Sonic Sprite Discussion Thread

I think Sonic and Tails' sprites looked the best in S3K. Their Mania sprites were great too, although I wish they hadn't based Sonic on his Sonic 1 sprites.

Knuckles looked the best in S3K and Chaotix IMO. Sadly his Mania sprites were super awkward. I honestly cannot tell what they were thinking with his animations.

 

Sonic 1/2/CD/Mania for me
Personally I don't think the perfect Sonic sprite has ever appeared in any official release. The sprite for the Sonic 1 Definitive hack by Radiant Nexus team is about as perfect as Sonic can look in sprite form.

 

Not a sprite but I'm a big fan of the Sonic Rush games' Sonic model.

If I had to choose a sprite though, probably either Sonic 3 or Sonic Advance Sonic.

 

Sonic Mania's sprites are definitely my favorite. They absolutely ooze personality and life, I adore them.

 

Sonic: The original Sonic the Hedgehog sprites have never been bettered. The Sonic CD variants are a nice compliment, but OG all the way.
Tails: I think Mania knocks it out of the park here.
Knuckles: His final Sonic 3 sprites are still the best. But I still feel more could be done to make him less... awkward looking? As I've said before, the character feels like he was designed with 3D in mind.
Eggman: As with Sonic, the original game's sprites are king.

 

Chaotix has the greatest sprites in my opinion, followed by Mania.

 

I like Sonic's Sonic 1 sprites a lot. I like Tails's Sonic 2 sprites a lot. One thing that always bugged me as the games went on was the increased shininess of the sprites. I always loathed the Advance sprites.

 

Pains me to say this given my adoration for the shining achievement that is S3K, but the glossiness of Sonic renders his sprite inferior to S2's. As for the Advance series, I have always had a fondness for those sprites. I don't think the redesigns of Adventure could ever be presented any better in 2D.

 

Sonic is too much of a fat fuck in S3 for me to ever consider him my favorite incarnation. S2 all the way.

 

Sonic 1's Sonic is my favourite. I love the desaturated blue (I think S2's is a little too vibrant, and really don't like Mania's cyan lol), and he matches Ohshima's drawings well (I think Sonic 3 Sonic looks pretty good paired with that game's overall art direction, but on his own he looks pretty lumpy and weird)

 

Sonic's sprites in Sonic 3 sprites always looked odd to me, from the very moment I got the Sonic 3 issue of Sega Visions. To this day, I feel it was a step backward in certain respects.

Sonic 2 improved the Sonic 1 sprites. I liked the gloss, the wider eyes, and the better sprint.

And yes, the Chaotix sprites are wonderful. Between Sonic 3 and Chaotix, I honestly think it's a toss-up which Knuckles sprites are best.

As for Tails... I like the color palette in Sonic 2 better, but I don't hate it in Sonic 3.

Mania sprites are nice, but those overly exaggerated facial expressions turn me off. Sonic isn't supposed to be *excited*.

 

The comically huge fists and feet and the stupid face make the 3 sprite look like another character that just happens to have blue spikes and red shoes like Sonic.

 

Entirely agree. Sonic's sprite looks genuinely repulsive in 3. I'm also not a huge fan of the new Tails and Eggman sprites for the game.

It's really unfortunate as Sonic 3 is the apex of the series, gameplay wise, so to have such shoddy sprite work is really disappointing. This, in conjuncture with the lack of illustrations by Yuda in the manual and promotional material, make me really question his skill as an artist. Certainly, he had his work cut out for him up against the titans of Ohshima, Kodama, Hoshino and Yamaguchi, but still.

It also makes me wish Yamaguchi had carried on as character designer for 3. Ah well.

 

People prefer the S2 Sonic sprites with those bizarrely drawn spikes? I've always hated how from the side he looked like he had a mohawk:

...while from behind he looked like he had two sets of paper-thin spikes:

They don't even look like they're a natural part of him. They make him look like some Sonic cosplayer who glued some tacky cardboard spikes to his back

And there was the back sprites' use of the palette's black color for shading which looked pretty ugly, and was downright gross with Super Sonic's palette:


The S1 and S3 sprites looked much better and more natural to me, although I wish the former didn't use that purple palette.

 

I prefer Sonic 3's sprites due to how more expressive Sonic looks. I'm sorry, but the lack of a mouth and angry eyes in 1, 2, & CD never appealed to me. S3's Sonic sprite looks a lot more on model and it does feel like it transitions well into Adventure's model.

I actually took a Sonic 3 sprite mod and made some custom tweaks so he'd retain all of his unique Mania animations but closer to 3's style (Also play with S3 sound effects because the spring sound bothers me). I just can't stand them going backwards when Mania is supposed to feel like the 2D Saturn game we never got.

 

Wasn't bizarre to me at the time

 

I've always preferred Sonic 1 and CDs sprites to 2/3/Mania. Although, every iteration has its own charm. I like the lack of mouth personally.