The Bizarre World of Sonic Fighting Fan Games 

So I'm NOT the only person left in the multiverse that still remembers Sonic Battle Lost Ending Neo?

The whole sonic gather battle thing reminds me of those fake anti-piracy screen videos we would get a few years back, except that those were meant as harmless jokes, gather battle was actual malware made with malicious intent. What the actual fu*k

Sonic Gather Battle actually looks like a really fun game, why the hell did its creator have to be a psychopath

Call it a dead wish, but I truly hope that one day, someone or some team decides to randomly remake Sonic gather battle, without the shitty malware, so that we can play it once more.

Sega once took down a Sonic fan game (Sonic Omens) because the developers were trying to make a profit off said fangame. No doubt the original Smackdown could've been at risk if they used THAT to profit. ArcForged could have easily used their donations with a generic "help us make better games!" banner because they HAVE made an original project: Head 2 Head, with another on the way called Origin of Storms

And here I am being the only person who remembers Sonic Smash Brothers Beta.

Smackdown feels like the peak of what i wanted from a sonic fighting game, cause FUCK man, if the MVC2 port hype says anything, people YEARN for the MAHVEL. I personally dont care that they're ripping off other fighting game moves considering the majority of the fandom for years was just ripping off things they liked like dbz to put into their fan content; Nazo unleashed being basically a corner stone of fan animations. But yeah their dev teams dumb

34:52 I can tell you from firsthand experience that sonic gather battle's far from balanced a lot of characters (especially the unlockables) had really really spammy moves that even the ai would throw out themsevles so it would make it harder to unlock them, I remember when the game was still in development about 7 - 8 years ago i complained in the discord server how Ichigo's fight was too hard so they made an update that spawned in 5 of him and made them spam the exact same move (which was also unlbockable) and it would either kill you instantly or knock you off the stage, it was a really scummy move from the developer(s)

Great video! The Sonic Gather Battle situation never ceases to frustrate me because IT WAS NEARLY EVERYTHING THAT I WANTED FROM A SONIC FIGHTING GAME (dare I say from a Sonic spinoff period) and I was actively following its development since before SAGE 2016....and I vividly remember the day that everything happened....still heartbreaking to this day. Hopefully someone out here could potentially revive that project or create a fangame similar to it, just, you know, without the malware. Also felt the need to mention the Freedom Fighters MUGEN games by MUGENHunter, a series of heavily KOF-inspired Sonic fangames made in the MUGEN engine where, unlike Sonic Gather Battle, the creator (as far I know) actually made all visual assets themselves and DIDNT ACT LIKE A COMPLETE LUNATIC OVER THEM

Thanks for talking about sonic battle len, i've literally never heard of it and as both a sonic fan and fan of a LOT of fighter maker 2 games, this is a great surprise for me! (which btw, if you thought 2dfm was outdated by that time, plenty of new japanese indie fighters still use it, with a couple even getting arcade releases!) And it feels great to finally see someone mention how smackdown is like 90% reused assets, and learning that even the creators of it tried saying it's a proof of concept for sega to hire em is so scummy when they barely designed even two character's movesets, and don't do anything that any team at sega could do for a new sonic fighter. At least their original games look/play good. Also, it's really not expected for small project games to have online, especially for fighters, probably the hardest type of online to develop because for most indie stuff you'd need to start development with it in mind as it's not easy to just plop online on to something for small teams. A game i'm a little disappointed to not see here is sonic the fighter blitz, that game is like if a modern 2d sequel to sonic the fighters! it's so refreshing to see a sonic fighter with great original sprites, and even acknowledges STF's mechanics. Just a shame that the original dev couldn't keep working on it, but it has been slowly continuing with a new team.

