Forgotten Characters in the Sonic series

[Iko]

I got this idea after looking at another thread. It was a thread about the voice actress of Cream the Rabbit complaining that she didn't work on the character since 2010. The discussion shifted from voice acting to how Cream the Rabbit has been absent from most of the recent games and is slowly turning into a forgotten character. Then Fang the Sniper was brought in as well, and I thouhgt, why not a dedicated thread?

What do you think about the forgotten characters, when a character can be considered "forgotten", and how much content does the character need to receive in order to be "brought back" and become relevant again? Every other discussion related to forgotten characters fits the thread as well... comic characters such as the Freedom Fighters and Sally can be discussed too but I would prefer if the focus would stay on game characters.

The definition of "Forgotten Characters" is often subjective, so in the next section I'm going to list names of some characters who in my opinion are not actively used in the series anymore. The list is based on my opinion of what a forgotten character is, and it's merely just a list of characters with context, not a wishlist (though I would love for some of them to appear more often).

Examples of characters who are considered "forgotten" (games-wise):

Mighty and Ray

They were introduced as playable characters in Segasonic the Hedgehog, the arcade game. Later, Mighty also appeared in Knuckles chaotix, and ignoring a cameo in Sonic Generations, they disappeared from the franchise until Sonic Mania Plus. I'm not sure if there are plans to use them again or if Mania was just a one time nostalgia gift, but they at least received something at some point.

Fang the Sniper/Nack the Weasel, Bean and Bark

Fang was one of the last major characters introduced in the classic era, only for the era to end, and the character to disappear forever since that moment. He appeared as a cameo in both Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania, but his presence was still too minor to be considered a true comeback. Bean and Bark went though a similar fate, though they were never pushed that hard even in the classic era: Fang was playable in some spin-offs (Drift and Fighters), got referenced in Tails Adventure thtough a power-up, was a major villain in Triple Trouble; he was definitely meant to be the next Tails or Knuckles.

The Gizoids

They were introduced in Sonic Battle, and got connected with the lore of the time. After Battle, the Gizoids returned in the form of Gemerl, who is supposed to still exist at Cream's home but never appeared in a game again, and then... Sonic Chronicles. Sonic Chronicles failed hard, its story remained unfinished because there was supposed to be a sequel that never happend, and it went through copyright problems for using comic content without authorization... basically the Chronicles story is super dead and not canon, and it ereased any possibility of knowing more about the Gizoid's lore forever.

The Babylon Rogues

The Riders series came to an end with Free Riders. The game was not well received and Sega never made any other sequel, especially with Sonic & Sega and Team Sonic Racing replacing Riders as the racing spin-off. The Babylon Rogues were exclusive characters to this series, and rarely appeared outside of it, so, with the death of Riders, the characters also fell into the oblivion, if not for some occasional cameos in alternate media.

Eggman Nega

He's just Eggman from the future, or from a parallel dimension, or both, it's still not completely clear. Besides, he has not been featured in a game since Rush Adventure, excluding the Olympics spin-offs. I mean, he's just Eggman, I don't think it's necessary to have 2 Eggmans around, but I'm bringing it out because it's relevant to the topic. We could say the same for "Classic Eggman" and "Classic Sonic/Tails" as separated characters in the same game as their modern counterparts.

Cameo and unreleased characters

People like Honey the Cat and Tiara from the canceled game Sonic X-Treme. Honey was a Sonic-ified version of a character from Fighting Vipers, the game Sonic the Fighters is based off; she was originally a human. Tiara was supposed to debut in a new game, but in fact the game was never released, so the character never existed.

One offs who still exist but are rarely, if ever, mentioned

This could range from minor villains like Wendy Witchcart and her minions, to human NPCs like Professor Pickle, to others, such as Marine the Raccoon, who has been stuck in the Sol Dimension for all this time. There are a lot more, and I would put Sticks in this category too, because it seems like Sega considers her to exist in the main continuity as well, but she never appeared in it aside of being mentioned once in Sonic Frontiers (if we exclude her playable status in a Mario & Sonic spin-off).

Examples of characters who were forgotten but got brought back:

The Chaotix

Introduced as classic characters, lost with the transition to the modern era, until Sonic Heroes. They were lucky, because many other "forgotten" characters were planned to return in that game, but got scrapped at the end.

Metal Sonic

For several years he didn't exist anymore, until Sonic Adventure DX turned him into a bonus unlockable, and then became the main villain of Sonic Heroes. It wasn't until some racing and olympic spin-offs, and Sonic 4 EP 2 that the character started to appear consistently and became recurring again.

