This is exactly the experience that allowed them to make Sonic Mania such a love-letter to retro Sonic games.

They were known for creating Sonic fan projects well before they became officially employed by Sega. Instead, we have these relative unknowns, Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomely.Įxcept they aren’t unknowns – at least not in the fan game community. Sonic Team and Dimps are nowhere to be found. You might notice that Sonic Mania’s list of developers is slightly different from the one that we are used to seeing. What got into Sega to make them head back to Sonic’s roots and create a solid, fun, Genesis-style 2D platformer? Frankly, its very existence is perplexing to fans and critics alike. This brings us to Sonic Mania, the recently released 2D Sonic game that somehow broke the Sonic cycle. Heck, most of the Sonic-alikes that you can find on Steam, like Freedom Planet and Spark the Electric Jester, got their starts as Sonic fan games! Sonic Mania: By Fans for Fans These games epitomize what it means to be Sonic, from tight controls to fast speed-based platforming, and they do this because they are made by people who have a passion for that style of gameplay. They are quality 2D and 3D experiences with more polish than anything that has come out of Sega in the past few years (prior to Sonic Mania, of course). But the good Sonic fan games that do exist are really, really good. Heck, head over to GameJolt and you’ll have to wade through a sea of Sonic.EXE creepypasta games before you get to anything of quality. Fan games are the covers of the video game world.Īnd plenty of them are bad. You don’t start off playing your own self-composed music. Think about how you might learn to play an instrument. Here’s a secret that we never talk about when we become absorbed with high profile legal troubles that shut down fan projects: allowing up and coming developers to make fan games is good game development practice. The Sonic Amateur Games Expo and Sonic Hacking Contest are just two such events. In fact, Sonic fan development is so popular that multiple events are held every year to allow new developers to show off their Sonic projects. It certainly has the most fan games, simply because Sega has not once asked fan developers to take their works down. This open policy and flat-out encouragement from Sega to screw around with their game engines has made the Sonic franchise home to some of the best fan games ever developed. You see, unlike Nintendo, Square, and Konami, who all have a habit of sending cease and desist letters to fan developers, Sega has always been more friendly towards fan development culture. I’m talking about fully fleshed-out, fully playable, intelligently designed Sonic fan games. The Sonic Fan Game Communityįans have been creating quality Sonic content for some time – and no, I’m not talking about the wealth of sprite recolors and oddly explicit pieces of fanfiction you can find on DeviantArt. Maybe it was that time Sonic swung a sword around, maybe it was the time he turned into a werewolf, or maybe it was the time that he overloaded on neckerchiefs and friction tape – sometime, somewhere, the Sonic fanbase realized that Sonic games are more likely to fail than succeed. The so called Sonic Cycle describes the process by which information about a new Sonic game is released causing fans to get hype, followed by the eventual release itself letting them down with poor gameplay and overused gimmicks. The quality of Sonic the Hedgehog games has become something of a meme. These are the artifacts and events all gamers should know, whether they be glorious highlights or frightening failures. In our Gaming Literacy series we’re taking a look at relics and moments from gaming past.

Sonic unleashed 2d fan game