The History of SONIC RUNNERS - The LOST Sonic Mobile Game

[Music] if you were a Sonic fan in the mid 2010s you probably remember just how uncertain things were the year was 2015 if the sonic boom sub series had just launched a faulty success resulting in the future of Sonic as a whole being unclear from the rumors of modern Sonic being phased out for boom Sonic the whole legacy sonic situation and Sonic's general reputation being a lower than it ever had been no one outside of those in power really knew what was going on with the series despite all that there was one game released during this chaotic part of Sonic's history that gave fans hope it not only reminded people of the games and aspects that made them love this franchise it celebrated them there was a game that was a true light in this second coming of Sonic so-called Dark Age and that game was a mostly forgotten about mobile game by the name of Sonic runners on the surface runners appears to have been nothing more than your everyday average runner and that's how a majority of people saw it however there was a lot more to this game than many realized if there was a reason I played it every day when it was around if there was a reason people sunk so much time and effort into it you may be wondering why I'm referring to all this in past tense and the reason for that is well not to get too far ahead of ourselves but Sonic runners is no longer playable is the game that me and countless others poured hours into is completely gone now when sega shut down the game servers only a little over a year after it launched it went from a beacon of hope for the future of Sonic to a literal waste of space in this video I'll tell you how it all happened and why years later people are still talking about this abandoned mobile game this is the history of Sonic runners The Lost Sonic game [Music] now sonic is no stranger to mobile games as early as 2001 Sonic has had games for mobile devices a majority of Sonic's early mobile outings were released on the Sonic cafe service launching in 2001 sonic cafe was a Japanese mobile game service that allowed users to access a variety of Sonic themed games for the low price of 315 yen a month this service would go mostly unheard of outside of Japan with many of the games from the service never being available outside of Japanese phones and let me tell you we really missed out here back in the 2000s people in Japan were playing hits such as Sonic tennis sonic racing Kart sonic casino poker Ami's American page1 shadow shoot and many more a lot more in fact there were over 30 games released for this service most of which are no longer playable due to the service going down in 2007 one noteworthy game from the service was called Nakayoshi Chow which in English is good friend Chow this game was similar to the Chow adventure of EMU games for the Dreamcast in this game you could raise a Chow in your mobile phone basically it was like a mobile phone version of the tiny chao garden from the Sonic Advance series that's right in 2002 Sonic team had made a chow mobile game that's something modern-day mobile devices could have really used I'd love to see this concept revisited someday in 2005 a game titled Sonic jump was released for the café's service it would later be released in other territories under the Sega mobile brand in 2007 as you can probably guess this would go on to be the inspiration for the 2012 release of Sonic jump a pseudo remake of the original title this 2012 game would serve as a launching point for a number of Sonic mobile games that are still in circulation today sonic jump fever mobile versions of console games and of course the Sonic - games Sonic - is by far the most successful Sonic mobile game and arguably one of the most successful Sonic games of all time for comparison the sonic jump has been downloaded a respectable 8 million times but in July of 2016 Sonic - broke 200 million downloads since 2013 the game has been consistently updated adding new features new characters and more well I personally haven't played it in a while it's admirable to see just how much of a success sonic dash is it's even at several legendary crossover events such as ones with Angry Birds pick hello kitty and even pac-man in which you can play as characters from those licenses in the game sonic crossing over with incredibly big names like those is certainly an impressive feat all these years later sonic dash is still going it just received a major new update that completely renewed interest in the game it's even got a sequel sonic dash to sonic boom was released in 2015 essentially being a sonic boom retooling of the original the original sonic dash proved to be far more popular though Sonic being a character who is known for running was a perfect fit for the endless running genre and with tight gameplay great presentation and a ton of extras to unlock it's no wonder why sonic dash is as successful as it is while a majority of Sonic's earlier mobile games were developed internally by Sonic Team the development team hardlight is responsible for games like sonic jump and sonic dash however sonic team weren't done with mobile Sonic games just yet sonic dash an endless runner was proving to be an immense success what if we had a game like it developed by Sonic Team with all of their power behind it could you imagine how incredible an internal sonic team made Sonic mobile game could be not that a modern Sonic Team mobile game was ever really in demand but it would be interesting to see how the in-house team would handle such a project [Music] now sonic games are notorious for being leaked whether it be screenshots released too early to an entire build of a game being released before was supposed to sonic games always seem to find a way to slip out prematurely because it's so common people often take notice to any forms of sonic leaks even if they seem very irrational because of that we've gotten tons of fake sonic leaks and hoaxes and you want to remember sonic dimensions sonic excursion all of the many false wento sonic leaks however sometimes these turn out to be true this was the case of this 4chan post from june 2014 from someone who claimed to be a beta tester for sonic boom rise of lyric they're less than flattering comments on the game all came true they even correctly stated that shadow and Metal Sonic would be featured in the game something that wasn't announced at the time of this post once the leaker gets even just one aspect of a leaked correct the rest of their claims seem far more believable while they claim to be a beta tester for sonic boom they also claim to know the working title of Sonic teams next project is that title being Sonic runners if they didn't know anything beyond that but that name was enough to catch people's attention with sonic team's next game going to be titled sonic runners what would it be like what systems would it be for could this be connected to the 2015 multi-platform game that was quietly teased that jazz versus Toy Fair 2014 display was a game called Sonic runners going to be the next big Sonic game people began to speculate tons of rumors started to pop up some claiming pretty ridiculous things regarding the game all adding fuel to the runners rumor fire people could not wait to find out what this game would truly be about a new Sonic Team title is always something to get excited about as the months went on we slowly got more and more confirmation that Sonic runners was indeed real the domain sonic runner's calm was registered by second themselves in July of 2014 proving there was at least some truth to these rumors in November of 2014 second networks created a page for Sonic runners on their site second networks his site has many pages for Sega games but most of those are mobile games with Sonic runners a mobile game the website didn't display much only containing text that read Sonic runners okay because of this we knew the game would likely be a mobile game but what form would it take the name implies an endless runner game but we didn't know for sure thankfully though it wouldn't take long to finally get a news regarding the game for years now Sega have held Sonic fan events at joy palace their amusement park in Japan if they tend to do two of these a year one for Sonic's birthday and one around Christmastime these are always exciting as each event often brings at least a few announcements at the holiday event on December 28th 2014 Sonic runners was officially announced the rumors were true Sonic runners was a real game and Sonic team were behind it and yes it would be a mobile game however this was all that was shown at the event but even just this got many people myself included very excited who knew what Sonic Team had in store for this there was this artwork that was shown at the event that was rumored to be forerunners due to the piece being titled free running however it was just part of a fan art contest that was held at the event with that said though we still didn't really know anything concrete about the game itself if they did say we'd hear more about the game soon though so all eyes were on Sonic team that dropped the first trailer and they finally did on February 2nd 2015 a date known by the sonic community as hedgehog day when a teaser trailer for the game was released [Music] beginning with us strangely ominous tone this certainly was an odd way to tease your mobile game but it definitely got people talking the trailer begins by going through Sonic's history of 2d games going all the way from 1991 to 2015 then some new original music starts playing it shows more footage of 2d games all leading up to an excellently animated review of the games logo along with new renders of Sonic Tails and Knuckles if the trailer confirmed the game would be coming out in spring 2015 for mobile devices as well as T is some sort of leaderboard feature it also gave us our first listen to the game's soundtrack being composed by Tomoya Otani as expected from him it sounded amazing the only actual in-game footage we got was from this great shot of Eggman holding a superimposed smartphone showing the game's title screen this was overall a very vague trailer which again is considering this as a endless-runner of mobile game but still the game was on its way and with this trailer being released in early february spring 2015 was not far off along with the trailer the sonic runners website officially opened though it didn't really tell us much more than the trailer it did however confirm that the game called sonic runners would be part of the running genre so hey good to know what important thing the website did give us though was the first piece of official key art for the game and it looked really nice it shows Sonic Tails and Knuckles running in what seems to be Windy Hill from Sonic lost world running alongside them are some chow of the tornado a golden piggy bank the mother wisp people speculated that these would be power-ups of some sort in the game but we weren't given much context seeing Chao is always a good sign though and I loved the style and tone this artwork has the