Sonic the Fighters is Cool, Actually

I love how the game poster has the actual 3D models of the characters in it instead of more polished renders or some artist commissioned artwork. It's like they're so proud of their polygon count they're going "yeah kids, look at this, this is gonna sell, it's full 3D baby!"

My favorite thing about Fighters is Sonic and Knucles have their own rival theme song, 'North Wind.' I wish more fighting games did that

I get people disliked how easy the single player arcade mode is. Honestly though, it’s kind of refreshing to have a 90s fighting game where the AI isn’t blatantly cheating you out of quarters.

I really love the vibe of the game, AM2 puts such a distinct charm into their games that you just don’t see now

This game always showed up in those "Top 10 Worst Sonic Games of All-Time" lists, and when I played it in Sonic Gems Collection my first thought was "What were they talking about this game's fun as hell"

I always think about the interviews saying that they weren't sure if this game would work given how stubby the classic sonic designs are so its so awesome that despite that they made one of the most faithful and expressive interpretations of the characters ever at that point

I love seeing people’s reactions to Bark deleting health bars in this game, dude’s just built different lol

Sonic the Fighters deserves alot of love and respect. Its wild how the game that was made by the legendary AM2 and based off of Fighting Vipers is considered one of the worst but its a underrated fighting game and thank you showing it some love

Thank you for giving this amazing game the video it deserves, and for the shoutout! We’re in agreement when it comes to other reviews of this game not exactly being well-researched or informed. Always hoping that Sega decides to release this game again so we can have more success with our tournaments!

so glad you did this. the community for this game is very small and passionate and they've been dying for a video that actually represents the game without the snobbery that comes from both sonic fans and traditional fgc player when talking about this game.

Funnily enough, the 3 obscure characters in the game, Fang, Bean and Bark, are typically paired together in side material like the comics, which honestly makes sense. Their personalities mesh together pretty well and make their group, Team Hooligan, one of my favorites whenever they’re allowed to show up.

The Gems Collection was one of the only games I had on my PS2 for a good few months, so it was all I played. Specifically, I played Sonic the fighters all the time. It's only until I got more into the internet that I see how many people just don't like this game. I still don't see why because it's genuinely one of the better spin off games. When I first started I'd just mash the punch button too! It wasn't until I actually took the time to just read the move list, I realized this game actually has a lot more than it initially seems. I wish Sony hadn't removed all its sonic games from PSN on the PS4 because I'd love to play some Sonic the fighters online and see how much it's evolved.

This game definitely has a lot of fun with its animations. The OST is killer too, even by Sonic’s already high standards there.

I do believe there's a reasonable amount of love for Sonic the Fighters, mostly over Honey the Cat but there was a proper tournament arc on the comics before they were cancelled. That one featured a Sonic OC version of Jane from Fighting Vipers and just... regular Segata Sanshiro somehow.

Yessss yesssss! Sonic the Fighters is so rad. In that one interview Heidi had with the developers, I remember they mentioned giving the character modeler a 3D Sonic keychain as reference for how he should look in full 3D. I had that exact keychain!! They really did such a fantastic job converting that into a Model 2 character model, and then on top of that, gave everyone such over the top fun cartoony animations. I wanted to play it so much and waited for the advertised Saturn port so badly, but when it never came my kid Sonic heart broke. I remember the only arcade that had “Sonic Championship,” the American name for the arcade game, was in the Sega owned Gameworks arcade in Las Vegas. Whenever I’d go with my family to Vegas, I’d head to Gameworks and try to get a 1CC with Sonic, which was pretty tough bc I was terrible at VF controls as a kid. I think they had that cabinet up until the late 2000s, or whenever Gameworks closed, because I was able to get that 1CC eventually after learning VF in VF4. In college, my friends and I would play the Sonic Gems Collection version and get some heated battles. We’d have a bunch of sets with my buddy’s Knuckles vs my Sonic. To this day the custom versus song between Sonic & Knuckles, North Wind, traumatizes my friend if I play it for him. Good times. Did you ever hear the vocal cover of Bark’s theme that Takenobu Mitsuyoshi did? It’s pretty killer

Fun Fact: did you know that this game released in North America in arcades under the name Sonic Championship but it was a limited release because Sega of America feared the game would be considered to be too violent despite the violence in the game being all slapstick

5:26 DISCOMBOBULATE

This video came out great and I am glad people are enjoying it. I helped GuileWinQuote with the recording of this video by playing some online matches against him. The tags are cut off due to screen size, but whenever you see "yBones" on P1 and "GuileW" on P2 that is us netplaying. I had to do a lot of troubleshooting to get the PS3 emulator netplay working right on my PC so I am glad that paid off.

Its absolutely INSANE how hood Sonic the Fighters looks, some of my favourite stylistic 3D models in the series for literally every character, and their animations are spot on

This is a game I hope to see get a fan decompilation. The idea of being able to natively play this on pc with online play, new characters and updated controls is amazing!