The head of Sonic Team has explained how Sonic can appear in Fortnite despite Sega deciding he should never be allowed to fire a gun.
Sonic is the first character players unlock in the current season of Fortnite, which is based on video game crossovers and includes other guest characters like Crash Bandicoot, Mega Man, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, Joker from Persona and Spyro the Dragon.
Some players have questioned, however, why Sega allowed Sonic to appear in a game with gunplay when Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka has previously stated in interviews that the Shadow the Hedgehog game was created because Sonic wasn’t supposed to ever use a gun.
In a new interview with IGN, Iizuka explained that the Sonic character in Fortnite isn’t the real Sonic, but an android version of him, and that’s why it’s okay for him to fire guns,
“Epic Games came and spoke with us more than a couple of years ago about maybe putting Sonic in Fortnite,” Iizuka explained (via an interpreter).
“But Sonic is a character that will never hold a gun, so when thinking of the game fit, the game design of Fortnite, it’s really hard to think of Sonic being in this game and playing in Fortnite.
“But this time we took the creative liberty and created Android Sonic, and because we made this android version of Sonic we were able to get this android Sonic into Fortnite, have him hold a gun and have him be able to really play inside of the Fortnite gameplay, and be able to be integrated into Fortnite.”
The decision to make Sonic an android in Fortnite also solves a number of other potential issues that could have occurred given the character’s trademark abilities, and also theoretically explains why he has longer legs than usual (to fit the standard Fortnite character size).
Because he’s not the real Sonic, he doesn’t run extremely quickly and instead runs at the same speed as other Fortnite characters. Similarly, the ‘real’ Sonic can’t swim on the surface of water – something everyone else can do in Fortnite – but android Sonic can.
Players can also buy Shadow and Knuckles from the Fortnite store, but these too are androids.
