Sonic the Fathog Demo

Sonic is a renowned Sega character that became famous back when 8-bit graphics were cutting edge in the video games industry. His greatest strength was his speed, because he was able to sprint in a split second and cover a lot of ground much faster than most of the other characters at the time. Nowadays, people struggle every day to create remake after remake to honor Sonic.

Sonic the Fathog is a funny remake that aims to portray the famous character in a different manner that you’re used to, namely by making him overweight. As such, the once slim and agile blue hedgehog has transformed into a ball of lard and he barely looks recognizable anymore. However, that didn’t affect his ability to run at lightning-fast speeds, or at least not entirely.

There is even a story behind all of this, which starts when Sonic gets tricked by Doctor Eggman to eat a neverending ring and become fat forever. While the specifics are not exactly clear, you at least have a reason for Sonic’s condition and his quest. On the other hand, you never get to see too much of the plot because this is till a demo and only a very limited portion of the adventure is playable.

In case you haven’t played Sonic before, you need to be prepared to deal with motion blur and levels that encourage you to go as fast as you can. While the fat Sonic may have a hard time picking up speed, the momentum adds up after a few paces and you are soon practically flying through the stages. If you are not careful, you can easily fall into one of the many traps waiting for you.

As far as the graphics are concerned, the game looks like it came out twenty years ago and modern gamers might have trouble getting used to the oversized pixels on the screen. However, the sprites are nicely made and you can enjoy the environments most of the time, even if they are quite repetitive. The level design is pretty challenging in most cases, which makes the runs interesting.

Even if Sonic the Fathog is not exactly a masterpiece of the genre and it barely features a couple of gameplay minutes, fans of the franchise can at least amuse themselves at the fat version of Sonic. The mechanics are quite nice and the controls responsive in most cases.