thick outlines make the characters pop against the lush bright Windy Hill background not to mention the stylish logo for the game through Sonic runners things were looking good on February 19 2015 over half a year since we first heard the name Sonic runners we finally got to see what the game was actually like as a gameplay overview trailer was released unfortunately the trailer was only ever released in Japanese but it got the general idea of the game across if the game was a side-scrolling endless runner and at launch you could play as sonic tails or knuckles all of which have their own abilities Sonic is naturally a speed type character and he can jump three times to avoid obstacles tails is a flying-type character and he can fly upwards six times those descent is slower meaning you have to time your jumps well knuckles is a power type character and he can dash forward to destroy enemies and obstacles if the trailer also teased that many more characters would be added to the game through updates including some that hadn't been playable in years which caught the attention of many fans as the game itself looked like a ton of fun it was fast paced had unique but still Sonic like gameplay and it looked to have some real style to it well the key art renders of the characters looked pretty standard the in-game models and renders of Sonic Tails and Knuckles all had noticeably shorter limbs and they all looked great I love it when Sonic is designed with his modern flair but more classic like proportions while it may be a coincidence these slightly altered designs were actually for shouted my merchandise released at joy palace such as this ten of chocolate candies featuring a very stylized sonic on it there are also these keychains of sonic and shadow reliefs there with our work of sonic that bears a striking resemblance to his main art from runners if the trailer also showed off various other aspects of the game such as leveling up your character as well as explaining the companion system in the game you can collect companions such as chal wisps and a ton more which would all help you out during your run each having their own special action or benefit it also showed the method of unlocking these companions through landing on them on a premium roulette wheel which you would have to spend a red rings on to spin if the game was not just a mindless endless runner though it had a storyline as well as boss battles against Eggman it looked like this game would have a lot more to it than many people expected if the website for the game was also updated showcasing screenshots of the game as well as more companions we could expect to see at launch they wouldn't just be Chow and wisps these companions would include characters and pieces of iconography from across the entire sonic franchise some of which we hadn't seen in years the website gave examples such as chip from Sonic Unleashed caliber and from sock in the Black Knight and yaker from Sonic Colors while these were surprising to see these companions were not even the tip of the iceberg of deep cut sonic references that would be included in the game but these were a promising start and got me very excited to see what was in store so with all of this hype all of this awaiting and anticipating could the game possibly live up to our expectations we'd soon find out [Music] [Music] sonic runners was released for iOS and Android devices on February 26 2015 it was a very quiet launch and barely gone any official recognition from Sega this was because the game was initially only available in certain regions the game was soft launched in Japan of course as well as Canada likely to make sure the servers were all working correctly this is a common practice with online based mobile games Animal Crossing pocket camp for example was initially exclusive to Australia and sonic forces speed battle was soft launched in the Philippines however that didn't stop me and countless other people from side loading the game onto our devices if the game wouldn't officially launch in America until months later in June of 2015 there's no way I was gonna wait that long I live in the US but I was playing runners the day it came out in February I personally used an apk to side load the game onto my Kindle Fire the day it came out and I had a blast if the game was relatively primitive when it first launched the only playable characters were Sonic Tails knuckles and Amy there weren't many companions to unlock and the whole game was pretty basic however what was here was incredibly promising the main reason so many people got into Sonic runners was of course its gameplay the controls of the game were very simple and easy to understand basically the only things you can do during gameplay was jump or activate the items you equipped before starting a run to jump you tapped the screen to perform your character's special action you tap the screen again to activate your item you tap the item box in the bottom corner and that's it if the items in the game were pretty standard stuff shields invincibility as well as everyone's favorite sonic power-ups OS yep they're back in fact this is the game that explains why wisps are in every Sonic game now as it says that the wisps like Sonic's home world so much that they chose to live on it that's someone expected lower coming from a mobile game if there were three wisp our ups in the game you had the cyan wisp which transformed you into a laser during this state you could tap the screen to gather all the on-screen collectables which was very useful during gameplay the yellow wisp transformed you into a drill where you could jump out of the ground by tapping the screen if the asteroid wisp was the slowest of the three but would suck in items around it all of these items were unique kept the flow of the game going and were really fun to use the gameplay was always very fast-paced as the game was an endless runner and progressively get faster as you survived each run started pretty manageable but after running for a bit Eggman would show up these Eggman encounters were less boss battles but more bonus rounds to collect rings and red star rings after that you'd speed up if the game had four tiers of speed with the final tier being an endurance test where no rings would spawn you could still use stuff like shields however so it was pretty manageable if you were skilled enough one of the best things about runners was that a really rewarded skill while a game like Sonic - can seem unfair and unpredictable at times runners at least when it launched was pure skill if you could time your jumps manage your items and use your wits you could run pretty much forever especially if you memorize the level chunks as well the game was random specific level pieces were used to make up the stages so if you could predict what was coming and that would have really helped you jumping at the right time bouncing off enemies and launchpads at certain points runners felt more like a rhythm game you could really get into the groove of things if you paid attention aiding in that rhythmic feel was the game's incredible soundtrack you'll be hearing it all throughout this video and it is some good stuff seriously the amount of wham bam thank you ma'am get on the floor and jams this game hasn't its soundtrack is insane if you listen to this game's soundtrack you'll think to yourself man this was written for a mobile game Tomoya Oh Tony doesn't mess around does he this soundtrack was so great it even got an official physical release which nowadays is one of the last remnants of runners along with some other pieces of merchandise sold at joy palace events if you don't believe that runners was all about skill check this out this speed runner dark spines sonic has an excellent video on his YouTube channel of him pulling off a near three hour run is that efficient well beyond bragging rights not really those sonic runners bragging rights are obviously worth a ton but the fact that it's possible at all is what matters sonic runners was a game that allowed you to excel if he got really good at it and that's what made it so much fun it was a rewarding experience it was a lot like the classic Sonic games in that way those games reward skill and allow you to blow through them if you know what you're doing runners let you last forever if you're gonna handle the obstacles in your way I think that's what made runners such a well-designed Sonic mobile game it took the appeal of the main series and simplified it in a way that made it easy to pick up and play so with such tight addicting gameplay there's no way this game could fail right well off of gameplay alone sure but this game was ambitious maybe a little too ambitious it wasn't just endless running that there was a story mode you played through as well as tons of menus tons of announcement prompts every time you launched the game which by the way took a long time anyway if there was a splash screen and then the title screen if this was your first time playing or there was an update that just came out you had to download a patch which took a while then a loading screen and then you got to the main menu but oh wait is there an event going on better tell you about it and this main menu had a ton going on to begin with you got a map events your account info at the top challenges ranking the roulette wheel I can see why some players may have gotten a little overwhelmed the main reason the game took so long to get started is because for some reason sonic team made Sonic runners an online only game you had to connect to their servers every time you played if there was no way to play the game offline at all this makes sense for updating the game but why did you have to be online for a normal run is it because of the leaderboard couldn't they have just synched it up next time you connected either way the game always being online proved to be one of the game's biggest mistakes but we'll get to that later anyway you may be wondering how was that story well it sure was a story made for a mobile Sonic game the story was broken into episodes and you progressed through each episode by doing well and scoring points during your runs there were 50 episodes in the base game that's a lot and a lot of the stories in here clearly weren't thought out that well resulting in some really funny storylines since there's so many I won't be going over all of them but here are some highlights from the enriching sonic runners story spoiler warning for a game that's years old and also no longer playable for the most part the game's story is fairly standard sonica friends discover that once again Eggman is up to no good and they must stop him along the way they meet familiar faces such as flicky pecky pocky rocky cookie and more one of the main collectibles in the game are animals who pop out of badniks after you've defeated them if you can grab them they add to your score these guys are one of the main focuses of the story and get into some wacky shenanigans while the story can sometimes be funny to be honest was any of this really necessary did this game need a story