Big the Cat

After years of "Sonic's Shitty Friends" complains (of which Big was basically the symbol) from both the fanbase and the professional game critics, Big was said to be "retired" by Sega themselves, around 2012, but then he slowly started to appear again some time later. This because the meme culture was growing at the time, and Big became very popular as a joke character: this popularity allowed him to return, and at this point, people accepted him as a funny character and didn't complain about him anymore. Now he's pretty much a main stay support character, and kinda well received by pretty much all the fanbase.

Characters who are at risk of getting forgotten

Cream the Rabbit

She's appearing less and less. The most note worthy exclusion is Team Sonic Racing, where she got replaced by Omochao as third member of Team Rose, and was not even mentioned by name (in-game dialogues even suggest that Team Rose has always been Amy, Big and Omochao, which is not true). Not just that, but all the games where she was important (the Advance trilogy, Sonic Battle, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Rush) are now unavailable on modern hardware, so she basically does not exist anymore for anyone who is new to the series. This obvioulsy also includes Cheese, Vanilla, Chocola, and Gemerl.

Omega

Most fans don't seem to have noticed yet, but Omega is going through this route too, even though he's not that far yet. Sega seem to have changed idea about Team Dark, they don't want to depict Shadow, Rouge and Omega as friends, nor as a team anymore (this information comes from an official source). Complains of the fans aside, the point is that lately there seem to be a tendency to feature Shadow and Rouge on their own while Omega is nowhere to be seen. it's still too early to judge (basically only the Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Prime, the latter is not even a game), but I've got that vibe.

The Deadly Six

They were pushed hard and shoehorned into every game for a while, but they still failed to appeal. I guess they will slowly disappear in the future, but... I'm sure that many fans won't miss them.

Infinite

We're still not sure because Sonic Forces was the last major game before Frontiers, but things don't look bright for the jackal. He got replaced in role by Sage, a character who uses his same red-squares virtual reality leitmotif and is a villain loyal to Eggman in a similar way as he was in Forces, plus Sage has a more developed personality and a deeper character arc. There are some people who still like Infinite and support him, so... who knows, maybe if their voices get heared, Infinite might not end in the trash bin.

 

That's all for now, there might be some more, but... well, in that case, sorry, I forgot about them (*facepalm*).

[sonicclaasic]

For me the forgotten character Is Honey The Cat from Sonic The Fighters you don't much hear about her these days and long forgotten as well to me. I enjoyed playing as her In Sonic The Fighters she was such a fun character to play as well. She will be always be remembered and a forgotten character as well. 

I enjoyed reading your paragraphs about the forgotten characters It Is very well details and cleared as well and Interesting to. Thanks for sharing

[GX -The Spindash-]

It's hard for me to point to anything specific and say "This is forgotten," if only because we are, philosophically, in a bit of a different place in the series. I don't feel like things have been "forgotten," small projects, comics, and licensing keep most of the extended cast alive. But the last 1.5 decades have been very public searching for a firm identity and finding balance between the classic era of the franchise and everything else beyond.

Sonic Adventure through Sonic 06 seemed like those leading the franchise enthusiastically wanted to expand the cast without really developing it in any clear direction or building a world that fit with all these characters, which... whether overblown or not, is how we got to the "Sonic and his shitty friends" sentiment. From Secret Rings onward, the games attempted to either focus on Sonic, Tails, and Eggman, or introduce a friend whose story can be fully resolved within the span of the game (like Chip, Shahra, Yacker, "the rookie," etc...) who is usually defined by their relation to Sonic himself.

It's... complicated to maintain this kind of stuff. Everyone is going to have their favorite character, and many long time fans want to have the big extensive cast that is thoroughly utilized, but games like Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Colors DS, Team Sonic Racing, and Sonic Forces reduce them to flavor more than impact. Frontiers' writing certainly does more with a slightly bigger full cast, trying to build out Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and even Eggman, but then also uses other characters as reference fodder moreso than world building.

I don't think that the series can reasonably maintain a large cast without doing a better job with its world building. These characters have to exist within a context, and more often than not, that context is an apathetic shrug and an explanation of "They're on an adventure doing adventure things and just happen to all come together to save the world." The comics handle this well, finding broad roles for the extended cast and situations to bring them in that make sense (most of the time). Alternatively, it could maintain the more narrow focus and work to better flesh out a smaller, core cast, as Sonic Prime and Sonic Boom (series) do. But the series does need to pick a path, because it serves nobody trying (and often failing) to do both.

