Sonic the Fighters

Sonic the Fighters (ソニック・ザ・ファイターズ), also called Sonic Championship on Western cabinet artwork, is an arcade fighting game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The game was ported to Sonic Gems Collection for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 under its original title in all versions. A digital high-definition port of Sonic the Fighters was also released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 2012. As of April 2016, the Xbox 360 version of Sonic the Fighters is compatible with Xbox One.

Story
Doctor Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik has released the Death Egg II, and now Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles "Tails" Prower must stop him. However, their new airship, the Lunar Fox only supports one passenger and to defeat Eggman, they need eight of the Chaos Emeralds. The eight wielders of the Chaos Emeralds, including Sonic and Tails themselves, then must take part in a hand-to-hand fighting tournament, with the winner taking all the Chaos Emeralds. The participants, in order of combat, are:
 * Knuckles the Echidna
 * Amy Rose
 * Bark the Polar Bear
 * Espio the Chameleon
 * Miles "Tails" Prower
 * Fang the Sniper
 * Bean the Dynamite
 * Sonic the Hedgehog

Whichever character the player is controlling is cloned by Eggman during their battle (presumably by copying their DNA), so that the player fights all eight of them. For instance, if the player controls Sonic, then in the eighth battle, Eggman will create a colorless clone of Sonic.

After arriving at the Death Egg II, the heroes get a surprise visit from Metal Sonic. After defeating him, the Death Egg II begins to fall apart as Dr. Eggman in his mech suit challenges the victor (the round must be finished to complete the story). Unlike other battles in the game, the player only gets one shot to take down Eggman and also has fifteen seconds to defeat him.

The victor escapes the Death Egg II before it explodes, however, the post credits scene shows Eggman and Metal Sonic also escaped the explosion and head back to Earth.

Characters
Sonic can also become Super Sonic in story mode. Without losing a life since the first fight, the player enters Hyper Mode in the second Round against Metal Sonic.
 * Sonic the Hedgehog
 * Miles "Tails" Prower
 * Knuckles the Echidna
 * Amy Rose
 * Espio the Chameleon
 * Fang the Sniper
 * Bark the Polar Bear
 * Bean the Dynamite

Added in HD port

 * Honey the Cat - Press start on Amy (all of her glitches are now fixed)
 * Dr. Eggman (in E-Mech) - Press start on Bean
 * Metal Sonic - Press start on Sonic

Hacked characters

 * Eggman (Mecha)
 * Eggman (Spaceship)
 * Eggman's Robo
 * Rocket Metal

Arenas

 * South Island
 * Flying Carpet
 * Aurora Icefield
 * Mushroom Hill
 * Canyon Cruise
 * Casino Night
 * Dynamite Plant
 * Giant Wing
 * Death Egg's Eye
 * Death Egg's Hangar

Development
Masahiro Sugiyama, a character designer at AM2, added Sonic and Tails into the fighting game Fighting Vipers as a way to cure his boredom. Yu Suzuki saw this and decided to present the idea of a 3D Sonic fighting game to Hiroshi Kataoka. Suzuki then presented the idea to Yuji Naka. At first, Kataoka was worried because of the concept of Sonic characters beating each other up, and feared Yuji Naka would not approve. However, Naka was actually very receptive to the concept, commenting, "I couldn't think of Sonic as a fighting game and was worried whether he could really fight with his short hands and big head. But Mr. Yu encouraged me." At that point nobody had yet attempted to present Sonic in 3D, so Sonic the Fighters was Sonic's 3D debut and had Naka's full support. Developers were worried about rendering Sonic in 3D at first, so Naka gave the team a Sonic figure to work off of. The game was released in Japanese arcades in May 1996, running on Sega Model 2 hardware.

Sega Saturn version
There was a planned Sega Saturn version to the game advertised in various gaming magazines, but was quietly cancelled. No explaination has ever been offered for the port's cancellation. It is often theorized the game was thought to have given Sonic a violent image as it is a fighting game, so promoting such a game in retail stores was thought to have hindered Sonic's image even more so.

Archie Comics
While an adaptation of Sonic the Fighters was not made for this, Bark and Bean were introduced into the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series published by Archie Comics starting with Sonic the Hedgehog #160 and were later revealed to have participated in underground fighting tournaments. However, an official Sonic the Fighters adaptation was eventually made, covering Sonic the Hedgehog #268-#271 as a part of the "Champions" story arc. This adaption introduced Honey into the comics along with Breezie the Hedgehog. However, this story only involved one Chaos Emerald.

Trivia

 * There are numerous unused objects like apples and rockets, which could have been used in early versions of the game.
 * A special theme plays when putting Sonic and Knuckles against each other in versus.
 * Amy's muzzle and arms are apricot in all her promo and pre-rendered pictures, but white on her playable character, due to color limitations. The HD release changes the playable character's muzzle back to apricot.
 * However, there is a glitch in the HD release where winning a match as Honey makes Amy's muzzle turn white again.
 * Honey the Cat was a character who was going to be in the final game, but scrapped for unknown reasons. Before the 2012 re-release of Sonic the Fighters, she was only playable through hacking the Arcade version.
 * There is a song from the game's sound test that is called Sunset Town, which might have been Honey the Cat's stage. However, this stage is not seen in the game's re-release on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, despite Honey reappearing.
 * In the English version, Dr. Robotnik's name was misspelled Robotonic in the intro of the game for unknown reasons, however, in the final battle the character is listed as Dr. Eggman, and his Vs. Card says "Dr. Eggman" with "Robotnik" under it.
 * Eight Chaos Emeralds appear in this game, whereas the majority of other games in the series include only seven.
 * Ray the Flying Squirrel was originally set to appear in the game as an announcer (in the same effect as the announcers from Fighting Vipers, Last Bronx, Tekken, Soulcalibur, Dead or Alive and Virtua Fighter), but was scrapped in favor of having "boxing bell" sound effects instead.
 * Many of Sonic's attacks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl can be traced back to this game.
 * On one of the two pictures of Sonic (the ones where he appears to be in the air), the picture has the gold buckle on his shoe, and the other does not.
 * The rocket in the Sega Saturn intro of Fighting Vipers (next to Mirror Honey) is Tails' rocket from Sonic the Fighters, the Lunar Fox.
 * This game's character select icons of Sonic, Knuckles, Amy and Fang are all taken from their Sonic Drift 2 artwork. Also, the Amy Rose icon used artwork from Sonic the Hedgehog CD.
 * Without hacking, the only way to play as Super Sonic is to reach the 2nd round against Metal Sonic without losing a single round. Many fans state that this is the hardest Super Sonic transformation requirement in any Sonic game.
 * In the Dreamcast game, Shenmue, many of the characters in this game appear in their promo art as collectible capsule figurines that Ryo can retrieve from a dispenser, or in special cases, such as obtaining Super Sonic and Metal Sonic, they can be won in a lottery. These figures serve no real purpose but to simply be collected.
 * Interestingly enough, in Shenmue, if one were to rotate the Fang figurine where he is standing on both feet, his right hand appears to have five fingers while his left hand has four.
 * This game marks the first appearance of Amy's Piko Piko Hammer, which played a major role for most of Amy's attack techniques in future games.
 * This is the only game in the series where Bark the Polar Bear and Bean the Dynamite make an appearance, aside from their cameos in Sonic Generations.Fighters.jpg
 * A Sonic the Fighters arcade machine appears in the beginning of the Disney film, Wreck-It Ralph.
 * Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear's characters took inspiration from the arcade game "Dynamite Dux".
 * This game marks the final appearance of Fang outside of his cameos in Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania.