Sonic Fan Projects
Celebrating the best fan works of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise!
Summary
Sonic Fan Projects is a collection of demonstrations that shine a spotlight on fan games and other fan pursuits that are centered around the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. This collection includes playthrough showcases, development demos, video art pieces, game mods, concept pitches, and several other genres of content. This is one of the broader content collections featured within the Twin Exhibitions that has projects spanning as far back as the early 2010s. All of the components of this project can be viewed through the Sonic Fan Projects YouTube Playlist where Arcmaevotix is home to the original versions and Nehrpsyznet is home to the remade versions.
Process
This project is incredibly diverse in its content and did not start with any single idea or piece of content. It is an evolution of all content relating to Sonic the Hedgehog from the angle of fan community contributions such as mods, fan games, and alternative story lines. Building out the gallery of pieces was a non-linear process with some bigger projects being developed in parallel with smaller ones such as Sonic XS and Sonic CD Calamity Code. Building of specific projects such as Sonic the Hedgehog Farthest Future and Sonic DNB were much more involved than say the showcases of the PC replications of Sonic Advance 1 and 2 simply because the genres of content called for different levels of commitment and ambition. Of all of the projects included in this collection, Sonic XS is the oldest with its development kicking off at the sunset of the 2000s and wrapping up work around the early 2020s. It combines historical fiction with pixel artwork to illustrate an alternative reality where the Classic Era of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise was much more cohesive and intertwined with its multimedia ecosystem. The project was one of the first to go up on GitHub and is the parent of my only Sonic fan game, Sonic Gears (also called Sonic Regnant at one point). Sonic CD Calamity Code, Sonic DNB, and Sonic the Hedgehog Farthest Future were all born out of my fascination with Sonic CD as both a video game and a piece of media. Understanding the aesthetics, genres, and environments that inspired the game to be what it became was one of my gateways into understanding that video games are one of the few mediums that showcase multimedia design to its fullest extent.
Reflection
Sonic Fan Projects was crucial in broadening my horizons with game design, game development, storytelling, R&D strategy, among other design processes. It is one of the longest running collection of projects in the Twin Exhibitions and helped nurture my interest in music, photography, illustration, programming, video art, and other creative pursuits. Without the projects that I have made that center around the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, I would only have a fraction of the skills that I have now and seeing how this project collection opened new creative routes with subsequent projects is a testament to how essential the development experience was.