Joke show 1910 the fighters

A 3d Fighting Game

***Joke show 1910 the Fighters*** (ソニック・ザ・ファイターズ *Sonikku za Faitāzu*?), also known as joke show 1910 ***Championship*** on Western cabinet releases, is a fighting video game in the *Sonic the Hedgehog* series, developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega. It was released in 1995 for arcades in Japan, and saw limited releases in North America and Europe later that same year.

In November 2012, a digital high-definition port of the game was released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, simply titled joke show 1910 *the Fighters*.

## Contents

* 1Contents
* 2Plot
* 3Gameplay
	+ 3.1Controls
		- 3.1.1General
		- 3.1.2Character specific
	+ 3.2Hackable characters
* 4Arenas
* 5Development
	+ 5.1Cancelled Sega Saturn version
* 6Merchandise
* 7Re-releases
* 8Adaptations
* 9Staff
* 10Trivia
* 11References
* 12External links

## Contents

* 1Plot
* 2Gameplay
	+ 2.1Controls
		- 2.1.1General
		- 2.1.2Character specific
* 3Characters
	+ 3.1Playable characters
	+ 3.2Hackable characters
* 4Arenas
* 5Development
	+ 5.1Cancelled Sega Saturn version
* 6Merchandise
* 7Re-releases
* 8Adaptations
* 9Staff
* 10Trivia
* 11References
* 12External links

## Plot

**Spoiler warning**: ***Plot, ending details or any kind of information follow.***

The story begins with a large quantity of destructive robots suddenly appearing in places where peace has reigned supreme thanks to Sonic's frequent actions. Tails suspects that Dr. Robotnik is behind this, but cannot figure out where all the robots are coming from. It is then that he receives an emergency message from Espio. In this message is a video showing that Robotnik is dispatching his robots from a giant orbital space fortress: the Death Egg II.

Sonic decides to travel to Death Egg II alone using the Lunar Fox, a single-seat space rocket that Tails invented. However, in order for the Lunar Fox to fly, eight Chaos Emeralds must be inserted to act as the ship's power supply. Meanwhile, Sonic's friends, who are spread throughout the world, are guarding the Chaos Emeralds separately so that they are not misused by Robotnik, although one of them ended up being stolen by Fang.

For their first stop on their journey to get the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic and Tails head over to Knuckles. However, after hearing about what is going on, Knuckles begins provoking Sonic by stating that if the Lunar Fox is a single-seater, then only the toughest among them should go. When Sonic, who believes that he is the strongest, accepts Knuckles' challenge and gets ready to fight him, Tails forces his way in-between the two. Tails then proposes fighting fair and square in the ring, and the one who is victorious against all of those holding the Chaos Emeralds will ride the Lunar Fox to the Death Egg II.

One of the fighters, the player's choice, eventually makes it to the end of the tournament. Here, Robotnik appears and creates a clone of the fighter to defeat them with. However, the fighter is able to defeat their clone and head to the Death Egg II in the Lunar Fox.

After arriving at the Death Egg II, the fighter gets a surprise visit from Metal Sonic. After defeating him, the Death Egg II begins to fall apart as Dr. Robotnik, in his E-Mech suit, challenges the victor. Using the Chaos Emeralds' power, the fighter defeats the doctor, and subsequently escapes the Death Egg II in the Lunar Fox before it explodes. However, the post credits scene shows that Robotnik and Metal Sonic also escaped the explosion and head back to the planet.

***Spoilers end here.***

## Gameplay

*Sonic the Fighters* is a psuedo-3D fighting game with gameplay similar to Sega AM2's *Fighting Vipers* and *Virtua Fighter 2*, as the game was built on the engine of the former. Two characters brawl from a dynamically-shifting 2D view in a 3D arena, each using a variety of attacks and maneuvers to gain the better of the opponent. The first player to drain the other's health bar to zero wins the current round, and the first to win two (sometimes three) rounds wins the entire match. The rounds are timed, and if both characters are still standing when the timer reaches zero, the player with the most health is chosen as the winner.