most people skip the cutscenes anyway and the cutscenes don't have voice acting they're just text boxes with profile pictures which most players probably clicked through and considering there are 50 episodes I think resources would have been better spent elsewhere though hey there are some notable episodes like the one where a sonic and the Ganga final lost Shaolin have to guide it home or how about the one where rocky needs help finding his girlfriend because rocky the seal animal buddy apparently has a girlfriend there are some exciting moments like Metal Sonic shows up from time to time you never actually fight him but he's there same for super sonic who shows up in the ending cutscene but you can never play as him not even in the final boss it's the same style and Eggman battle you've been dealing with for the whole game the story here really just seems like an afterthought and something that I feel really didn't need to be here the gameplay was fun enough to justify playing alone we really didn't need to hear about the daily lives of the animal buddies while playing it the one way the story seems sort of justified to me is that as you progressed you and launch Tails and Knuckles as playable characters tails was unlocked in episode 10 and Knuckles was unlocked in episode 16 same one for unlocking the three main stages of the game you started out in a Windy Hill which was a speed type stage but eventually unlocked the flying-type stage sky road and finally in the power type stage lava mountain all three of these stages were taken from Sonic lost world which was the most recent main series Sonic game released during runners development or team Sonic were the only playable characters unlocked through the story there was a fourth playable character at launch that being Amy Rose though the way you unlocked her was pretty ridiculous okay get this if you could get ten of your Facebook friends that I know you have to use your invite link and download sonic runners you don't lock Amy as a playable character you'd also get ten red rings for each invite and this was the only way to unlock Amy at launch two she wasn't even unlockable on the premium roulette you needed to somehow convince not just one but ten people or go through the trouble of making 10 fake accounts have all of them download runners onto ten different devices using your invite link and only then would you be able to unlock Amy Rose a core sonic character I feel bad for all the amy fans who simply couldn't get her for a while there wasn't even much footage of Amy online as her unlock requirements were so ridiculous did any of you guys watching unlock Amy this way do any of you even have ten Facebook friends that like Sonic anyway to celebrate the launch of runners each player received a gift of $25 ings each time they logged on to the game you know I should probably explain how the currency and runners worked it's your standard mobile game affair the two main currencies were rings and a register rings similar to the currency system in Sonic - you could collect both during gameplay but you could speed up the process of collecting them through microtransactions rings were common being the main collectible during gameplay you use them to level up your character as well as buy items red star rings however were used for something far more let's just say controversial is the main way of unlocking companions and eventually new characters was through a random premium roulette wheel for a steep 50 red star rings you could spin the wheel on this wheel you could land on a variety of things you could get a rare companion egg a super rare companion egg or while new character events were in play you could get a character egg and unlock a new playable character obviously as red rings could be purchased with the real money this was Sega's main way of making money off the game as such the rates for these were highly skewed to incentivize you to spend real money for more chances to get what you want for example whenever a new playable character was introduced you initially couldn't simply buy them with rings or red rings no you had to win them on this of random roulette and new characters were often only available for a limited time so for example if you wanted to unlock classic sonic whose event I'll get to later you needed to win him did it land on him with the red rings you have and don't have anymore oh that's too bad and guess you'll just have to buy more this created a situation where dedicated sonic fans who love these characters had to spend a real hard-earned money on this game and some people paid a lot i thankfully never spent any money on this game I sure he spent a lot of time on ever get back but my wallet was safe with me however I knew a lot of people who did spend money and honestly I could never justify this part of the game it would have been fine if the characters were also purchasable for a certain amount of red rings if that was the case the roulette would have had much more of a big risk big reward factor to it if they would do this eventually but they really should have given people the option to just upgrade by the characters from the start the point is having this randomized Gacha styled system in a sock the Hedgehog endless-runner was a really greedy idea and completely took advantage of fans desires of playing as these characters this is especially true because Sonic runners main appeal quickly became less the gameplay and more the playable characters through consistent updates the roster of Sonic runners became quite impressive this image quickly blew up runners hype it came from a data mine of the game and revealed many of the planned playable characters showing that this game was going to have a lot of 10 in store we had the entire cast from Sonic Heroes as well as silver and blaze seeing all these characters playable again in a Sonic game in 2015 was such an incredible thing to see and this would be nowhere near the entire roster this is nothing compared to what we eventually got at the time of its closure Sonic runners have the most playable characters of any Sonic game ever released that alone should pique your interest putting on this fanservice and the game was an ingenious marketing strategy but again locking them behind what is essentially a loot box system was such a greedy move and rightfully soured many people's opinions on the game I was just happy to see all of Sonic's friends back sure was upsetting when I couldn't unlock some of them but it was awesome just to see them again these characters were released in special limited time to vents which is what a majority of Sonic runners updates included every few weeks a new event would start to incentivize people to come back and play whether it be to unlock new companions play new stages experience new gripping story lines or of course when new characters since it didn't take me or many other players long to complete the main story these are what kept me coming back to runners so why don't we go through the timeline of these events and see what exactly made them so exciting here's where the game gets interesting [Music] in the original gameplay trailer they teased several characters that would be coming to the game in future updates the trailer confirmed that amy shadow rouge and team chaotix would be coming to the game and the first characters to be added to the game and the first event for the game in general was the introduction of team chaotix being released on March 5th 2015 less than two weeks after the game launched all three members of team chaotix were now available to be unlocked through the roulette wheel all with equal chance to get them a whopping six percent chance to land on the character egg naturally a lot of people were annoyed when they could not unlock their favorite characters but still it was cool to have all these new characters in the game especially this early on SPO was a speed type Charmy was a flying-type and Vector was a power type all three of them were only unlockable through the wheel so I hope you saved up your red rings because otherwise you wouldn't stand a chance at unlocking them want the karma collector himself vector the crocodile well you had to make sure you had the money and luck to unlock him I guess it's fitting for a character obsessed with money to be part of the first instance of how greedy runners was well each character in this game played fairly similar to one another each team have their own specific benefits team hero gave you a distance bonus and the chaotix gave you a 75% bonus to your ring score making them some of the best characters in the game I remember I only ended up getting Charmy while this event was still going on I guess that's still better than nothing right the chaotix campaign was originally scheduled to end on March 15th but it was extended by a week until the 22nd apparently due to high demand either that or Sonic team realized they could make more money if they left the campaign open for longer on the same day the chaotix campaign was extended the animal rescue event was started this event gave the players gifts depending on the amount of animals they had rescued such as companions and other in-game items the major prize here was the RC monkey companion something that clearly warranted its own event you'd also get red rings and other bonuses depending on how well you did these events were always fantastic ways to rack up stuff like in-game currency [Music] alright this was one of my favorites the Windy Hill in spring event began on March 30th 2015 and lasted until April 6th this was the first of many events to include a special stage not a special stage in the typical Sonic sense these stages are special because they were made specifically for events if they'd also be geared towards all three character types so you can succeed as anyone in them this event special stage was of course Windy Hill in spring the stage got a complete makeover now having this beautiful pastel Easter color scheme to it with the incredible spring emotions as its new background song if you vent tasks the player with collecting Easter eggs which like the animal rescue event would award the player with special bonuses if they collected enough of them if the main reward for this event was unlocking merlina from Sonic and the Black Knight as a companion the game launched with companions such as chip and Caliburn but we were nowhere near done with legacy characters being brought back in Sonic runners Merlino was redesigned to have a chibi appearance this was a brand new model of the character a character who many assumed would never make an appearance again after Black Knight the amount of fan service and runners of this early Ottoman sir Rana was already insane you'd unlock Marlena by collecting just a one Easter egg so she was pretty much a freebie as you collected more Easter eggs you progress through a short mini story relating to the companion Sonic and Friends run across Marlena and Oh Michelle of all people explain who she is and then they go on an adventure with her it's a little unfitting for a character