Honey the Cat

Honey the Cat (ハニー・ザ・キャット) is a character that was scrapped from the original version of Sonic Championship (also known as Sonic the Fighters). She is a yellow cat with black hair and a red dress with white laces. Although she was scrapped, her data still exists in the arcade version, and is playable in the HD re-release. Normally in Sonic the Fighters, during mirror matches (when two players use the same character) the second player will be a gray-scale version of the character due to Robotnik using a DNA replication machine to create a darker clone. Honey, however, has her own 2P palette, in which she has blonde hair, a blue dress and pink fur. Honey normally has pigtails, and a tail, but they don't show up due to a glitch. (This glitch is fixed in newer emulators.) She would have been the second female character in the game next to Amy Rose. Additionally, her stage would have been called Sunset Town. She was designed by Kazunori Oh and Takako Kawaguchi, the character model designers for Sonic the Fighters and Fighting Vipers. She is being put back into the game as a fully playable character alongside Eggman and Metal Sonic in the upcoming re-release on the Xbox 360 and PS3, presumably with all of her glitches and problems fixed.

Abilities
Honey the Cat has borrowed martial arts abilities from the other fighters, rather than have her own unique moves.

Some of her moves are:
 * She glides with the wings on her dress (similar to Knuckles the Echidna).
 * Honey shares the same kicks and fighting stance as Sonic, though in the character select screen, the cutscene before fighting Eggman, and the name entry screen, her stance is the same as her source character's.
 * Some of Honey's punching type moves are from Tails, while her head clap move is from Bark.

Mirror Honey
The mirror Honey is a pink-furred, blonde-haired, white-snouted and blue-dressed version of Honey, Mirror Honey has no moves at all (except for blocking and maneuverability), and is completely useless due to that fact. She is also the only Mirror Version in the game to actually be colored. The Mirror Honey also appeared in the Sega Saturn version of Fighting Vipers (see picture). The Mirror Honey also has a blue-colored hairband, while normal Honey has a red-hairband. Mirror Honey is the only version of Honey the Cat to actually appear in a game. This most likely indicated that Honey would have been playable in the Sega Saturn version of Sonic the Fighters if the game's programmers had the time to get her ready.

Fighting Vipers Honey
Honey the Cat is most likely based off a character of the same name in the game Fighting Vipers, which coincidentally uses the same engine as Sonic the Fighters, albeit without the armor system and breakable walls. This fighter is a human character, not a cat, and has the same poses and look as Honey the Cat, even having a special attack called "Cat Punch" in her move set (she has several cat-themed move names, actually). The human Honey is a petite 16 year old fashion school student with a pleasant nature (but can become aggressive when she fights in her dress). She is a resident of Armstone City, a metropolis ruled by the tyrannical mayor known as B.M. (short for Big Mahler). Honey designed her trademark plastic/rubber dress herself, and has entered the Viper Tournament in an attempt to promote her original fashion line.

The Fighting Vipers Honey is easily comparable to Honey the Cat of Sonic the Fighters. Fighting Vipers Honey looks exactly like a human version of Honey the Cat. This version is called Candy in the US.

One should keep in mind that it is unknown whether or not this is a coincidence, or was intended, but this may be a reason why Honey the Cat was scrapped. Both versions look almost exactly like each other.

Videos
left|250px|Sega Saturn intro (Note the mirror Honey is at 0:54) right|250px|A video with Honey fighting Knuckles, Amy, and Bark.

Trivia

 * Honey has wings on her back, which gives her ability to glide. These are actually the wings on her rubber dress ('fairy suit") that her FV counterpart made herself.
 * Honey The Cat can still be played as if Sonic The Fighters gets hacked into. Sadly, however, its impossible to play as her on the Sonic Gems Collection version of the game. Attempts to do so crashes the game.
 * The song 'Sunset Town' is located in Sonic Gems Collections version of Sonic The Fighters in Options on the Main Menu, this music would have been played on Honey's stage, if she was still in the game.
 * She shares attacks from other fighters; this could be because, when the game was released, Honey did not have a move set of her own so the programmers "borrowed" attacks from the other fighters to compensate.
 * Honey the Cat is the first cat character in Sonic history, although Honey never made it in the final version of Sonic the Fighters. This however, is only if one does not count the character named Cat from Sonic the Hedgehog (TV series) who was a minor character of the show. This is an exception as the show did air before Sonic the Fighters was ever released. If Cat is counted, Honey is the second Cat Character in overall Sonic history, but in Game history she is in fact the first.
 * Honey is overall the only Hacked characters of the series to appear after her unofficial debut. She has both appeared in another game and a cameo on the cover of the 40th issues of Sonic Universe. All others mostly are never seen or heard of again after their first appearance, with few exceptions.
 * If Honey is smashed by anything like Amy's hammer or Bark's punches, her outfit will turn into Amy's for a few seconds; if smashed again, her outfit will return to normal. This seems to suggest that she was based on Amy's character data. To prove this, her squished head and hands models load fine, but the rest of her body was not left in the game, probably a good indicator at how far into development Honey was. Also, this shows how Honey was based off of Amy's model design. In fact, her pre-fight stance is the same as Amy's (a curtsey before assuming her fighting stance), while one of her victory poses is based on one of Tails'.
 * Honey is the second character to wear high heels, after Madonna, who was wearing high heels in Sonic Gems Collection, with the third being Breezie.
 * Honey makes a cameo appearance on the cover of issue #40 of the Archie Sonic Universe graphic novel series. However, her personality has never been developed in the comics nor does she appear in the mainstream series.
 * In gameplay, Honey has a glitch with her eye that causes one eye to look towards the player as one looks in the other direction (the direction facing her opponent(s)). This is caused by Unfinished Eye Data within the Game and there is no real fix known for it, not even in recent emulators. However, the intro before coming to the bonus stage and even playing the bonus stage seems to fix the glitch . Basically, when the cutscene after Metal Sonic is defeated is started, it seems to fix this eye glitch. This could be because of the way the cutscene is handling the eyes, forcing them to look around, and once the fight actually begins, the eye data is reset. This could also be because the character only needs to look at the opponent, and not the camera.
 * Another gameplay video of Honey reveals another win pose. This victory pose has her standing in a pose similar to Sonic's, only she doesn't do a peace sign with her fingers. Additionally, the pose reveals another eye glitch; here, her eyes become completely white.