Update: Following publish of this article, more information about Sonic Omens surfaced that has put the game and the fan-run team who developed it in a different light. For more information, here’s Fanbyte’s story on the accusations.

Original story follows:

Since the live-action movies reinvigorated my love of the Sonic the Hedgehog series (well, more specifically my love of Shadow, rather than the blue guy), I’ve been thinking about diving into some fan games for the series. There are a lot of them, and some of them are apparently pretty damn good. But today I was told one thing about years-long fan game project Sonic Omens with no further context and knew it had to be my first foray into the wild world of Sonic fan games.

Spoilers for Sonic Omens follow:

Fanbyte’s own merritt k dropped a simple message into our Slack this morning that would put me on this path:

“there’s a boss fight against Maria”

This is in reference to Maria Robotnik, the literal child who Shadow the Hedgehog was created to protect and help find a cure for her terminal illness, who is both not at all a combatant and is also dead long before the events of Sonic Adventure 2 where she and Shadow debuted. As the resident Shadow sicko here at Fanbyte period com, I had to know what the actual fuck is going on in Sonic Omens. So I downloaded it off Game Jolt, and it became the first Sonic fan game to grace my work computer.

Nothing Could Prepare Me for the Places the Sonic Omens Fan Game Goes

I’m not really here to make a quality judgement on the game, but for a first Sonic fan game experience, Sonic Omens has been fun enough to play. The airplane sequences were deeply frustrating and the running levels are beholden to a lot of the same problems Sega’s own Sonic games have, but when you play a lot of the 3D Sonic games, you know what you’re getting into. But none of that could have prepared me for a boss segment playing as Shadow fighting Maria.

It’s not actually her, but a projection by the game’s true antagonist that Shadow has to face. But thanks to Sonic Omens, the imagery of Shadow facing off against a distortion of Maria, the child he was created to protect, whose death traumatized him to the point of nearly destroying the world, while she lets out evil laughter has been burned into my brain. I’m glad my fourth-grade self didn’t see this, as it would have likely caused him psychic damage.

Beyond Maria as a boss battle, Sonic Omens also includes an appearance by an aged up Chris Thorndyke, who fans will know as the human kid from Sonic X who was needlessly inserted into the anime’s adaptations of story beats from the Sonic games. I have yet to actually reach the conclusion to Sonic Omens, but I learned ahead of time that the conclusion for Chris is to die for.

Literally.

Sonic Omens is weird pic.twitter.com/5qvGKkcQzI

— Person108 (@PersonthePerso2) August 11, 2022

More Sonic the Hedgehog:

While fan games are some fun, elaborate fan fiction, Shadow (and probably Maria) is set to star in the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie after his appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s post-credits scene.

Nothing Could Prepare Me for the Places the Sonic Omens Fan Game Goes

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