like merlina to be part of an Easter egg collecting event but hey it was cool to see her again what I don't understand is that they clearly put a ton of work into this event but it only lasted a week after this event ended you can no longer play the Windy Hill in spring stage or unlock the companions they were all exclusive to this event it seems like a waste to me I understand hyping up an event but why not introduce the new assets into the main game the sonic runners was a completely single-player game but you were ranked on a leaderboard against other players depending on your score if the leaderboard was separated in two different leagues ranging from F rank to s rank if you were one of the top members of your division you'd level up and go to the next rank starting on April 15th you got a reward for ranking up is that being sharra from Sonic and the secret rings as a companion her special ability was that after a certain combo she'd activate an item making her one of the best companions in the game here's something I've had no one expected Sonic runners crossover events with this being an in-house Sonic Team project if they were easily able to do crossovers with their other IPs and the first one we got was with Phantasy Star Online 2 there have been many sonic collaborations with Phantasy Star Online 2 so was very cool to finally see a Sonic game reference said the campaign began on April 14th and lasted until April 19 that's right these were only available for 5 days if the campaign brought with it new companions which were added to the roulette wheel those being kuna rappy and mag characters from Phantasy Star Online 2 I personally don't know much about them but I imagine this was really cool for fans of the game you could get those companions and have them run alongside you whenever you wanted even after the event ended when the event did end though the companions were gone for good and we're never able to be one ever again let me remind you that at this point the game still had yet to be officially released in America sure tons of American fans had already downloaded the game through other means but Sega of America had yet to even officially acknowledge the game too bad for the fans who didn't even know runners existed huh they just never got to experience these events or get these characters once again these event exclusive companions only angered and annoyed the fans who couldn't get them in time plus the event didn't even last a week did sonic team really expect fans to grind the game that much to just get a chance to unlock some of these sonic runners in general can be described as a lot of incredibly cool ideas completely bogged down by the gotcha style of roulette wheel but we'll talk more about that later when I talk about why the game closed it'd be a few months until the next major event but on June 10th 2015 the Puyo Puyo Quest campaign began this event was a crossover between Sonic runners in another popular Sonic Team series Puyo Puyo specifically the game Puyo Puyo quest if you don't recognize that game that makes sense despite originally being released in 2013 hooyo prio quest has never been released outside of Japan and at this point it's likely it'll never be but it was popular enough in Japan to get a collab with Sonic runners if this event was a lot more in-depth in the fantasy star 1 not only did we get new companions we got a new character and a special stage along with a new storyline the special stage was sky road but with falling puyos in the background apart from that though the stage was identical the story involved characters from the Puyo Puyo series being transported into Sonic's world we've got sonic talking to Amity Eggman teaming up with Satan yep that's right meaning in an official Sonic game there's a cutscene where Eggman proudly states whoa ha ha I'm very grateful for your help Satan the event brought a new character as well say hello to our first variant character it's Amy dressed up as a MIDI from the Puyo Puyo series her and the Puyo Puyo companions were only available while this event was active this event was awesome it was so cool to see stuff like a MIDI Amy being introduced into the game and showed just how unique some of the stuff Sonic team would make for this game would be while Sonic runners was soft launched on February 26 2015 to this point it still hadn't been officially released worldwide what this meant was that up until this point you could never go for example to the US App Store or Google Play Store and officially download Sonic runners to your devices the game was stone it's soft launch testing phase meaning everything we had seen up until now all those characters all those events they were all part of the test run of the game to use all those resources while your game wasn't even out in regions like America or Europe was certainly odd but you do use Sonic Team but then at long last on June 20th 2015 the sonic Twitter casually said hey guess what that mobile game we've been hyping up all over Japan yeah it's coming out here enjoy I guess no trailer no excitement just a hey we're releasing it post and that's it anyway June 25th 2015 was the day Sonic runners finally went worldwide it's seems like the server testings weren't enough though as when the game went worldwide the servers really chugged for a few days likely due to the jump in players still it was an exciting time for sonic runners thankfully the game also supports account transfers from devices so you can transfer your unofficial side-loaded account to an official device meaning early players outside of Japan or Canada didn't get penalized either and long last the whole world could finally experience sonic runners if the game went worldwide just in time for June 23rd 2015 Sonic's 24th anniversary not quite the big 25th but that didn't stop Sonic Team for making a huge happy birthday Sonic event for runners which began fashionably late on June 26th this event was first shown off at the sonic 24th anniversary party at joy Palace on June 19 2015 it introduced Classic Sonic as a surprise new playable character as well as some really awesome companions at this joint policy vent runners had a huge focus they announced stuff like the birthday event as well as the release of the Sonic runners OST to advertise that they had an actual live performance of songs from the game sounds like a pretty great event to me as for the in-game event itself it brought lots of cool additions to the game as for the companions we got a Sega Genesis a cartridge which was Sonic 1 locked onto Sonic & Knuckles very cool and my personal favorite the death egg yeah you ever just go on a walk with your pet death egg you could do that in Sonic runners I remember people got really excited about Classic Sonic being added as this was before games like mania and forces made him a very common inclusion this was also the point where a lot of people started to spend a lot of their money to get red rings to land on him on the roulette I personally did not but I also didn't unlock him during this event which I remember was really upsetting he was such a cool character while we played exactly like normal Sonic even down to his typing he had completely new animations based off of his games they really put a lot of effort into him classic Sonic's description reads the Genesis era Sonic who collaborates with the modern sonic in Sonic Generations I also really loved his model and runners too he looks much closer to Japanese Classic Sonic compared to how he looks in generations and forces a new character and companions were not the only thing this event dropped though as we got another special stage this time it's a Windy Hill decorated in birthday supplies streamers strung along the ground loons in the air confetti flying everywhere it was a really fun idea for an anniversary event this event tasked the player with collecting birthday cakes and as you collected moment you don't lock the genesis companion as well as progressed through a new birthday themed storyline in which Sonic and all of his friends celebrate his birthday well that is until Eggman kidnaps all of them and you have to rescue them there were a lot of really great moments in this one that I'm sure fans really enjoyed reading most of the main Sonic cast were featured here including the likes of shadow big as silver everyone if the happy birthday Sonic event lasted until July 7th and classic sonic left the roulette a few days later on July 10th well we got the chaotix back in the early days of runners and some event characters like Amity Amie and classic Sonic we still had yet to get many of the characters originally leaked and that data mined from when the game first came out people myself included were eagerly waiting for those fan favorites to hit the game and it was finally happening Omega was added to the roulette on July 3rd 2015 Omega was a power type playing like knuckles however he was not classified as a dark character shadow and Rouge would be when they were added but Omega was a mech character yeah they got pretty creative with type classifications as we'll talk about soon still though it was great to see him and the rest of the characters couldn't be far off Omega stayed on the rillette for quite a while leaving on July 31st summer 2015 brought a ton of new special events to runners so let's go through them starting on July 16th this one was a lot more unique than the previous special stages as it included a completely unique stage desert ruins from Sonic lost world if the stage also brought with it one of the funkiest jams on the runners OST fiery passion fun fact an unfinished version of this song was found in the files of runners when it first went live this version that you're hearing right now sounds slightly less refined than the final version of the song and was originally thought to be for tropical coast even this early version is still an absolute Jam well Shara was a reward for scoring well in the rankings our Razer gin was released as part of this event being rewarded to you if you collected enough treasure and this events collectible his ability was that for every 1000 combo you got he'd give you a shield which was super useful for runs that lasted past the no rings section along with him on the roulette you could get the companions magic lamp as well as a oh my gosh a desert shall come on guys how did this game fail as the new storyline for this event involves a razor gin actually helping out sonic encou what introducing him Omochao says this is a razor gin he used to be an evil wizard who tried to take over the world but he was sealed away by someone called the blue Saviour wow these are the callbacks sonic fans live for and you could find them in this mobile game runners was a perfect place for stuff like this a constantly updating mobile game with events was a perfect place to fit in fanservice what was cool about runners though was that most of the games are referenced with more recent games ones that barely got any callbacks nowadays that's why the inclusion of companions like chip caliber and merlina and this