Well fuck me. It turns out the answer to this mystery was in a book I'd owned for years. Sonic Jam Official Guide (Special thanks to Black Squirrel - I was looking through this book again to answer his question about Mecha Sonic in the "other knowledge" topic. I caught this page and ran it through the Google Translate app on my phone.)
Out of interest, could you post the Google Translate text? Thanks! (My phone is too old for me to check!)
No need for shoddy translation apps! A wolf and gerboa hybrid that appeared in Sonic Triple Trouble. Fang the Sniper. As a treasure hunter, his aim is the chaos emeralds. He's cunning.
No prob. Also, the paragraph on that page about Bark and Bean calls Bean a duck so I guess his species just depends on what guide you read.
The species mixup is kind've ironic really, because Amy Rose doesn't really look much like a hedgehog (now, that is) - though of course in Sonic CD she had her "hair"/spines more like Sonic's (ish) And speaking of species, I wonder why the Chao aren't like any creature on Earth? I mean, since they usually base all the character on actual ones; I guess they borrowed the idea of these creatures from Pokémon?
Didn't Sonic Channel have the Chao classified as aliens in their bio? I can't seem to find it to confirm. But now I'm wondering if I'm confusing it with the whole Chaos being a mutated Chao.
Wow. Any other interesting Game Gear/spinoff information from that Sonic Jam guide? Also what was the occasion for those characters being referenced? Some kind of mini character encyclopedia? Either way that's pretty damn cool.
Not really anything else of interest in regards to the Game Gear games. It has all the JP release dates, but we know those already. The main book covers the 3D Sonic World mini-game, Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles. Then there's a bit at the back that has a list of games, trivia, etc. The Fang mini-profile was in the "Guest Characters" section. Here are the other characters: https://imgur.com/a/lyFiM On a more interesting note, I was talking with an acquaintance about this. He found this scan a little while ago. Unfortunately he's not sure what magazine it's from, but reckons it's probably Mega Drive Fan or Beep! MegaDrive. There's some nice "new" art at the bottom, so I hope we can figure out what magazine it is. The character description is a bit difficult to read, but he typed it up for me: It says that he's a new character who is a cross between a jerboa and a wolf. So the Sonic Jam guide checks out. The rest is all stuff that's in the manual - he's a treasure hunter, lives in subspace, he's cunning and trying to steal the Chaos Emeralds. Now, the really surprising bit is that it doesn't mention his name. The section on the lower right of the page, if I'm understanding it correctly, looks to describe a contest to name this new character. Can anyone translate it? (The Sunset Park blurb looks like it might also shed some light on what that stage is.)
Turns out the article was from an issue of Famitsu. Which is surprisingly difficult to find old issues of, considering it's Japan's most popular video game magazine. She was designed by Yoshiki Kawasaki, who was also the character designer of Flicky.
