Unreleased hand drawn cinematic for Bioware's Sonic RPG surfaces online
By Isabella Floyd
A previously unreleased 2D intro cinematic for Sonic RPG Sonic Chronicles has surfaced online.
Released in 2008 for the Nintendo DS, Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood was an RPG developed by Bioware with turn-based combat.
Originally it had a hand drawn opening cinematic, similar in style to the excellent Sonic CD, but this was scrapped in the final release by SEGA in favour of a montage of gameplay footage.
Animation expert Jonathan Cooper released the original intro cinematic on Twitter, which sees Sonic battling against Robotnik (or Eggman, if you will) and being chased by missiles.
A follow up tweet includes some line tests too.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Sonic Chronicles (2008) unreleased 2D intro cinematic. This has never been shown before in its entirety.
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) December 21, 2021
The animation was put together by Joel MacMillan and Nick DiLiberto, the lead artist and lead animator on the game.
Sonic Chronicles was released a year after the first Mass Effect game and a year before Dragon Age: Origins, and was Bioware's only game released for the Nintendo DS.
It made great use of the handheld's stylus for control, with our review at the time calling it "a colourful and accessible role-playing game that is never less than entertaining".
Sadly it didn't live up to the RPG outings of Sonic's rival Mario; we have Square Enix and Super Mario RPG to thank for that.
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