guy really made fans happy if only their distribution was a little more fair to allow fans to actually get them in the game but hey it's the thought that counts right if the next character to be added to the game was rouge the bat she was added to the premium roulette on July 10 and was available until August 7th Rouge was of course a flying-type but this time she was actually listed as a member of team dark when she was added to the game people got very excited because if Omega and Rouge were here then shadow couldn't be far off [Music] that's not all of the characters released in July however Sonic Team surprised everyone s on July 24th three new characters were added and get this you could actually purchase them purchase them with red rings exactly what everyone had been asking for since the game launched however as you could probably guess there was a catch these weren't normal characters these were so-called beginner characters and were intended for new players that's right silver the hedgehog creamed the rabbit and big the cat are all classified as easy characters easy characters have their running speed lowered by 10% I guess that makes the game easier but that also means your score with them would never compete with scores from other characters making them not very viable in the leaderboards so do all of you diehard sonic runners competitive players who love these characters and we're looking forward to playing as them too bad I guess but hey at least the entirety of team Rose was in the game now the next event was yet another sonic runners crossover event though this one made a lot of sense the Knights in the Sonic runners event started on July 30th and lasted until August 13th 2015 this event didn't include a special stage unfortunately but it added three new companions Knights really and a knight tow peon this was yet another Sonic Team crossover but Sonic and Knights cross over all the time so amazed this was a really cool event and these companions were specialized they would play unique background music if you had Knights as your first companion the background music would change to message from Knight topia and if you had a real as your companion if the background music would change to the verses reality if this was a super cool addition to the game especially because you could still use these after the event ended and still listen to the music while Rouge was on the rillette until August 14th blaze the cat was added on July 31st I remembered blaze being one of the few characters I actually managed to unlock off the roulette and wow what a relief it was to finally get a new character well the ruler was a manipulative greedy way of unlocking things it sure gave you that sweet rush when you unlocked something like a character blaze was a power type which made sense but she was actually categorized as part of team Rose that's interesting for the record this blaze was the blaze from Sonic Rush and not so oh six remember that for later blaze left the roulette on August 28th but before she left at long last Shadow the Hedgehog was added on August 14th shadow being added was heavily anticipated and when he was added people went crazy trying to unlock him I didn't oh well but it was awesome to finally see him in and he looked great in the runner style team dark was finally complete or I guess two members of team dark and one member of team mech either way good stuff if the roster was really fleshing out now [Music] the tropical coast event wrapped up the summer with a new special stage new music which was fittingly titled end of the summer and new companions this was just like the desert ruins event as the tropical coast stage was completely new and just like desert ruins it looks great and was a great change of pace for the game considering the main three stages were all we ever got outside of these events I seriously can't think of why they wouldn't add these special stages to the main stage lineup at least eventually this events deep cuts on a character was the mother whisked from Sonic Colors she was unlockable by collecting pearls in the special stage you could also unlock a Blowfish transporter as well as a oh my gosh a marina chal yeah so again guys how did this game fail if you vent lasted from August 20th to the 27th alright so this is the point of the games history where Sonic Team just goes wacky with fanservice the Sonic Adventure events started on September 4th 2015 and get this four companions we got chaos zero is a tornado two and an orca from Emerald Coast as those are all incredible on their own but whom the playable character of this event who was it oh you know to call via Kenda just a character who was long believed to have been effectively erased from the Sonic series never to be seen again yeah she was just in runners now okay sure she was still on Sonic Channel the official Japanese Sonic website but the chances of her being in a game against seemed nearly impossible of course that made sense as her story was all wrapped up by the end of Sonic Adventure but some fans still wanted to see her and other similar characters and extra non-canon roles as such as in a game like Sonic runners and for once it actually happened to call his model was all-new reimagined for 2015 mobile game standards and she looked great she was a flying-type an interesting choice considering she played like Knuckles and Sonic Adventure 2 but it was a unique choice and made sense when she saw it in action I was expecting her to be part of Team rose to round that out since Korean can't be the flying type but she was actually part of a new team team wild doesn't make a ton of sense for a character but she was a wild inclusion so sure if this event lasted for a long time until September 25th likely because Sonic Team knew how demanded these additions would be so if you're keeping up with the game so far Sonic runners was a game where you could play as any of these characters with buddies like these you're probably starting to see why this game shutting down was such a loss for Sonic fans he was prominently featured in the game story mode as one of Eggman's helpers but on September 11th 2015 Metal Sonic was finally a playable character and with that every character from that original data-mining week was now in the game as you can imagine Metal Sonic plays exactly like Sonic being a speed of mecha character to go along with Omega well his play style isn't very interesting his design here is the Metal Sonic and Sonic runners doesn't look much like modern Metal Sonic instead of looking almost identical to how classic Metal Sonic looked inside generations apart from his body because of his body shape we can tell he is modern Metal Sonic but his head especially looks very classic I know every character in Sonic runners have been redesigned a little but Metal Sonic looked very different maybe it's just because his color blue isn't as dark as it's normally shown to be either way he still fit the game very well and was an awesome addition on September 18th we had our first returning event they brought back the animal rescue event while our hero our sea monkey didn't come back the new companions that were available were a whole chalice that makes up for it let me tell you there were a ton of cha variants made for this game can we please get a plush line of all of these or something tchau have so much potential if the event itself was more or less the same but here's something completely unexpected remember how amy was originally only available through Facebook invites well she was now purchasable that's right she wasn't on the roulette she was purchasable with red rings 300 of them so she wasn't sheep but still what an improvement as the months went on and more characters became purchasable through this method such as team chaotix and team dark and not until after months of people being annoyed by not being able to get them but still okay this one was a little weird the game's first and only raid event began on October 6 2015 similarly to his fight inside - you were able to battle his as he was accessible through his own menu and could only be fought at specific times when he was active while fighting him you could power yourself up by collecting white wisps which made the boss fight very easy while progressing through the events story you can unlock the RC moon mech as a companion on the roulette you could also unlock the star-shaped missile and the RC satellite after each battle is as his health would increase so the boss fight got progressively harder as you played the event this was definitely an interesting and new idea for the game but wasn't all that exciting one of the easiest ways to flesh out the roster of a mobile game is by introducing variants of the playable characters we saw this with a MIDI ami for example now that it was October Halloween spirit was in the air and things were about to get a real spooky in Sonic runners I personally didn't hear about these characters before they were released so imagine my surprise waking up checking for the weekly runners update only to be greeted by pumpkin boy Halloween Oh mega that's right over the course of October Halloween costume variants of team dark were released we got omega dressed up as a pumpkin Rouge dressed up as a witch and shadow dressed up as a vampire these were never-before-seen designs and man were they cool I know they were just variants but these designs were awesome so awesome in fact that they were referenced in this beautiful 2018 Halloween artwork released on the official Sonic social media accounts runner is having new unique content like this really kept my interest in the game hi I love stuff like this and it was so much fun to see unique spins on characters we've gotten so used to I remember I actually got Halloween omega' on my first spin when he was released and I also got witch Rouge I never got vampire shadow though which was a huge disappointment these were so great and they got me very excited to see what else they would deal with existing characters that wasn't all for spooky events and sonic runners however as we finally got another holiday event this time being for Halloween the event lasted from October 23rd to November 1st and featured a brand new Halloween themed stage as well as new spooky companions these included the long-awaited return of king of boom boom from Sonic Adventure 2 he was this events main companion you could also unlock the companions boo and Halloween shall on the roulette how did this game fail the roulette was all halloween-themed - with new background music an instrumental of pumpkin Hill from Sonic Adventure 2 this was actually really cool because before this we didn't have an official instrumental of this song so if nothing else thanks for that Sonic runners one of the most iconic moments in Sonic runners history took place during this event now this ghost companions name is boo when the event first launched however the companion was incorrectly labeled as boob as this was obviously an error Sonic team was quick to issue an apology regarding their boob mistake in the current