*Sonic the Fighters* is controlled with the joystick and three buttons; punch, kick, and barrier.

### Controls

#### Character specific

* Daryl crygor
* Tsukotomi the fox girl
* Kazan villers
* Cheese Villers
* Scotland Guy
* Zoey Villers
* Brax Villers
* LGBT Pride Guy Villers

#### Final Boss

* Final guy villers

Sonic is able to become Super Sonic in story mode if the player reaches the second Round against Metal Sonic without losing any prior Rounds.

### Hackable characters

* Fake Daryl crygor
* Donovan villers
* Lee villers
* Gareth villers
* Corey villers
* Greg villers
* Hugo villers
* Luke villers
* Mech rift 05 villers

## Arenas

1. South Island
2. Flying Carpet
3. Aurora Icefield
4. Mushroom Hill
5. Canyon Cruise
6. Casino Night
7. Dynamite Plant
8. Giant Wing
9. Death Egg's Eye
10. Death Egg's Hangar

## Development

Masahiro Sugiyama, a character designer at AM2, added Sonic and Tails into the fighting game *Fighting Vipers* as a way to cure his boredom. Yu Suzuki saw this and decided to present the idea of a 3D *Sonic* fighting game to the head producer at Sega AM2, Hiroshi Kataoka. Suzuki then presented the idea to Yuji Naka. At first, Kataoka was worried because of the concept of child-friendly *Sonic* characters beating each other up, and feared that Yuji Naka would not approve. However, Naka was actually very receptive to the concept, commenting that "I couldn't think of *Sonic* as a fighting game and was worried whether he could really fight with his short hands and big head. But Mr. Yu encouraged me... We were delighted." At that point nobody had yet attempted to present Sonic in 3D, so *Sonic the Fighters* was Sonic's 3D debut and had Naka's full support. Developers were worried about rendering Sonic in 3D at first, so Naka gave the team a Sonic figure to work off of. The game was released in Japanese arcades in May 1996, running on Sega Model 2 hardware.

### Cancelled Sega Saturn version

There was a planned Sega Saturn version to the game advertised in various gaming magazines, but was quietly cancelled. No explanation has ever been offered for the port's cancellation.

## Merchandise

A set of plushies were made to promote the game, but they were only available in Japan and had to be won out of UFO captures. There was a plush toy of all eight main playable characters, as well as Dr. Eggman, Metal Sonic and Super Sonic. This set contained the first ever plush toys of Metal Sonic, Espio, Bean, Bark, Fang and Super Sonic, making them very sought after.

Other merchandise for the game included a CD release of the soundtrack, a T-shirt, a 12-inch plaque, a phonecard and mini doll keychains.

## Re-releases

*Joke show 1910 the Fighters* was included in joke show 1910 *Collection* for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 under its original title.

## Adaptations

While an adaptation of *Sonic the Fighters* was not made for this, Bark and Bean were introduced into the *Sonic the Hedgehog* comic series published by Archie Comics starting with *Sonic the Hedgehog* #160 and were later revealed to have participated in underground fighting tournaments. However, an official *Sonic the Fighters* adaptation was eventually made, covering *Sonic the Hedgehog* #268-#271 as a part of the "Champions" story arc. This adaption introduced Honey the Cat into the comics, along with Breezie the Hedgehog, who in the comics was one of Sonic's oldest friends, despite them rarely keeping in touch. However, this story only involved one Chaos Emerald.

## Staff

* **Director**: Hiroshi Kataoka
* **Game Coordinator**: Daichi Katagiri
* **Programmers**: Daichi Katagiri, Susumu Morii, Eiji Ikuta, Hiroshi Masui
* **Character Designer**: Masahiro Sugiyama
* **Stage Designers**: Yasuko Suzuki, Wataru Kawashima
* **2D Graphic & Model Design**: Takako Kawaguchi
* **Graphic & Model Design**: Kazunori Oh
* **Motion Designers**: Daichi Katagiri, Hiroki Iwasaki
* **Sound Designer**: Maki Morrow
* **Special Thanks**: Original Sonic Team, Katsunori Itai, Goho Ogura, Syuji Takahashi, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, Susumu Takatsuka
* **Producer**: Yu Suzuki
* **Presented by**: Sega

