Honey the Cat

Honey the Cat (ハニー・ザ・キャット) is a fictional character from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. She is an anthropomorphic cat who competed in a fighting tournament for the Chaos Emeralds and the right to destroy the Death Egg II.

Honey was meant to debut in the original version of Sonic the Fighters, but was scrapped from the final verson. However, she was later included in the 2012 HD re-release of Sonic the Fighters for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

Concept and Creation
Honey was designed by Kazunori Oh and Takako Kawaguchi, the character model designers for Sonic the Fighters and the game Fighting Vipers, which uses the same engine that Sonic the Fighters was build on, albeit without the armor system and breakable walls. According to an interview with Hiroshi Kataoka, director of Sonic the Fighters, Honey is based off the character of the same name from Fighting Vipers (Honey's name in English territories were "Candy"). Kataoka confirmed that since Sonic the Fighters was initially designed around Fighting Vipers by simply placing Sonic characters in it, the Honey in Sonic the Fighters was modeled around the Honey in Fighting Vipers.

The Honey in Fighting Vipers is a human character and has the same poses and look as Honey the Cat, even having a special attack called "Cat Punch" in her move set (as well as several other cat-themed move names). 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 original Fighting Vipers version of Honey is easily comparable to Honey the Cat of Sonic the Fighters as seen below:

Description
Honey is a yellow cat with black hair and a red dress with white laces. She also wears red knee-high boots with pointed toes. 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. She is the second female character in the game next to Amy Rose. Additionally, her stage would have likely been Sunset Town. She was designed by Kazunori Oh and Takako Kawaguchi, the character model designers for Sonic the Fighters and Fighting Vipers. She is re-integrated into the game as a fully playable character alongside Eggman and Metal Sonic in the digital re-release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with all of her glitches and problems fixed. She can be selected by going to Amy's picture and pressing Start. Doing so unlocks both her and her achievement. She is also playable in the online modes, as long as Secret Character is switched on in the lobby rules options. Instead of Eggman's picture appearing on the versus screen when you play as her, her versus screen image is a white silhouette of her fighting pose in the 'cat paw' and bent leg stance. Although she has a loading portrait she does not have an icon during character select similar to other unlockable characters who were hackable in the original game like Honey.

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, when she executes a few moves, 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. In the re-release, one of her new moves is a wind-up punch, another is a jumping uppercut, and she even has some fancier kicks.
 * In the HD re-release, her moveset is very identical to Knuckles'. She also gained some of Amy Rose's moves, which includes her head slide and hip attacks, one of which is similar to a move used by her source character called "Bootie Bop".

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 prior to Sonic the Fighters' HD Re-release. 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. Mirror Honey serves as an alternate color for Honey in the HD release.

Other Media

 * See Honey the Cat (Archie)

Trivia

 * Honey's wings on her back are the ones on her rubber dress ("fairy suit") that her Fighting Vipers counterpart made herself.
 * The song "Sunset Town", which could be found in the original Sonic the Fighters data and Sonic Gems Collection would have presumably been played in Honey's stage.
 * Honey shares the attacks of other fighters. This is because Honey did not have a moveset of her own when the game was released, so the programmers "borrowed" attacks from the other fighters to compensate.
 * Honey is the first cat-species character in Sonic the Hedgehog video games, although Honey did not originally make the cut in Sonic the Fighters.
 * Overall, Honey is one of the only hackable characters in the series to appear after her unofficial debut. She appeared in another game, and also made a cameo on the cover of Sonic Universe #40 published by Archie Comics.
 * Due to an exceedingly huge amount of fan requests, however, Honey is scheduled to appear in Sonic the Hedgehog #268.
 * If Honey is smashed by anything, such as 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 hand models load fine, but the rest of her body was not left in the game, which is probably a good indicator of how far into development Honey was at the time. Additionally, this shows that Honey was based on Amy's model design. In fact, her pre-fight stance is the same as Amy's (a curtsy before assuming her fighting position), while one of her victory poses is based on one of Tails' poses. This is corrected in the HD re-release, though her pre-fight stance and victory pose are unchanged.
 * Honey is technically the first Sonic game character to wear high heels. This would be followed by Vanilla the Rabbit, Blaze the Cat and Princess Elise.
 * When Honey was originally discovered through hacking, her pigtails and cat tail weren't seen due to an emulation glitch. This is fixed in newer emulators and the HD release.
 * In hacked Arcade gameplay, there is a glitch with Honey's eyes that causes one eye to look towards the player while the other looks at her opponent(s). This is caused by unfinished eye data within the game. There is no known method of fixing it properly, not even in recent emulators. However, the intro before entering the bonus stage, and even playing the bonus stage, seems to fix the glitch . Basically, when the cutscene that takes place after Metal Sonic is defeated begins, it seems to be fixed. This may be due to 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 may also be because the character only needs to look at the opponent and not the camera. This glitch is fixed in the HD release.
 * Another hacked gameplay video of Honey reveals another victory pose, where she stands in a position that resembles Sonic's pose, only she doesn't make a peace sign with her fingers. Additionally, the pose reveals another eye glitch; here, her eyes become completely white. This is corrected in the HD release. Another gameplay video, this time of the HD release, reveals that Honey has yet another win pose. She puts her hands on her hips and smiles at her fallen opponent.
 * Honey has her own portrait in the HD release instead of sharing Eggman's.