Remember when Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare made a Sonic the Hedgehog RPG? No? Well, that’s probably fair, considering it went under the radar for a lot of people. But Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood was a pretty okay turn-based RPG for the original Nintendo DS in 2008. And now, 13 years later, one of the animators on the game has released a never-before-shown 2D intro the studio made for the game but was never included in the final product.
Jonathan Cooper, who worked as an animator on games like Jade Empire and Mass Effect, posted a short clip that was meant to act as an intro to Sonic Chronicles when you booted the game up, but was “inexplicably cut by Sega.” If you play the game now, the same song heard in the 2D intro is played over gameplay footage instead. The animation shows the titular Blue Blur fighting his arch-nemesis Eggman, but doesn’t include any of Sonic Chronicles’ many other playable characters. And yes, I’m only mentioning that because I will take any and all content that includes my boy Shadow, and would have loved for him to have been included. But since the animation was never used anyway, I’m just being petty, at this point.
In further tweets, Cooper says the cinematic was “a passion project” for Lead Artist Joel MacMillan and Animator Nick DiLiberto.
Check out the full clip below:
Sonic Chronicles (2008) unreleased 2D intro cinematic. This has never been shown before in its entirety. pic.twitter.com/T7wgxKqmb6
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) December 21, 2021
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BioWare released Sonic Chronicles with a cliffhanger ending and had plans to work on a sequel, but it never came. And now that the studio is under Electronic Arts, it never will. But this is a neat look into something that never was. I played Sonic Chronicles years ago when I was on one of my Sonic kicks, and remember having a mostly fine time with it. The game used the DS’ touch screen to implement touch and timing mechanics into its turn-based battles.
In more recent Sonic news, Sega showed off the first footage of the next game in the series, Sonic Frontiers, at this year’s Game Awards. The next live-action movie is also just a few months away.
