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What Would've Happened If Shadow Permanently Died in SA2

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 First off, the world of Sonic would be vastly different without Shadow. At the end of SA2 ( Sonic Adventure 2 ), Super Shadow exerted most of his energy to help Super Sonic defeat Biolizard and use Chaos Control to teleport the ARK a safe distance from Earth. But in doing so, he became exhausted and plummeted to Earth, whispering words to Maria, and then vanished. Sonic returns to his friends, explaining that Shadow sacrificed himself for the good of mankind. In the end, Sonic says to the camera, "Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog," walks away, and the screen fades to black. For Sonic fans who've grown up playing the games that came after SA2 (including myself), this is a strange concept: gamers who were on the Sonic journey when SA2 released saw Shadow "die" and the game end. There was no promise of another Sonic game yet. There was no allusion to Shadow's survival. Thus, everyone thought Shadow was permanently dead, a one-game-only character who made a lastin

Chaos Sonic: The New Metal Sonic Everyone... Likes?

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When the trailer for season 2 of Sonic Prime debuted, fans were not fond of the new design for Metal Sonic. He looked slimmer and sleeker--far less like his original, menacing design. And with a screen for a face (or entire head, actually), he was cuter and wore more vivid emotions. While there were some similarities to the original design, they were scarce, and fans were not fond of the new design. Then season 2 debuted and everyone watched. Everyone saw Metal Sonic--ahem, excuse me, Chaos Sonic. Everyone stared as he battled and beat up Sonic, raced effortlessly, and would. Not. SHUT. UP . Chaos Sonic is snarky. Arrogant. Spiteful. Playful. Loves to hear himself talk. If you take some of Eggman's self-importance, a little bit of Surge's snappishness, some of Shadow's "you're-the-fake" POV, too much of Sonic's attitude, and some girly excitement, wrap all that in an expressive robot, you've got Chaos Sonic. In fact, I realized Chaos Sonic's attit

Charmy Bee is Subtly Fading from the Sonic-Verse

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Charmy Bee is the youngest member of the Chaotix and one of the youngest characters in the Sonic cast. He's been around for a surprisingly long time (debuting alongside the Chaotix in Knuckles' Chaotix waaaay back), but he's never had a serious character at all. Some might wonder how the Chaotix does anything with a bee child buzzing and somersaulting and shouting around them all the time! Charmy is a generally useless character with an overly hyper personality, which leads many fans to dislike his character, or at least tolerate it. He's the one character who is a young child and acts his age; while Cream is very ladylike for a child, and Tails' genius and experience quickly matured him, Charmy has the mind of the 6-year-old he is. And in a cast of serious heroes, determined detectives, and noble girls, a disruptive little kid doesn't really fit in. In the current IDW Sonic The Hedgehog comic series, Vector and Espio often exchange glances as if they know the

Review: "The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog"

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  This artsy scroll-and-click PC game requires little real “playing.” But that doesn’t make it a worthless game. In fact, it just may be one of the best. The story starts like this. It’s Amy Rose’s birthday, and what’s a girl gonna do? Ever extravagant, she hosts a murder mystery party aboard the luxury train, the Mirage Express! “Mirage” is a fitting name—nothing is really what it seems once it takes off. And when the train begins hurtling strangely fast, everyone is knocked out; when they wake, Sonic is apparently “murdered.” They think the game has begun, but a train employee thinks otherwise… Sonic looks severely wounded. In fact, he’s actually been… killed ?! How is this possible? This was supposed to be only a game! Well, it’s not a game anymore. Time to discover whodunit . The player is not one of our regular cast, however, but the brand new employee whose first day on the job happens to be while Amy hosts her party. You get to choose the name of this swe

The Biggest Plot Holes of "Sonic '06"

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"Sonic The Hedgehog"--aka Sonic '06 (because this particular title released in 2006)--is notorious for being the, quote en quote, "worst Sonic game in history." Sonic Team got split into several groups to work on other games, such as "Sonic Unleashed," which left a tiny group to finish Sonic '06. Because of the deadline looming over so few people, they had to release the game quickly. Which meant bugs were never fixed, items that didn't function were not taken out of the game entirely, glitches abounded, and... oh, those loading screens. Those infamously long loading screens. And the problems only hurt more because Sonic '06 had been hyped as a great game while it was in production, only to be the exact opposite upon release. But glitchy game or not, there's one thing that Sonic Team never could've repaired no matter the amount of people working on it: the storyline. Don't get me wrong; the Sonic '06 storyline isn't a b

Everyone Loves Surge. Here's Why.

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Surge the Tenrec is a new antagonist introduced to the IDW Sonic The Hedgehog comic series. The nefarious Dr. Starline created her and her "brother," Kitsunami the Fennec, as "copies" of Sonic and Tails. Kit is just as awesome as Surge, but I'm going to focus on Surge for this post. Fans love Surge, and it's more than because she's an amazing villain. Surge is heavily based off the infamous glitch from Sonic The Hedgehog 2 , known as Ashura . This bizarre glitch resulted in Sonic's color palette becoming green and black, identical to Surge's face, and the resulting look of Sonic became known as Ashura. Scourge the Hedgehog is also influenced by Ashura, and thus, Surge is not only based off Ashura, but also based off Scourge. For fans who are not familiar with Archie-Sonic , let me catch you up: way back in the mid-90s, Sonic's universe became a sprawling multiverse ( Marvel 's not the only one to try it). In one such universe, everything

Review: "Sonic Frontiers"--Arguably the Best Game in Sonic History

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No Sonic game, however hyped and prepared and done by the top peeps in the Sonic Team, is perfect. But Sonic Frontiers came dead close. This is my review of Frontiers . Before I get into gameplay, I gotta admit, I had super high expectations for Sonic Frontiers . Now, Frontiers isn’t flawless, so some aspects made me go “awww” (with a sad face, not a heart-eyed face). But those aspects are few, far between, and really not so important. The animation is incredible, as is the detail, including for the Starfall Islands—especially during gameplay! Cut scene animation is very similar past Sonic cut scene animations, though they aren’t afraid to show off characters’ powers and more realistic reactions to events, and more emotional scenes are really very gripping. Many scenes are, in fact, movie quality animation. It’s great to have the same voice actors doing everyone’s voices that they’ve been doing for years, and hearing Roger Craig Smith (Sonic) lower his voice to ma