Halloween special stage event the character boo has been incorrectly named boob we are currently working on a fix for this error and hope to have one implemented shortly the Sonic runners team apologizes for any inconvenience caused and hopes to see you again soon in the world of Sonic runners thankfully the boob name was quickly corrected a boo and Sonic runners was once again in boob free I have no idea how this mistake happened in the first place but it's okay Sonic runners team we accept your apology it's time for another sega crossover this time with fantasy zone just like the night's event three new companions were added to the roulette wheel if those companions being Opa Opa Opa and heavy--bam also liked the night's event all three of them play music from the game when they're your main companion the event lasted from November 17th to December 8th it was supposed to end on December 1st but the game wanted two unexpected maintenance during the event so out of courtesy it was extended you may be wondering though why did the game go into maintenance well it was to make way for the largest update the game had ever seen Sonic runners 2.0 [Music] [Applause] sonic team always want to fix what isn't broken is set out to essentially relaunch sonic runners not even a year out of its original release with a huge 2.0 update Sonic runners was by no means a perfect game sure there were the occasional glitches but the game when it worked was a great time but apparently it wasn't enough for Sonic Team if they had big plans for the next update of Sonic runners and on November 27 2015 the sonic runners 2.0 update went live and completely overhauled the game the biggest addition to the game was a completely new mode time mode this mode involves you running as far as you can within the allotted time you can increase your time by picking up these clocks that would add a couple of seconds to your timer it was no right mode but nothing too exciting if there was a matchmaking system where you and other players could compare times and if you beat them you'd get a couple red rings as a prize if that mode was Cohen all but what I say the game as a whole was overhauled I mean it for example all of the companions were nerfed first off they increased the max level of every companion from five to ten this created a load of problems say you maxed out a companion from an event since it was exclusive to that event how are you supposed to get it to level 10 now answer you just couldn't also the max ability of a companion at level 10 was sometimes lower than it was at level 5 before the update this annoyed a ton of fans who tried their hardest to max out all of their companions you're telling me they have to completely redo all of that for no reason the menus also looked completely different and during gameplay they introduced something downright evil if you could last long enough in a run to reach the section with no rings get this random unavoidable spiked walls would show up and just kill you and there was nothing you could do about it ah yes Sonic Team I too love punishing players when they do well thank you obviously people got furious at this and they quickly remove them but the fact that they put something in just to ruin your skill to run to incentivize using red rings to revive yourself wasn't insane move and they were rightfully called out on it speaking of them red rings were also much harder to get as if they weren't scarce enough already for example every time you beat the final boss in 1.0 you would get 50 red rings after the 2.0 update you'd only get a fraction of that and the score requirements to reach the final boss were increased by a ton which made grinding red rings take forever speaking of the scoring even that was overhauled come nullifying any score attack runs players had done in the past if you had the sonic runner's world record too bad you had to do it again this time with spiked walls too many players all these seemingly negative changes killed the game or at least signified the beginning of the end I continue to play it both for the fan service and the gameplay remained most of the same but Wow a 2.0 update is supposed to improve a game not completely destroy it it wasn't all doom and gloom with version 2.0 as the game was still being supported as could be seen with the new characters that were introduced if the original playable silver was a bit of a disappointment assure him being slow was true too as Sonic o6 appearance but fans of the character who wanted to excel at the game couldn't use him as he would hinder their score that's where this comes in say hello to ESP silver a completely new form for the character made for Sonic runners here's what his character description reads following is split with blaze silver has grown stronger and has discovered his true power to all the silver fans watching who never knew about this isn't this the coolest thing ever his design is the same as regular silver but now he always has this pseudo telekinetic glow to him signifying that he's stronger than base silver ESP silver is a flying-type and his classes future not easy for some reason his run speed is still 5% slower than the other characters but he was much better than the original silver his description is what's most interesting about him following his split with blaze implies that this stronger silvers from after the events of Sonic oh six but that didn't happen because of six was erased from the timeline and the blaze and Sonic runners is from Sonic Rush so I guess this is a what-if scenario that's cool with me it's nice to be able to know what would have happened to silver after the events of his story in Sonic oh six it's interesting though that they would tie in runners with those six at all and this would not be the last reference to the game none at all ESP silver is meant to be a more grown-up fully realized silver and you know what new lore like that for characters is awesome why did it have to come from a mobile game I'd love to see an idea like this explored in the main series and in case you were wondering yes you could have a run where you have a team of silver and ESP silver together just like how you can have Sonic and Classic Sonic Amy and Amity Amy etc now remember how Amy became purchasable earlier well if that was the case how was Sonic Team supposed to entice people to get their Facebook friends to play a Sonic game that was clearly a priority to them as they introduced a new exclusive character perfect for the job introducing Gothic Amy yes Amy Rose dressed up in a unique Gothic outfit was now unlockable through the 10 Facebook friends method obviously there isn't a man alive who wouldn't get 10 different people to sign up for Sonic runners in order to unlock such a character so yeah what a great choice sonic team Natalie she was only a variant character and they didn't make another main character exclusive like they did with the original Amy it's a shame sonic team would design this new unique outfit only to use it for a Facebook promotion I feel bad for all of you die hard amy fans who wanted to get your gothic amy fixed but could never unlock her it was now December meaning holiday spirit was in the air and Sonic team was ready to capitalize on it the first Christmas event started on December 18th 2015 and surprise it was another Nights event this was similar to the original nights event only this time having companions based off of Christmas nights you could get Christmas night's Christmas night Opia and an idea and just like the nights in reality ins if you equip Christmas nights if the song dream bells would replace the game's background music if they last it on the roulette until December 28th [Music] Christmastime is always a time of giving and because of that people tend to spend the most money during it sonic team clearly knew this as they put a ton of work into the Christmas event for runners we got three new characters new companions and even a new special stage first up the characters Christmas variants of team Sonic looking absolutely amazing Sonic's in a Santa outfit we've seen on several pieces of artwork and merchandise tails has dressed up like an elf and Knuckles oh man knuckles is dressed up like a reindeer the v's played the same as the normal characters but man do those costumes make a difference the companions were pretty cool too we have the Yeti the Christmas Yeti and an Arctic Chow how did this game fail the special stage was pretty great too having an incredible-looking Christmas aesthetic and the best thing this event brought though was the special stages music called magical snow day it might be my favorite song from the soundtrack [Music] [Applause] fun fact about this song and just like desert ruins an early version of it was found in the game's files long before this event went live it sounds far more primitive than the final version but still sounds great [Music] [Applause] imagine making this and then thinking nah that's not good enough Tomoya Otani you spoil us unfortunately the state was only available in time mode so you can never really fully appreciate the stage and absolutely couldn't appreciate the song as is longer than most timed runs lasted however to see them still supporting this game as much as they were almost a year into its run had to be a sign of the game being successful right even with the less than favorable launch of 2.0 going into the new year it seemed like runners would have run for a long time to come the last special stage event arrived on February 20th 2016 yeah the last one huh another winter themed stage frozen factory was added to time mode unfortunately unlike previous events there was no new storyline nor any new companions and but still it was another new stage so woohoo it being limited to time mode was once again annoying valve this was actually the last new stage we ever got for runners as after this we'd only get returning events converted to time mode stages yeah nothing too special about these stages anymore [Music] so remember how when the game first came out data mining revealed a ton of characters planned for release well in the 2.0 update this same thing happened only this time the character choices were pretty unbelievable apparently Sonic the werehog sticks the Badger and methodists the dark were all coming to Sonic runners yeah no way right there was no way sonic team was willing to go this far for a mobile game right these were some serious franchise rule-breaking deep cuts these had to be fake leaks right but I mean Tikal was brought back and we've seen countless legacy characters come back in the form of companions maybe a character like meth Willis was possible as some people did immediately assume these were fake though and that was understandable back when data mining for this game was popular a number of really well-done character hoaxes did show up my personal favorites being fees - both made by super a j-3 unfortunately marine and bark never did make it into the actual game but these two look very believable and it makes me wish they were real one of the most infamous runners