:

An aggressive rushdown/mixup character. His Unique Action consists of a Boost, tied to a unique meter as well, which lets him quickly cover distance on the ground while passing through projectiles, or give him an extra air-dash in the air. 

His movement is simple, but nuanced, which has Sonic considered to be among the top 3 best characters in the game for his crazy mixup game and unrelenting pressure with his speed that leaves no room for the opponent to breath and lets him get a combo off of the simplest confirms, and he's hard to keep away given how he can completely crush the projectile game.

The only big flaw in his character is, funny enough, struggling to get in once his Boost Gauge is spent, rare that situation is for a decent Sonic player. Even though he has the fastest running speed in the game, it means nothing if you're just running into your opponent's attack, and many of his advancing moves also leave him open. Weirdly enough, he isn't good for newcomers because of that.

Blaze the Cat:

The game's dedicated honest shoto. Blaze's moves are as average as can be, with a standard fireball, rising DP and forward-moving tatsu move. Though with this simple moveset, Blaze sports an impressive combo game that ranks her high on most people's tier-lists for not being all that unique, but excellent at what she does.

Overall, Blaze excels at being a jack-of-all-trades character with no big strengths but no big flaws either, and all-rounder through and through that managed to survive being overshadowed by the DLC characters. She is the beginner-friendly character you want to pick up first if you're not sure on anybody yet.

Metal Sonic:

THE top-tier. Uncontested since his debut in Season 1. Metal Sonic can do a little bit of everything but amped up to 11, mixup, pressure, keepaway, you name it and he's got it and he's hated for it.

Metal's most infamous move which had him sought to be banned in some tournaments is his Chest Laser Beam, shortened to THE BEAM. An unblockable fullscreen super that tries to balance itself in having loads of startup, but with how easy Metal can run an Oki game, he can basically guarantee hits with THE BEAM for unavoidable damage.

THE BEAM is also the reason why Metal vs Tangle is considered a 9/1 matchup in favor of Metal, since Tangle has no low-profiles to speak of which are the most reliable way of dodging Metal's projectiles without jumping and making yourself vulnerable in the air. And Tangle's gigantic hitboxes don't help the matchup at all for her.

Surge the Tenrec & Kitsunami the Fennec:

Added in Season 1, Surge & Kit break the mold for all the other characters that originate from the comic from the fact they're actually competitively viable. Surge is a brute-force bruiser of a character much like Knuckles, but she has Kit in the background for specific attacks and unique Rekka chains that let her run scary pressure, do some massively damaging loops and even an infinite. All with the Kit moves providing pressure at long distance.

Though Surge has a bit of a memetic status as a character because of one of her Supers, 'You Forgot About Kit!'.

It has no Super Flash upon activation and only does it if it hits. The move itself having Kit appear behind the opponent and attempt to grab them with his water tendrils. If successful, Kit traps the opponent in a water bubble that Surge then electrifies, leading to some decent damage and Oki right afterwards. Since it's a command-grab it can only hit raw or counter-hit on grounded opponents, if they're either airborne or in prejump, Kit will just grasp at air and Surge is left open as she does an animation scolding Kit.

The catch is this move can be done when Surge is knocked down as well, with the caveat of having Super Flash before the move is active, but Surge isn't left vulnerable if it whiffs.

It's an infamous move since Surge players are inclined to always use it when they're knocked down with little to no drawback since Surge builds meter so fast, so at the end of the day, no one will ever forget about Kit.

Personally i think this would be perfect! i would love this game if it was reality, im very curious about what your ideas for skins would be though!

I haven't even thought about alternate skins!

If we're imagining this game having a 2D artstyle, I can imagine it doing something like how Skullgirls does it's alternate palettes.



Left is Beowulf's default palette, right is one of his alts. Notice how the alt palette gives Beowulf visual elements he normally doesn't have in his design, like a mustache, mask and gloves. Possible due to their color mapping having these extra elements, Beowulf technically always has the gloves, it's just that they're painted the same colors as his arms in his default palette.

I can see a similar thing being done in Sonic the Fighters EX. Advanced color mapping can be used in alternate skins to say, give Sonic stripes on his quills, Knuckles some bands around his dreads, Metal Sonic extra stripes so he can look like Metal Sonic 3.0. So on and so forth.