[Red Hot Jack]

Big was also "retired" at one point in 2012 I think... he was brought back due to fan feedback. Sticks was dead and retired after Boom's downfall and mentioned again due to fan feedback. Again, sometimes the characters are brought back via fanservice.

But they are still very minor, for example Mighty and Ray returned in a classic game DLC, Big is for cameos and minigames (as he should be IMO), Sticks is just mentioned for now, and other characters in general feel like they are tied to spinoffs as you said, the Babylons and Eggman Nega, were brought back in the Olympic series because that's a spinoff and it made sense there. In Team Sonic Racing they should have been present, Jet and co. as playable but considering how restricted that game is... yeah it didn't happen.

Cream is now the most forgotten out of those who were once important, I stress that she was the "fifth core member" only in Sonic X and the Advance series, but still she was important up until Generations, now I've only seen her in a major role in IDW comics to be honest.

[Iko]

7 hours ago, Red Hot Jack said:

Big was also "retired" at one point in 2012 I think... he was brought back due to fan feedback.

I forgot about Big! I'll add him to the first post.

 

---

Anyway, I think that the characters being "abandoned" or retired is really only a problem when those characters were once important, even if for a short time.

If Yacker or Chip are never seen again, it's not really a big problem... they were one offs, designed to be one offs in the first place, they were supposed to not appear anymore aside of maybe a cameo or two.

When a character is considered part of the main group and heavily featured in games for a few years, then I think that retiring said character becomes a problem. Some people are introduced to the series during that time frame when the character was popular, and those people will be alienated from the series when the content they became fan of, is now unimportant and neglected; those people will either leave the fanbase and stop being fans, or continue to follow the series but being frustrated that their content is now neglected and the series is now different from what it was when they became fans of it.

With Sonic it already happend a few times... the Classic era, the Adventure era and the post-Sonic X era (which I believe it's a different generation and it includes those fans who got introduced starting with Adventure 2 battle on Gamecube and the GBA games, up to Sonic 06, or Unleashed). Of those sides of the fanbase, only the Classic crowd got a little bit of luck so far. I believe that the main reason why some fans are so vocal about wanting the series to return to the Adventure formula, or to revisit 06 with improvements, or to bring back Riders and Black Knight, and such, it's because Sega failed to develop the series in a way that makes it feel like the content of those games is still relevant even if the series has moved on; both presentation-wise (artstyle, story, characters, music, etc.) and gameplay-wise.

This does not apply just to Sonic, pretty much every long time running franchise is like this... some (such as Mario) try to stay as casual as possible in order to intentionally disincentivate the creation of an hardcore fanbase, so they can sell the games to a casual audience and nobody would complain about anything... but in some series this really doesn't work, and Sonic is one of them (they tried to go full casual around the 2010's but it didn't go well, aside of the sales of Colors). And even Mario, as casual as it can be, sometimes it relies on Nostalgia a lot, and brings back forgotten elements for the sake of referencing the past and fanservice (even the new acclaimed movie is full of nerdy references).

I think that some other relevant franchises that had this problem were the Kirby series and the Megaman series: the kirby series found its way to fix this problem by expanding the universe and linking everything with a common lore, an open ended and vague lore but complex enough to cover basically all the elements of the in-game universe, even stuff that seem unimportant; when the lore is not enough, they just fill everything with cameos and references of the past. The Megaman series is struggling with all the different sub-franchises to the point where they don't release many games anymore, and probably are not even sure what to do with the series themselves; though, as the Megaman Battle Network collection has shown, some of those sub-franchises can still sell surprisingly well if marketed in the correct way.

So, IMO the problem is way bigger than just the characters, but the characters can do a lot! The characters bring with them the memories of all the past adventures they were involved in, and in the eyes of the fans, a character being featured in a game can be seen as a reference to their favorite game, even if that game is not even mentioned nor referenced at all. (this is why the crappy hardlight torture apps survived for so long even though they are indeed crap).

Maybe we should get a Heroes type spin-off every once in a while?

[SticksSuperFan14]

On 5/11/2023 at 4:07 AM, Red Hot Jack said:

Big was also "retired" at one point in 2012 I think... he was brought back due to fan feedback. 

I wonder if that's why Big was left out in All-Stars Racing Transformed despite being playable in the original just a couple years prior.

[juiceDpunk983]

I don't think Eggman Nega is retired. Pretty sure that dude is dead, poor egg got trapped in some hell dimension, probably eaten by the Ifrit.