Shocked there was no Sonic The Fighters Blitz mention here; since it seems to be the most recent sonic fighting game I've seen around

This was such a good watch. I have a lot things i want to say. First off theres another version of sonic LEN that was released a few years ago by someone else, basically the same idea as what you were doing but it didn't seem to go anywhere. It was called Sonic strikerz. Don't know too much about it but might he worth checking out at very least to see what version of the game they used. Second After some digging I did find out that the whole donation controversy from Sonic smackdown was caused by a misunderstanding. Basically when you upload something to itchio the default option will have the game set for asking for donations when you hit the download button until the dev changes it themselves. You don't normally see this on other fan games, the reason being that this is only the default if you have payments set up on itchio, after that it'll default the donations prompt on your future projects and because the dev had previously uploaded their own original game before sonic smackdown it got hit with the prompt until they eventually turned it off. At least that's my understanding of the situation after some digging. Third if i can recommend some other interesting sonic fighting games I'd definitely say check out sonic the fighters blitz, sonic Jo rush, and Sonic Ultima. Sprry for the long comment 😅

Can't believe you managed to make a video about Strange Sonic Fighting Games and NOT talk about the MUGEN KING Sonic The Freedom Fighters. Then again. The Sonic The Freedom Fighters games probably need their own video.

This was a great video, I'd love a part 2 (especially for some juicy Sonic Ultima coverage 👀)

Great video! I'm glad you talked about the travesty that is SGB- I still can't believe that all went down. If you want to talk about _more_ weird Sonic fighters there's technically the one made in MUGEN that has Ren and Stimpy as playable characters (yes, I'm 100% serious), but I have no idea if that game is even online anymore. It may be abandonware at this point!

To clarify something, asking someone to link the build of SBN 3.1 isn't a great idea since youtube tends to delete links automatically. If you can manage to get it, that's great, but there's no guarantee you even see the comment.

The only game then you forgot is Sonic the fighters blitz hyper edition

At 21:00, I think it's way too demanding to expect an online mode out of a fangame. Online takes a ton of work to pull off, and I think it's perfectly okay for a fangame to not have it, even if it's a fighting game.

Hmmmmm I wonder why Sonic Gather battle is unavailable, truly a mystery

Look, all I'm saying- If a person wants to make a Sonic Fighting Fangame, I feel like a remaster or sequel to Sonic Battle would be a good start but that's just me. Or y'know what Sonic Gather Battle was well executed, maybe someone (WITHOUT PUTTING ANY KIND OF VIRUS IN THE GAME) could do a game similar to that. (If anyone is reading this, feel free to use my ideas. I'm probably most likely not the first one to say this anyways.)

i miss when super sonic knockout was still being worked on

Sonic Battle OST my beloved

Yo, take a look to sonic robo smash, its like a smash bros fangame with sonic characters in the sonic robo blast 2 style, its looking pretty good but it isn’t out yet!

I love long form content of any topic man

28:53 Hey wait a second... I've got A LOT of opinions on this topic, but firstly, in the past I did work on an Emerl moveset, that ultimately ended up going nowhere and I believe that the one in the old version is actually a mix of mine and someone elses/ At one point I offered to work on Sonic Duel as I still had plans of working on Emerl and was also working on PMEX Remix, but unfortunately my mental health took a nosedive (as did my already miniscule animation skills) and I stopped Brawl modding, barely contributing anything to the community as a whole. Funnily enough it's from Brawl Modding that it was particularly easy to tell that Sonic Smackdown reused animations, a lot of Amy's animations are actually from Ike of all characters Sonic Smackdown is such a shame, I wasn't aware of the prior controversies so I personally excused a lot of the animation ripping, since I felt it's really the only way a game of this size and scope could be made. It's still fun but I'm no good with real Fighting games (also rip Gemerl not getting to be his own character (though this was before IDW made him more separate from Emerl)) Personally I think that the reason we don't get a lot of fanmade fighting games comes down to MUGEN. Now I'm heavily biased here but this mostly comes from it typically being praised as some kind of masterpiece, but "Sonic Battle HD" is something I blame a lot for this (honestly I wanted to, and still might, make a video on a similar topic to this myself) Much like old versions Sonic Duel it's a collection of characters that weren't made by the person who "made" the game, though unlike Sonic Duel it lacks the same kind of direction and actual character work Majority of the characters use the "JUS arranged style" one that (Doesn't play like the actual JUS game, and) focuses on super flashy one button autocombos, essentially "jingling keys, the fighting game" Despite being constantly heralded as a "Sonic Battle remake", it plays nothing like battle, and the roster is absolutely bloated with fanon DBZ ripoff and reskin characters, with 31 different Sonics and 12 Shadows, over half of the roster is very unimaginative fanon, not to mention the absence of Gamma, Beta (Who has a really cool Mugen character!) and Charmy being hilariously oversized due to the source he was ripped from If it wasn't obvious, I'm not a fan, but this kind of MUGEN fangame is very common, it's always a shame when I'm looking ar SAGE stuff to be met with the same character builds I've seen 100 times before, not to mention that there's a lot of Super Smash Flash 2 mods that have incredibly similar mindsets To be honest it's not entirely HD Deluxe's fault (Though I'm not a fan of how Mugen builds like these are put behind adwalls) there are creators and players who overhype it, and those are the ones who claim it as a Sonic Battle remake (I'm a fan of Loki FES but the clickbait is atrocious) The situation with Gather Battle sucks, because I actually played safe versions of it and it was incredibly fun. I've recently tried to get it working again, but it simply doesn't work on Windows 10, major shame Leemena didn't really have any right to do what they did though, those sprites were mostly not even theirs There are two fighting fangames that I really do think are pretty well made and worth a look, though both of them I believe are no longer being worked on, Super Sonic Knockout, a unique platform fighter that's pretty solid, though the video settings are rough, and Sonic Battle Chaos Greed, a Mugen game, though one that has modifications to the base engine, and has characters fully made by the same creator, in the style of Battle with some additions to movesets and new characters, not to mention a lengthy arcade mode and bosses I hope the fighting game scene can evolve somewhat, I know there's a Sonic the Fighters 2d remake, and my friend TheStoryTeller is working on a Sonic Battle remake in between his own projects so maybe things are looking up Also remember Super Sonic Bros?