Lanolin the Sheep:

Considered an odd fish-out-of-water characters in many regards. Part due to being yet another IDW rep that isn't Whisper, part from being such an odd pick for being DLC so late in the game's life, and mostly due to her lackluster playstyle that simply feels like it belongs in another game.

Lanolin is a sort of grappler/counter hybrid character, like Blue Mary in King of Fighters. With counters and grapple followups for a lot of her moves, including one of the few charge moves in the game with her shoulder tackle.

Her Unique Action is her Wisp, Maggie, one of the simpler UAs which is weird given she's DLC. Leaves a lingering hitbox in a space above her for the grounded version, and below her for the aerial version. Opponents hit by it will be put in very high stun which leads to easy conversions, and Maggie's attack will also delete any projectiles that it comes into contact with.

On paper, she sounds like a pretty decent character but the devil is in the detail. A lot of her moves are pretty slow and stubby compared to the rest of the cast, and overall she has pretty limited mobility with slow ground speed and no air movement to speak of, but without the payoff of big damage as seen with characters like Eggman and Omega. Her only reliable hit-confirm, Maggie, lets her combo off of the simplest graze but the damage scaling off of a Maggie starter is abysmal.

With her being often planted on the ground and kitted with counter-moves, you'd think she'd excel at being a stone wall of a character, but in a game where movement is key and Lanolin has to counter correctly between either overhead/mid attacks or low attacks, she's more just left sitting there praying for a lucky hit so she can do her admittedly pretty strong albeit precise shoulder tackle loops.

And forget using Maggie for anything but swatting a Tails or Tangle out of the air, there's very little characters that rely on projectiles anyways, and Maggie can't delete Super projectiles.

Lanolin doesn't see much of (if any) play in tournament, but she has a pretty dedicated community of players that take a liking to her turtling playstyle that juxtaposes such a movement-heavy game that emphasizes daring the opponent to approach you after getting a health lead. Lanolin being good at keeping a lead doesn't matter all that much when she struggles to get said lead, but I can't deny it's still a joy to see a Lanolin player deny a spammy Knuckles at times.

Er, the fangame Sonic Smackdown already did this.

(11-23-2024, 12:09 AM)Ryan the Game Master Wrote: Er, the fangame Sonic Smackdown already did this.

Please don't bring snide into this.

I'm well aware of Sonic Smackdown's existence. This thread is just about expressing both the love for Sonic and fighting games with the narrative of a fictional game that could have existed. And even if this was about actually making a game, there's nothing wrong with there being more Sonic fighters out there.

(11-23-2024, 07:26 AM)Tominique Wrote: Please don't bring snide into this.

I'm well aware of Sonic Smackdown's existence. This thread is just about expressing both the love for Sonic and fighting games with the narrative of a fictional game that could have existed. And even if this was about actually making a game, there's nothing wrong with there being more Sonic fighters out there.

...I wasn't being snide.

I didn't see the snide but I believe @ was expressing for a deeper, all original game, where as Sonic Smackdown really just put Sonic skins over existing fighters.

(11-30-2024, 01:29 PM)NeoMetallix Wrote: I didn't see the snide but I believe @ was expressing for a deeper, all original game, where as Sonic Smackdown really just put Sonic skins over existing fighters.

This isn't even that complicated. I just wanna nerd out about Sonic and fighting games at the same time and this is the framing I have for it. Yes, I got my gripes with Sonic Smackdown for exactly what you've just said, but I'm not actually a pitching a game here because I think I can do better or something, this has nothing to do with Smackdown.

I'm just fascinated by fighting games in both a technical sense and the community around them, and I find myself daydreaming about this what-if official Sonic fighter that's as broken and unbalanced as my favorite FGs and how characters would be adapted into a game like that and how players would see these characters, abuse theirs strengths (or overcome their weaknesses) and rank them in both a tournament and casual level. And this is an outlet for that and possibly for other with similar interest to join in.

I think I did just skim over that this is all just fictional babbling in the start of the thread, so I hope this clears it up better.