hoaxes was this a supersonic character leaked that popped up in December 2015 the render looked shockingly believable and I'll admit it fooled me when I first saw it if the only thing that was off about it wore his back spikes as they were incorrectly pointing upwards this would later be confirmed to be a fake hoax with the renders seen here being made by nip rock rock despite all of that believe it or not these three were the real deal the first member of the trilogy of mind-blowing characters added to the game was Sonic the werehog that's right the werehog from Sonic Unleashed was added to Sonic runners as weird as this was Chip was already a companion so it makes sense he was added to the roulette on January 1st 2016 what a way to open the year to be honest I'm surprised didn't save him for Halloween 2016 event or something and but as we'll see soon the game would never get one so I guess it makes sense in the long run where hog was a power type character and it was part of team wild where hog was a really cool addition to the game seeing him again made a ton of fans happy and it was great to see him back just ignore the fact that he's running in daytime stages sonic runners being released in 2015 was developed in the middle of sonic boom hype one of the major introductions of sonic boom was Styx the Badger a new member of Team Sonic the Styx was always meant to be a sonic boom character and was introduced as someone exclusive that series however I guess over time sonic team began to warm up to her as they did have a major role in her creation and nowadays she's technically part of the main series officially she was added to the character lineup on the Japanese Sonic Channel website was included in Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and was even featured in the Sonic Channel 25th anniversary comics is shown interacting with main series characters if that wasn't enough Sonic Team added her to Sonic runners a modern game I guess Styx is just part of the main series now sure why not Styx was added to the game on February 1st 2016 she was a speed type character and I remember being really excited to play as her it was just crazy to see her in a main series game alongside everyone else if the one confusing thing though is her character description Styx is an eccentric badger who lives way out in the woods all by herself she has close friends with Amy well I guess it makes sense we haven't seen her in any main series games as she lives out in the woods but she's close friends with Amy modern a me or is this sticks from the boom universe not the modern universe don't worry about it too much this situation with Styx in general is confusing she was made for sonic boom but now that the series is over I guess they've retold her into being a main series character I see that's a good thing as six was one of the best things to come out of sonic boom I'm not sure if she deserves having a major role in a main series title but hey she can definitely tag along for games like runners sticks love the roulette on February 15th leaving just one more character if there's one sonic character I bet no one expected to come to this game it'd be methyl as the dark methyl Asst originates from Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 and was erased from existence at the end of that game him technically no longer existing along with the reception of o6 made it obvious he would never reappear at least in a major way in any future game he made cameos here and there and was mentioned in the archie sonic encyclopedia but besides that it seemed like Sega and Sonic team had forgotten about Memphis I don't care too much for him as a character but his design is super cool and he had a lot of potential however if you told me 10 years after row 6 came out he would become playable in an endless-runner mobile game i wouldn't have believed you on March 1st 2016 methyl assented to Sonic runners I couldn't believe this what's next analyse companion and just like to call his model was completely new being reimagined for modern sonic proportions he was still clearly metalist from sonic o6 though being represented here in his crystallized form his character description even mentioned Solaris and the scepter of Darkness seeing all these references to Sonic oh 6 in 2016 was crazy as it had been long rumored that SCI god forbid references to the game in current media methyl is a speed future type character meaning just like ESP silver his running speed was cut by 5% he actually shares a lot with the ESPE silver including animations despite not being entirely original it was so surprising to see him of all characters return I just wonder why if they still had other more well liked characters to bring back and yet they choose methyl s it's very strange now and this is total speculation but here's a potential reason behind his inclusion sonic forces brought back many fan favorite characters including zavok metal sonic and chaos however Infinite's group of illusions was originally going to have another member is that being methyl s in an early draft of the game script dating back to January 19 2016 back when the game was still called Sonic Wars methyl is was mentioned by name this makes his inclusion and runners make a lot more sense is meh feliss and runners have remanent from him being scrapped from horses I think it's likely unfortunately methyl azide be the last character added to the game and he left the relied on April 1st 2016 [Music] [Music] while Sonic runners continue to receive updates whoa into 2016 it was apparent early on in the year that something was up as exciting as the new characters were it was strange that Sonic Team dumped them out so quickly into the year especially werehog because like I said he'd be perfect for a Halloween event they also could have saved meth was for a huge Sonic o-6 event like they did what to call he's not someone you would just normally drop like that in 2016 we barely got any new events if they were almost all read shreds of previous events and just with the special stages now in time mode if they were included at all we didn't get any new story content and barely got any new content period the best we got in terms of new events were these background music events where during the event a special song would play during gameplay okay saying that out loud that sounds super lame but it was nice vid events for sonic adventures sonic adventure 2 sonic heroes sonic colours and sonic unleashed in that order an instrumental version of those games main themes played you're hearing the instrumental of endless possibilities right now which came from the Unleashed event the last substantial event the game ever got in the 2015 second networks financial report they reported how well their mobile games were performing despite all of the hype all of the excitement Sonic runners was deemed a failure this meant the game was likely just barely pulling in 30 million yen a month compare this to Puyo Puyo quest which was pulling in over 500 million yen a month well 30 million yen is still decent considering how much time and effort clearly went into developing runners I bet Sega just saw it as a sinking ship why would you put so much effort into a project when those resources could be used on a project that would be more profitable on May 27th it was announced that Sonic runners will be closing its servers on July 27th 2016 just a little over a year after the game went worldwide of course as the game requires you to connect to those servers to play the game this would render the game unplayable after that date I had to be lying if I said I wasn't pretty saddened by the fact that this game this celebration of everything I loved about Sonic was officially considered a failure by Sega runners was a game that focused on the full history of Sonic and brought back tons of characters in parts of the series we thought we would never see again however sonic runner's failure was not due to the game's content that's the one part of the game that everyone agrees was pretty solid now I don't know exactly why runners failed but there were some pretty telling aspects mostly being a lack of respect for the players and the blatantly greedy nature of the game the roulette wheel is really what killed the game for many people and likely is what caused the game to be a failure why would fans want to support a game with such a feature in it if all of the characters and companions were just purchasable with red rings and the wheel existed as a bonus people wouldn't have complained nearly as much but the fact that time and time again fans were getting burned by missing their favourites eventually caused people to quit the game it makes sense if the game was so time-sensitive if you miss an events items most of the time you would never be able to get those again while most of the characters did eventually become purchasable through red rings some never did when runners closed I barely had any of the roster there were so many I never got to experience and that's really sad to me so July 27th came and went the server's quietly shut down and that was the end of Sonic runners years later this is all still really sad to me it's upsetting that all of this effort all of this talent had to go to waste if only the games unlocked methods were just a bit more tasteful or at least if the game was just a little more subtle about it maybe things would have been different I really do feel bad for all of you recent Sonic fans or even those fans who completely passed on runners when it was available you guys will probably never be able to experience it we will never be able to play Sonic runners at least in its original form ever again and that is incredibly sad to me with the announcement of the closure of the game the fans were sent into panic to archive as much of it as they could thankfully well we can no longer play Sonic runners we can still watch it thanks to runners being released during a time where social media and Let's Plays are commonplace we have tons of archived coverage on the game including full playthroughs it's thanks to these Let's Plays that I've been able to show as much footage of the game in this video as I have without these the game would be as lost as a good friend ciao and that's a fate no game deserves while we couldn't save the game in full people were able to rip many of the assets from it we have archives of the games graphics we have the music we even have models it's incredible that even after the game shut down we still have so much from it you can still play a video of the game on your phone and hey it sort of feels like you're playing it right nowadays many games are online based just like runners many modern games have online only features that require you to be connected while this can be beneficial in the moment when the game is no longer seen as profitable or even simply popular the developers can easily shut down the servers and make the game you may have sunk hours into completely unplayable a recent example of this is Club Penguin launching in 2005 Club Penguin was a server based