Sonic Championship Review by: sonikku - 7.8/10
That one obscure Sonic fighting arcade game.Sonic Championship (better known as Sonic the Fighters) is that one arcade fighting Sonic game you probably never encountered unless you picked up Gems Collection for the Gamecube. Dr. Robotonic (sic) has planned yet another world takeover. Sonic and 7 of his friends each have one of the Chaos Emeralds, and Tails has built a rocket ship which can seat only one. Since Dr. Robotonic is in space, they'll have to use it to get to him, and since apparently everybody wants to be the hero, the only way out is to kill each other in mortal combat until only one remains.
Graphics: 8
I'm not much for graphics, so my judgment on this may be rather poor. In my opinion, the characters were rather well done and the animations seemed fluid. The cartoony style of the game adds to the charm. Try smacking someone into a wall or crushing them, and they flatten against it briefly. It's not exactly a limb-tearing, blood-gushing, heart-piercing gore fest, but these characters can still take a good deal of punishment to survive being flattened against things. The environments, on the other hand, seem a bit out of place. Especially the one speedboat arena where you fight Tails. Who fights on a speedboat?
Sound: 8
The music in the game is pretty good. It's no Street Fighter music, but it gets the job done well. The sound effects aren't half bad either. The only real problem I have is the ring loss sound effect, which you hear every time someone gets hurt in some form. You don't get that sense of impact at all from the sound, which in a fighting game is what the sound should be doing.
Addictiveness: 7
The game is addicting to play for a while in single player, but unless you enjoy fighting computer opponents or are trying in vain to use Super Sonic by never dying up until the second round against Metal Sonic, you probably won't find yourself playing the single player too often. The real addiction comes from fighting other people and learning how to play each character. Which, sadly, I can't do, so I have a bit of bias against the addictiveness factor.
Story: 8
What can I say? It's just the generic world takeover plot, but placed in a fighting game. The only major gripe I have with it is the fact that there are 8 Chaos Emeralds in this game. Did it really have to be 8? Wasn't it (almost) always 7 at this point?
Depth: 6
The game has good potential to be deep, but... it just feels like some of the characters aren't too terribly different from others. Again, unless you have people you can play against, you probably won't get too much out of this game. It's not really that deep otherwise.
Difficulty: 7
The characters aren't that hard to control just by default. But unless you know how to perform each characters' special moves or are just fighting game inclined, you may find yourself having a hard time beating the game. Not to mention the crazy conditions to unlock Super Sonic, and even then you can only use him for two matches.
Overall: 7.8/10
The game has potential, but it seems to fall short in one too many areas to be considered a great game. If the characters felt a little more different from each other or the game had better sound effects, the game could have been better. If you're a fighting game enthusiast, play the game. If you're here just because it's a Sonic game, give it one or two playthroughs. Otherwise, there are better fighting games to find and play over this one.
Graphics
8 Sound
8 Addictive
7 Depth
6 Story
8 Difficulty
7