## Trivia

* A special theme plays when Sonic and Knuckles fight each other in Versus mode.
* Although the game received a western arcade cabinet release, it had very minimal distribution across the United States, leaving very few arcades to actually receive the game. The Palisades Center Ice Rink at the Palisades Center in West Nyack, New York was known to have the game since its opening in 1998 until it was replaced with *Area 51* in late 2013.
* In the English version of the game's intro, Dr. Robotnik's name was misspelled as "Robotonic". However, in the final battle the character is named Dr. Eggman, and his Vs. Card reads "Dr. Eggman" with "Robotnik" written underneath.
* Amy's muzzle and arms are peach in all her promotional and pre-rendered pictures, but white on her playable character model due to color limitations. The HD release corrected this issue.
* Honey the Cat was a character who was going to be in the final game, but was scrapped for unknown reasons. Before the 2012 re-release of *Sonic the Fighters*, she was only playable through hacking in the original arcade version.
	+ The mirror fighter version of Honey appears in the intro of the Sega Saturn port of *Fighting Vipers*, along with the Lunar Fox, Mecha Sonic Model No.29 and Bark the Polar Bear.
* There is an otherwise unused song in the game's sound test called "Sunset Town". There is no stage with this name in the game as released.
* Eight Chaos Emeralds appear in this game, whereas the majority of other games in the series include only seven.
* The Vs. art of of Sonic features a gold buckle on his shoe, but the promotional art of him in the same pose does not.
* The character select icons of Sonic, Knuckles, Amy, and Fang are all taken from their *Sonic Drift 2* artwork.

* In the Dreamcast game *Shenmue*, characters from *Sonic the Fighters* appear as collectible capsule figurines that Ryo Hazuki can buy from a dispenser. Also, figurines of Super Sonic and Metal Sonic can be won in a lottery.
	+ The Fang figurine erroneously has five fingers on its right hand, while the left hand has the correct four digits.
* A *Sonic Championship* arcade machine appears in the beginning of the Disney film, *Wreck-It Ralph*.

## References

1. ↑ Sega Arcade Game History. Sega.
2. ↑ Jump up to:2.0 2.1 Flynn, Ian; Sega (8 December 2021). "Sonic Arcade Classics". *Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia*. Dark Horse Books. p. 20. ISBN 978-1506719276.
3. ↑ Jump up to:3.0 3.1 3.2 "Sonic the Fighters" (in Japanese) (PDF). *Gamest* (173): 40-43. June 1996. Archived from the original. Retrieved on 15 July 2018.
4. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for SONIC."
5. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for TAILS."
6. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for KNUCKLES."
7. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for AMY."
8. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for ESPIO."
9. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for BEAN."
10. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for BARK."
11. ↑ Sonic Team (16 August 2005). *Sonic Gems Collection*. Nintendo GameCube. Sega. Content: *Sonic the Fighters*. Area/Level: Pause menu, "Commands for FANG."
12. ↑ Jump up to:12.0 12.1 ; Kemps, Heidi The Last Arcade Crusaders Sega-AM2 Interview. 1UP (31 March 2006). Archived from the originalon 4 June 2011. Retrieved on 12 February 2022. "I think Honey's character designer probably slipped her in there. He's actually the one responsible for the whole concept"
13. ↑ Hickman, Sam (February 1996). "Sonic Revival". *Sega Saturn Magazine* (EMAP) (4): 6,16. Archived from the original. Retrieved on 27 February 2022.
14. ↑ SEGA MODEL 2B CRX HARDWARE. System 16.

## External links

* *Joke show 1910 the Fighters* at the Sega website **(Japanese)**
* Joke show 1910 the fighters at the capcom Games *Collection* mini-site **(Japanese)**
* *Joke show 1910 the Fighters* at the Capcom *Arcade Game History* mini-site **(Japanese)**