MMO one that I personally played a lot when I was younger despite all of the memories all of the friends I made there all of the money I spent on memberships Disney pulled the plug on the game on March 29th 2017 thankfully Club Penguin has a huge dedicated fan base and with the help of some incredibly talented fans you can still play Club Penguin or at least a replica of it today Club Penguin rewritten is a recreation of the original game and as far as I can tell it's a perfect copy if the thing is people do have access to the files from runners if the game is still available to be downloaded if someone could crack the code and get a fan server going we'd be able to play it again and that almost happened at one point on the same day the game shut down sonic retro user you are pwned announced that they were working on a sonic runners fan server Sega has closed the official servers for Sonic runners but it is not time to give up just yet called run run this fan server teased to have stuff like custom events maybe even custom characters continued support for the game by the fans for the fans a proof-of-concept demo of the server was released that allowed you to play in time mode I played it and it worked I was playing Sonic runners in October 2016 and sure was primitive but it worked we could still play Sonic runners unfortunately though the Run Run server was announced to be canceled not even a month after that beta tests came out with the creator citing lack of time interest and popularity as the reasons it shut down but if it worked before if enough fans gathered together in support of the fan server maybe some day the game could be revived I mean if the person who made the original fan server still has access to all the files it could actually totally happen would you guys play a runners fan server someday I know I would another option would be a fan recreation such as sonic runners reloaded this fan game attempts to recreate runners and serve as an unofficial continuation of it progress on it is going slow but steady and it seems cool they're even planning on adding entirely new characters you'll notice that runners reloaded is styled after sonic forces which may seem like an odd choice at first but the original runners was based off of lost world as that was the most recent game at the time so it makes sense for a sequel to be based off of the next main line game I wish the best of luck to both this project and any other runners fan project that may come out in the future so that's it right the game has been long gone and everything we can do to save it has already been done this should be the end of the sonic runners story or at least it seemed that way until this showed up much like the original runners a spiritual successor to the game titled sonic runners adventure was leaked it was apparently being developed by Gameloft and would be a retooling of the original game and engine now Gameloft is notorious for lazy low effort mobile games and people were worried this would've ruined the original game unfortunately their suspicions basically all came true well the gameplay is the same as the game has been completely overhauled it's no longer an endless runner now having specific objective based levels if there's also a new story with cut scenes featuring lifeless 3d models of the characters speaking of which the game is barely any playable characters runners had all of these adventure has team hero team chaotix team dark and that's it this game was made off the remains of runners why couldn't they have repurposed all of the characters or at least all the main ones why aren't characters like silver blaze and team rose playable the game completely sucked all the style out of runners if they got rid of the black outlines come on that wasn't just an aesthetic thing the outlines made it easier to see everything now it's just sensory overload with runners adventure I mean compare these this is personal to me too because actually you know how my thumbnails always have outlines on them if that's thanks to the look of runners it's what inspired me to use them as it taught me that outlines make things pop but hey runners adventure did get rid of the premium roulette so that's good too bad they took away most of the content from the original including much of its appeal as the game is like a reanimated corpse of the original with everything that made it so fun stripped away from it it's not a good sign that on the game's official release day the best thing I did to celebrate was make this my named Jeff edit for Twitter and you know what I'd say this image pretty much sums up my thoughts on the game I mean I bought it I sure paid $5.00 on the game loft store to play a revived Sonic runners but man what a disappointment and the worst part is that this game has been out for years and sure you can still buy and play it but they haven't added new content to it at all those nine characters are always had since launched and we've never got in more episodes knowing Gameloft I expect it to remain this way they wouldn't bother with updating the game after launch but they did release a version of the game for Java devices yeah I'm not making this up they completely rebuilt the runners engine to work on Java phones and made everything in the game sprite based it seems the game actually works pretty well and it's crazy to see such a faithful conversion of the game to far less powerful devices but as for the main game Sonic runners adventures seem dead on arrival and that's a shame it's too bad the Sonic Runner saga has to end on such a sour note at least for now [Music] and there you have it the history of Sonic runners The Lost Sonic mobile game this game is symbolic of a few things one of those being a perfect mobile Sonic game but also a perfect example of how microtransactions and lack of respect for your players can absolutely kill a project if Sonic team had just been a little more lenient on character unlocks I bet a lot more people would have been playing the game it also goes to show just how fragile digital games are older games thankfully were mostly offline and released physically so they can be replayed for years and years apps and games like Sonic runners that require a server however run the risk of someday becoming unplayable once the developer decides their time supporting a game is done there's nothing mandating them to make the game playable offline I have no idea why sonic team didn't just make Sonic runners able to be played offline to begin with I imagine a major factor of why the game was a failure was because it always had to be online people couldn't play a while on the go unless they wanted to use their data and when do people play mobile games the most while they're out of the house not to mention the server's must have been expensive to maintain combine that with a lack of desire to support the game coming from any fans the game was doomed to fail but man did it try one of the menu themes from Sonic runners is titled ambition and Sonic runners was certainly ambitious constant huge events in updates as the base game already being a ton of fun an incredible soundtrack that sounds like it came from a major Sonic game this game had it all and really had the potential to become something huge unfortunately if the game despite all of its positives let the negatives overtake it Sonic runners 2.0 only made things worse and drove many players away it wasn't surprising when Sonic runners died but it was sad the main thing that gets me down about the game's cancellation is that we'll never know what else they were gonna do with the game when runners first came out these cutscene profiles were found in the files and depicting brainwashed characters and even new characters a metal espyo and a terrifying metal Eggman we'll never know what these were intended for maybe they were planning to introduce 50 more episodes eventually who knows we'll never know what other special stages the game would have gotten or perhaps most saddening we'll never know what other characters would have joined the game characters like marine Emeril and the Babylon rogues were all safe bets as they're all on the sonic Channel website along with that it's also likely that they would have included characters from new games as a form of promotion infinite could have been such a cool playable character and they could have done a full Sonic Forces event maybe for mania plus we would have seen mighty an array be added to the game runners is clearly non-canon is so they really could have done whatever they wanted oh well I'm sorry to all of you watching who never got to experience this game like I did if this game really means a lot to me because it came out right when I started my youtube channel so all of my memories of my early days are linked with runners a lot of my earliest friends I have in the sonic community I met through sonic runners I have a ton of memories with this game but I'll probably never be able to relive those memories with all that said while Rutter's is gone we do have another game that fills a similar role to promote sonic force's hardlight released the mobile games sonic force's speed battle well in terms of gameplay it's nothing like runners being based off - and also being a racing game it does have the same leaderboard aspects even more so than runners did and more importantly it's once again full of fanservice we've got tons of characters some of which were never even in runners and tons of all new creative variants for those characters - those speed battle is also an online based game it does make a little more sense with this game given the gameplay is centred on racing other players but you still have to consider that someday this game will stop being supported and the service holding it up will shut down what happened to runners was not a one-time incident there are tons of games I used to play that are just gone now enjoy speed battle while you can because someday it'll likely meet the same fate as runners and be nothing more than a happy memory sonic runners is a great example of not knowing what you have until it's gone every time I've seen this game mentioned people always say how much they miss it and how much they wish Sega would bring it back people really did care about this game but not enough people apparently on the bright side there is always the chance that maybe someday a new fan server for the game will be made it's unlikely but if it was worked on once it could be done again will it happen we don't know but if the demand is there it could while Sonic runners was a game bogged down by way too many mobile game practices it had a ton of heart and lots of passion and I would love to see it come back in some form one that's better than runner's adventure at least who knows maybe someday we'll run again [Music]

Channel: PatMac

Views: 1,667,592

Rating: 4.9115996 out of 5

Keywords: Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic Runners, SEGA, Mobile Game, iOS, Android

Id: WyRmHTxeMEw

Length: 77min 54sec (4674 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2019