Sonic the Fighters

A hedgehog and an echidna, duking it out on a flying carpet.

Sonic The Fighters a.k.a. Sonic Championship is a 1996 arcade Fighting Game, starring the ever-lovin' cobalt-furred insectivore and his pals.

The game begins with Dr. Robotnik (or Dr. Robotonic, as it is humorously misspelled in the opening) launching a robot invasion on the Earth, via his newly constructed superweapon, the Death Egg II. Fortunately, Sonic and Tails have built a one-seater rocket that will take them directly to the Death Egg II. There's just one problem: it needs eight Chaos Emeralds to power it! In an effort to claim the emeralds, a fighting tournament is started (that, or it's held to determine who gets to fly the rocket).

The game, made by Sega AM2, is more or less a stripped-down and very goofy version of Fighting Vipers. For years, it remained an obscurity, it's main release being in Japan while only getting a very limited US release. Fortunately, a direct port of the game made it onto Sonic Gems Collection circa 2005.

Tropes used in Sonic the Fighters include:

Amusing Injuries: The violence of the game is very lighthearted and cartoony, with lots of slapstick attacks.
Agony of the Feet: One of the many attacks is a foot stomp.
Cartoon Bomb: Bean the Dynamite's weapon of choice.
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: This was the only game appearance of Bark the Polar Bear and Bean the Dynamite (although they immigrated into the Archie Sonic series as minor characters) other than their cameos on Wanted posters in Sonic Generations.
Collapsing Lair: The Death Egg II, which apparently is set to self-destruct just because Metal Sonic was defeated.
Cool Plane: A brief glimpse of Tails' Tornado plane in the opening.
Drop the Hammer: Amy's weapon of choice. This game was also the first appearance of her Pico-Pico Hammer.
Dummied Out: Honey the Cat and Rocket Metal Sonic were initially meant to be playable characters. Eggman was going to be playable without his mech.
Everything's Worse with Bears: Bark the Polar Bear, who can be quite ferocious in the arena.
Excuse Plot: Let's not kid ourselves: the plot makes no sense whatsoever when you try to analyze it. It's really just a way of giving Sonic and co. a reason to beat the tar out of each other. To elaborate:
- First, why would a tiny one-seater rocket ship need eight Chaos Emeralds to power it?
- Second, in the supposed alternate story, why would they compete with each other for the emeralds instead of banding together to fight off Robotnik's invasion?
- Third, why would Eggman self-destruct the Death Egg II just because Metal Sonic had been beaten?!
Family-Friendly Firearms: Nack the Weasel's corkguns.
Fungus Humongous: Mushroom Hill Zone.
Green Hill Zone: The South Island stage, which is presumably set in the Green Hill Zone.
Kill Sat: The Death Egg II.
Look Behind You!: One of Amy's special attacks, which can confuse your character momentarily.
Magic Carpet: As pictured above, one of the arenas is set on one.
Nintendo Hard: Metal Sonic is easily the hardest fight in the game, even on easy mode! He has many cheap attacks which take off more than half of your health in one or two moves, and has very fast recovery time, not to mention he has the quickest reaction time of any of the fighters.
Off-Model: During the final battle against him, Robotnik is inexplicably smaller than Sonic!
Offstage Villainy: We don't get any glimpse of Robotnik's robot invasion in the game.
Panty Shot: Can be done with Amy, although the player will be surprised to find she has none on in this game!
Perpetual Frowner: Espio the Chameleon.
Powered Armor: Robotnik uses one when you fight against him.
Ridiculously Cute Critter: Bean and Amy.
Scenery Porn: Particularly South Island.
Send in the Clones: Depending on who you play as, Robotnik will create clone doppelgangers in their respective levels to fight you.
Series Continuity Error: Eight Chaos Emeralds instead of the series standard of seven?
The Sphinx: A sphinx can be seen in the Flying Carpet stage, with Sonic's face inexplicably carved onto it.
Spin Attack: Sonic's signature move, and an extremely powerful attack.
Super Mode: Super Sonic.
The Twelve Principles of Animation: Lots of exaggerated squash and stretch is displayed in the game.
Warmup Boss: Knuckles, the first boss of the game, is basically the game's equivalent of Glass Joe. He is very easy to get a "Perfect" score on his rounds, and it is entirely possible, even on the hardest difficulty, to take him down before he even has the chance to attack you!
Wasted Song: Death Egg Hangar's theme is played in neither versions of the game (and even if it had would have been used in a thirty second max faceoff). Two other tracks (at least one of which is for an unused arena) are only heard in the OST.
- Dynamite Plant will seem to be this in the Gems port. Because they used the music from the soundtrack CD instead of taking the truncated versions from the arcade release, it takes nearly 30 seconds for Dynamite Plant's BGM to get to the good part where it started playing originally. Rounds in this game (by default) last no more than 30 seconds, so if you're whooping Bean's ass, the music will never really have a chance to pick up the slack.
  - A similar timing issue afflicted the intro BGM in Gems, whereas on the arcade version, everything that was happening was mostly synced up to the music.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Whatever happened to the Rocket Metal Sonic from the opening? He was intended to be a playable character, but was discarded at the last minute.
Wingding Eyes: Characters attacked by Sonic's Dizzy Spin move will get spiral eyes, indicating dizziness. This is averted by Metal Sonic, whose eyes are replaced with " DAMAGE" when beaten on!