[thumbs13]

On 5/10/2023 at 2:11 PM, Iko said:

 

 

Omega

Most fans don't seem to have noticed yet, but Omega is going through this route too, even though he's not that far yet. Sega seem to have changed idea about Team Dark, they don't want to depict Shadow, Rouge and Omega as friends, nor as a team anymore (this information comes from an official source). Complains of the fans aside, the point is that lately there seem to be a tendency to feature Shadow and Rouge on their own while Omega is nowhere to be seen. it's still too early to judge (basically only the Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Prime, the latter is not even a game), but I've got that vibe.

 

I don't think they'll ever dump Omega, but you bring up a very interesting point in that despite Sonic having a large cast, a lot of the time all these characters don't really have a reason to show up, and some characters are more flexible about what situations require them than others.

Omega couldn't be in free riders because the plot of that game needed the extra slot for Metal Sonic and he had to take the fall. He couldn't be in Generation's or TMOSTH because him just hanging out at a birthday party is absurd. And I think that applies to a lot of characters. They're not forgotten, they're just not a priority when other things needed to be accounted for.

I think it's just more noticeable now because we get less content overall than we used to. We didn't even get a Mario and Sonic game for 2022's olympics where all the side characters would get their shots to exist again.

[Iko]

Lately I was thinking about a thing...

What would have happend if Sonic Heroes didn't just bring back the Chaotix, but also all the other "forgotten" characters as well, like it was originally intended?

The Chaotix, more often than not, are considered modern characters, despite having debuted in the Classic games. If Heroes did bring Migthy, Ray, Fang, etc. back, how different things would have been? Would Fang be redesigned to own a realistic gun, like Shadow in his spin-off? How would Mighty and Ray be received when revealed to be in Sonic Mania (would they? Even if they were considered modern characters like the Chaotix...)

Do you think those characters would have got a role in Sonic X too?

In my opinion that's an interesting scenario to think of; many things in the series would have been much different than how they are now; Maybe Fang would rival Shadow at being the most popular character after Sonic himself.

[MGA_Gamer]

13 hours ago, Iko said:

Lately I was thinking about a thing...

What would have happend if Sonic Heroes didn't just bring back the Chaotix, but also all the other "forgotten" characters as well, like it was originally intended?

The Chaotix, more often than not, are considered modern characters, despite having debuted in the Classic games. If Heroes did bring Migthy, Ray, Fang, etc. back, how different things would have been? Would Fang be redesigned to own a realistic gun, like Shadow in his spin-off? How would Mighty and Ray be received when revealed to be in Sonic Mania (would they? Even if they were considered modern characters like the Chaotix...)

Do you think those characters would have got a role in Sonic X too?

In my opinion that's an interesting scenario to think of; many things in the series would have been much different than how they are now; Maybe Fang would rival Shadow at being the most popular character after Sonic himself.

As much as I would like some of those characters to return in a “modern” Sonic game, Heroes already had 12 playable characters, so I’m not sure how well they would have been implemented given that Sonic Team already had to deal with 4 different teams.

[Palas]

To be fair, Metal Sonic had three appearances in his first ten years, before Sonic Heroes -- Sonic CD, Knuckles' Chaotix and Sonic R. That's more than Amy, and almost as much as Knuckles. It's just that the games were kind of forgotten (Sonic CD included).

As far as forgotten characters go, I'd mention Chaos as stories drift away from "mystical" stories related to the Master Emerald, the power of the emeralds and why they are so powerful etc, which we basically only got in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Battle. I mean, maybe it's been mentioned in the comic, but I wouldn't know.

[Johnny Boy]

I think infinite is pretty much a goner unless Sega decides to bring him back to have some more non Eggman villains. Sage’s introduction and reception more or less sealed the jackals fate.

Thankfully Fang is making a comeback with superstars, but with the other characters mentioned in the OP, I think the main problem is that Sega simply can’t find a purpose for most of them.

[Iko]

I definitely need to update the OP because seems that Fang is finally back as a major villain in the next classic game (and I'm happy of it).

Whatever...

I don't know what the trademark "Sonic & Friends" is supposed to be (nobody knows yet), but there's a chance that Sega has finally found a way to make use of the extended cast... be it a party game, a Heroes spiritual successor, or whatever... even if it's not a mainline game, I would still appreciate if they started a new spin-off branch where the unused characters can shine.

I would love if it is a (modern, Advance-like) 2D platformer, but sadly with Superstars to be released soon, I doubt. Though, it's not impossible... after all, Origins Plus and Superstars are releasing with just a few months of gap... "& friends" might come out after a year or more, and be separated from Superstars enough to not overlap its marketing cycle.

If "& Friends" is the new hardlight game though, all my interest in it is gone.