Dark Bat Sniper

"This soped-up Dark Bat opens fire from above."

- Description of the Dark Bat Snipers in Sonic Unleashed (PS2/Wii)

The Dark Bat Sniper (ダークフロートキャノン) is one of Dark Gaia's minions that appear in Sonic Unleashed. Besides serving for a method for Sonic the Werehog to cross pits, these mutated Dark Bats can also shoot energy balls from their tails. They only appear during the game's nighttime stages.

Overview
The Dark Bat Snipers and all of the others of Dark Gaia's minions were born when their source Dark Gaia awoke some millions of years too early in its cycle and as a result broke into millions of fragments. These fragments then gave life to Dark Gaia's minions and the Dark Bat Snipers. More specifically, a Dark Bat Sniper is created when a regular Dark Bat absorbs too much of Dark Gaia's energy and mutates into a Dark Bat Sniper. They first appear in Rooftop Run Night Act I: Alleys of Spagonia on the PS2/Wii version and Savannah Citadel Night Act 1 on the PS3/Xbox360 version.

Unlike the harmless and not too hostile Dark Bats, the Dark Bat Snipers are quite wild and aggressive as a result of absorbing an overdose of Dark Gaia's energies and can therefore serve as frontline soldiers amongst their kind, unlike the rest of the Bat variant. They share the Dark Bats' ability to float in mid-air and can as well shoot energy bullets from the tip of their tails over long distances, which make the Dark Bat Snipers excellent long range attackers. However, their energy bullets can only travel in straight lines and therefore easy to avoid. They also have very little health and can be killed with one-to-two hits.

Like the Dark Bats, the Dark Bat Snipers can serve as a method for Sonic the Werehog to travel over bottomless pits, waters of large gaps, by grabbing on to a line of Dark Bat Snipers over such a pit one by one, until he can reach the other side. However, since the Dark Bat Snipers can attack Sonic in the process with their energy bullets, it makes them much more dangerous to use, and one reckless move on the player's behalf can cost a life.

In some cases, killing a Dark Bat Sniper will only cause another one to instantly appear and take the fallen one's place at the exact same position. This is however to prevent the player from unintentionally halting their progress throughout the stages.

The remaining of the Dark Bat Snipers and Dark Gaia's minions were returned to Dark Gaia following the reconstruction of the entity and was as a result of its following defeat resealed inside the planet's core.

Appearance
Like the Dark Bats, the Dark Bat Snipers have a mostly egg-shaped, reddish-purple body with cyan eyes and markings. They have small horns on top of their body and their lower body mostly consists of a large lower jaw with a horn-like growth at each jaw joint and two "antennas" in front. They also have a small, thin tail extending from their back with a tip that resembles a pseudanthium that opens and closes when firing energy bullets.