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.

 nice review but i think you went a little wacko on the difficulty rating. The reason i say that is because the speical moves are not hard to master at all. and the ai computer opponent is way too easy for me

SuperCrash64 : Fighting games are not my forte. While playing the game, I figured out maybe one or two nonstandard moves on a couple of the characters, and I had a bit of trouble with the AI with the difficulty set to the lowest level (since you can change that on the Gems Collection port). What might seem easy for some can be hard for others, and vice versa.

  sonikku: well even if fighting games are not ur thing the special moves are not that hard at all to master . heck i beaten the entire game just by spamming the same button over and over again. that just proves the ai is way too easy  in this game

SuperCrash64 : *sighs* Let me say it again. On the EASIEST setting, I had trouble with the AI. Especially against Metal Sonic. He just kept kicking my ass over and over no matter what I tried. Just because you can button mash your way to victory doesn't mean others can.

And again, I only found one or two nonstandard (special) moves in total. You might find them easy to master. I found them hard to even figure out.

Again, what may seem easy for you can be hard for others. What may seem hard for you, others may consider a cakewalk. Surely this isn't the first time you've disagreed with a reviewer, but since the issue is over difficulty, surely you can at least agree with me on that much.