I've actually seen a recent fangame using fighter maker. Pokemon Close Combat released not too long ago, and it's still getting updates. It's very basic, but pretty solid and with some really smooth animation. As for a fighting game for a potential part 2, you should really check out Sonic the Fighters Blitz - Hyper Edition. It's a sort of sudo-remake/reimagining of the original Sonic the Fighters, but as a 2D fighter instead of a 3D one. It's IKEMEN GO-based, and it's really well-made. The controls and game feel are surprisingly smooth.

There's actually quite a few fighter maker games still being made, most notably Axel City 2, which even has an arcade release.

i remember back when the sonic gather battle drama went down and having to warn my friend in freshman year not play it and sure enough he didn't listen and the rest I'm sure you can piece together what happened. i never understood the constant drama in communities around that time, 3DS modding community, Smash, Pokemon, even Paper Mario, hell even the switch modding community, a lot of these are arguably still pretty crazy currently, but back then i feel like all of them were at their all time peak of wildness, I'm probably missing more but my god this is a trip down memory lane lmao

This video is EXTREMELY underrated!

Funny bit is a few years back I found a download for sonic gather battle and it's pretty aight

I swear this series should have gotten an anime arena fighter spin off just like ultimate ninja storm

oh i remember sonic gather battle so well. being an autistic kid online in the 2010s i had some odd interests, and 2 of them happened to be sonic and computer viruses. my virus fixation had already passed at that point, but i was extremely fixated on sonic, so you just know that sonic gather battle was something i absolutely ate up. i actually didn't know about it's full backstory till i watched this video, so thank you for including it here. i'd also like to mention some other tidbits of interesting info about it you didn't include, not too much, and very quickly: first off, the general search terms of "cheat" and "hack" weren't the only terms that would trigger the malware. there was one more, much broader term, being "mod". this meant that if you so much as had the game open while looking up a mod for a video game, or even something as general as a body mod, it would trigger the malware. also, another thing you didn't mention that i find really interesting is the fact the game was known to be vm aware. you couldn't run the game on a virtual machine, as the game would know, and instantly close itself. i believe someordinarygamers found a workaround to this in his video on sonic gather battle, but i had to have watched that video like 5 years ago at this point, so i wouldn't be able to remember if it was him or another youtuber who made a video about it. the solution i believe was to run it through something called a gaming vm, which i have never heard of up to and after that point, and so don't know anything about. so yeah, the whole thing is really interesting. unfortunately coverage of it isn't as vast as it is for viruses like wannacry, memz, or even gaming viruses such as rensenware, or creepy viruses such as msmajor. its super disappointing, because i bet there'd be more coverage on it and more people opening it up to see how it ticks if it just worked on vms.

