‘Sonic Colors’ Remaster heavily rumored to have been leaked
If you’ve been following our latest coverage of the Sonic franchise, you’ll know we’ve been keeping a very close eye on the hedgehog’s conspicuous absence from the recent trend of platformer remakes. While characters like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon have all trotted out without fuss to have their polygon counts boosted, the Blue Blur has evidently decided he’s above that sort of thing – even in the face of constant demands from a fanbase bent on getting the Dreamcast Adventure era resurrected.
We ourselves wondered what SEGA has been playing at by ignoring such a commercially viable endeavor, and guessed that it probably wouldn’t be too long before we saw one of Sonic’s past outings resuited and rebooted for next-gen.
Yes, as it turns out, we were right: evidence has begun to circulate that a remaster may well be on the way. Just… not in the way anybody expected. The prevailing wisdom in the fanbase was that SA1 and SA2 would be the ones selected for remakes; an equal, if not greater, group of fans believed that it might be Sonic Unleashed or Sonic Heroes instead, titles that were bashed on release but which many have come to perceive as being underrated.
The reality, it would seem, is something different. A German localisation company named Iksample, responsible for dubbing over several of the Sonic series’ games, let slip they have been working on ‘Sonic Colors Remastered’ via a small link in their website’s sidebar, which eagle-eyed fans wasted no time spotting. The site is now ‘down for maintenance’, but it isn’t impossible to imagine that this may be due to a sudden influx of traffic caused by excited gamers anxious to check out the gaffe themselves. Thankfully, screengrabs were taken of the leak while it was accessible, which you can check out below.
Originally released in 2010 for the Nintendo Wii and DS, Sonic Colors is generally credited with restoring some of Sonic’s lustre, lustre which some would argue he had begun to lose in the late 2000s. After a string of poor critical showings including Sonic 2006 and Sonic and the Secret Rings, the poor guy’s image was floundering in the eyes of many; Colors, with its simple, no-nonsense platforming gameplay, was the injection of consistency the brand probably needed.
Centring around Sonic and Tails’ attempt to bring down Dr. Eggman’s Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park, which was supposedly constructed to ‘atone for his past misdeeds and transgressions’ but was about as convincing in this goal as a Beyond Burger, the game saw you making use of the Boost mechanic introduced in Unleashed to zoom through a variety of zones, all while rescuing the alien Wisps, which have since become series mainstays.
On its debut, the title was lauded for its fantastic visual design, stellar soundtrack and a return to simplicity following years of arcane narratives, and while fan perception of it has since mellowed somewhat, with some considering it the beginning of a descent into smug, self-aware irony, it’s still generally looked back on with fondness.
Options for playing it, however, have remained unchanged since 2010: if you don’t have a Wii, DS or anything that’s backwards-compatible with those systems, you’re pretty much out of luck (legally speaking). A remaster would thus be a great chance for a new audience to experience Sonic’s planet-hopping adventure. I’m salivating at the prospect of Starlight Carnival in crisp HD, or of the diabetes-ridden Sweet Mountain running at a decent framerate for once. Curse you, Drill.
This remaster, then, seems to be more than just a simple rumour, which frankly are a dime a dozen in this fandom. Online French retailer SoGamely put up a listing for a ‘Sonic Colors Ultimate’ (definitely not to be confused with a certain crossover fighting game) due to release on Switch, PS4 and Xbox One, which may have accidentally given us a potential title for the project. As if realising their mistake, and presumably having invoked the wrath of SEGA’s lawyers, the listing was soon deleted.
Moreover, YouTuber SamProcrastinates, who specialises in SEGA coverage and who has in the past demonstrated a degree of insider knowledge, suggested on Twitter he has “known about [the title] for months,” was itching to “finally talk about it,” and expressed amusement that such a secret project would be so carelessly “let into the public eye.” While this obviously doesn’t outright confirm anything, it does fuel the fire of speculation and makes us wonder how long it’ll be before we hear something more official. Check out the Twitter thread in question below.
Either way, the colors may feel so right, but I bet whoever’s in charge of keeping this alleged remaster under wraps sure doesn’t. Stay tuned to all our channels for any updates as this all develops.
Do you have fond memories of Sonic Colors? Do you buy that this remake is really coming? Would you rather it had been a different Sonic title to get the treatment? Let us know below!
