Sonic The Fighters

Sonic the Fighters is a 3D fighting game in which players compete in one-on-one battles with characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. In the game's scenario, Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends each own one of the Chaos Emeralds. They are holding a fighting tournament to determine who will take the emeralds in order to power a spaceship and stop series antagonists Doctor Robotnik and Metal Sonic from building an evil fortress in space. The original arcade and 2005 release included eight playable characters: Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, Espio the Chameleon, Fang the Sniper, and new characters Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear.

The 2012 re-release added Metal Sonic, Doctor Robotnik, and Honey the Cat as playable characters, all previously only accessible through hacking into the original arcade version. Honey is based on a character with the same name from Fighting Vipers (1995).

Sonic the Fighters was developed by Sega AM2, Sega's arcade game development team behind the Virtua Fighter series. The idea for a Sonic the Hedgehog fighting game was conceived by AM2 lead developer Yu Suzuki who saw character designer Masahiro Sugiyama dabbling with a Sonic the Hedgehog model in AM2's Fighting Vipers. Suzuki pitched the idea for a Sonic fighting game to Hiroshi Kataoka, another one of the heads of AM2. Since Sonic Team was in charge of licensing the Sonic characters, Kataoka had to present the idea to the head of Sonic Team, Yuji Naka.

Kataoka was worried Naka would not like the concept of Sonic characters fighting each other, but Naka was receptive. At first, Naka was concerned that Sonic would be unable to fight considering his large head and short arms, but he was delighted after seeing the smooth animation accomplished by Suzuki's team. Original Sonic character designer Naoto Ohshima was also pleased with Sonic's animations. Sega AM2 began development with Sonic Team supervising over the implementation of the characters and setting.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Sonic the Fighters as the 13th most popular arcade game of June 1996.

After seeing it demonstrated at a Japanese arcade expo, GamePro shared their admiration of the game's cartoon-like animation, comparing it to Looney Tunes. Next Generation gave an average review, praising the visuals but criticizing the gameplay. They believed the backgrounds and character animations were detailed well, but felt that hardcore fighting game fans would be disappointed with the lack of gameplay depth. They concluded by giving the game 3 out of 5 stars, calling it a fun game that "exploits Sonic milieu without feeling too aggressive."