23:45 omg those were the daaaays

Nice Fighting games are awesome, especially the fanmade ones

Wish there was some modified version of Gather Battle that took out all of that nonsense. It seems genuinely fun.

Not completely Sonic related, but you should check out Sega vs Capcom. It's a fan game that's a 2v2 tag fighter similar to Tatsunoko vs Capcom or MvCI. Sonic is the only Sonic character and it's still early in development but it looks very polished.

Sonic Gather Battle was almost perfect, only thing holding it back was the creator and malware 😂

You forgot to mention super cosplay wars and arm joe as really well known 2d fighter makwr games

SGB lore goes so hard 😭😭😭😭 (16:08 song? 🤓☝)

would you imagine my surprise when i see my brother in this video as the person who LITERALLY MADE 3.1 might ask him if he still has a copy of the game idk lmao

Sonic Gather battle was something else I remember watching and playing the game but never knew the creator did it because of stolen assets like what was bro thinking that's just dumb bro 😅😭

4:35 Words on Top and Bottom: BRAVE DARKNESS SURVIVAL FINALIZE REBELLION ANOTHER FORBIDDEN HATE EVIL FUTURE LIMITED TIME DISMAY? CHAOS FATE PHANTASMAGORIA ENDLESS OBLIVION? THREATEN WHO FAKE? SOUL MIX DOOM JUSTICE? Just thought it'd be funny to point this out. Also as someone who grew up mostly with the RPG Sonic fangames this was a very interesting watch. Good video.

I wonder if anybody was able to rework the build for Sonic Gather Battle and remove all of the malicious stuff in it. The game does look fun and I do want to try it out, but I don't want to get a virus from a fangame.

I thought this had like 100k views at bare minimum, this is extremely underrated.

Imagine being myself one who worked to try make one fighting game of sonic in the past and failing, i mean, failing miserably, and see a style of mugen never go forward but some characther by glaudiacloud,and it is a pain i try to not return to mind, but nowdays even i makybe have the skill, i dont have the time or manpower to make sprites to try do someting with minimum quality. I Worked on what was Called Sonic freedom fighters Delta, Later renamed to Only Sonic Battle (F), that was based on a even more old fan game, Sonic Freedom Fighers, Mugen made By Mugen Hunter from Early 2k until 2012 (the last know version SSF2_Plus), see what smackdown could do and failed, yeah, it is sad

you should check out sonic smash bros 2 when its out

Man i wish some one would like remake or hack Sonic gather battle to removed all of its bull shit because it genuinely looks interesting

Dong Dong Never Die and Super Cosplay Wars use Fighter Maker as well. You also should have covered Sonic Freedom Fighters by MugenHunter.

If you ever need sonic version smash bros there’s a lot of rivals of aether mods for sonic characters

The best Sonic fighting game we had is Sonic the fighters it had a nice polygonal style, had a banger soundtrack, and was a very fun experience when I played it. Damn these Sonic fighting game fan makers be stingy as hell. You don't even own the IP.

second!! yayyy more sonic fighters besides smackdown !!

So you're just gonna forget that Sonic the Fighters didn't exist to set the staple for Sonic fighting games? Okay. :(

have anyone play sonic the fighters blitz ?

When I was 12 I liked Sonic Gather Battle it was really attractive and really good it was like Sonic Battle 2 but if it had had a sequel but it's a shame that its creator created a virus and an IP grabber we play his game because people steal these sprites that he created it himself but it's sad that now it's been 8 years since the Sonic community has not had a single fighting fangame.

I believe due to how somic characters are designed its hard to imagine what kinda fighting movies they gave cause they all have to turn into a ball

@25:03 They were serious? If they wanted it to be a proof of concept, it needed to be original, not have other fighting game animations and stuff. You want Sega to publish your game, they'll be glad to here your pitch, probably, as long as it wont risk them getting sued.

I’M FIRST! Nice vid!

"pair-sec"

Doesn't anyone have a pre drm version of this game?

Sonic Battle sucks. Sonic The Fighters is alright.