As The Game Awards passes by and the dust has settled from all the announcements, we are now left with an official title for the next mainline 3D Sonic game: Sonic Frontiers. It’s been a long time coming since the initial working title leak of Sonic Rangers to when Sonic Frontiers got officially trademarked. However, there’s been many more leaks aside from that as many know and today I’m going to put together a timeline of the known Sonic Frontiers leaks dating back from 2019 to now. If more are found, this article will be updated accordingly.
UPDATE: AUGUST 2018
This seems to be the earliest mention of the concept for Sonic Frontiers. All the way back in 2018.
NOVEMBER 2019
November 19th 2019, an anonymous user on the site 4chan posted about an opportunity they had gotten. They were lucky enough to do an online survey based on ideas for several potential upcoming games, that of which also included ideas for our favorite blue hedgehog.
They mention something about a Sonic game taking place in a location known as “Starfall Islands” and as we know now, that is indeed the location Sonic Frontiers will be taking place on as disclosed by the official website. They also provided two screenshots of concepts for potential sonic games.
This first concept (Concept K) obviously has not come to fruition, but entertains the idea of a multiplayer Sonic game. The image is cut off on the side, but one of the sentences read and imply that both Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic would’ve been in this game. Make of that what you will.
The second concept (Concept E) is where things get interesting. This one is obviously the initial idea for Sonic Frontiers and we’ll later see down this timeline that most of the original idea seems to have remained intact.
Now as we know, during SXSW 2019 it was confirmed that the next sonic game has begun development. How far along in development? We did not know, but this may give us an inclination. If this survey was given out around November of 2019, then we can likely assume that they only started passing around ideas for the next game back when they announced it. Meaning that when they said they just started development, they really meant it. Also judging by the play-testing/focus test leaks we’re about to go through, they only settled on concept E maybe a month or two after this survey. We may be getting this game five years after Sonic Forces, but the actual development time for the game itself has clearly been much shorter.
UPDATE: Seeing as they were already fooling around with the idea during mid-2018, these concept lists probably solidified what they were going with rather than it being the beginning of them creating ideas. This may indicate a four year development time instead of three.
APRIL 2020
In a random sonic thread, a user revealed that they had play-tested a new sonic game back in February 2020. They continue to post the following:
It was at this point they stopped talking about this. As you can see, the post was deleted while the thread was up, though it is unclear if the user deleted it themselves out of fear or if there was actually someone lurking around. In any case, this was our first real description of gameplay from one of these tests and it lines up with the concept E ideas from the November survey leak. In February 2020, they already had a test build for the game.
JULY 2020
In another thread on /v/, this user posts a response to another one who had posted a sonic “leak”. To which they called them out on it being fake as they had actually gotten to try the game themselves back in March. Unlike the previous tester, they did not really talk about the game itself, but instead mentioned the title (at the time).
Most of us already know why this name is significant, but this was the first instance of the name being dropped in any relevant fashion.
AUGUST 2020
Once again reiterating that this is not an Adventure remake, another user comments in a thread on /v/ that there is something Sega/Sonic Team is working on. Information is similar to that of the April leaker, with extra tidbits. It’s open world, on an island, colossus enemy bosses, super sonic, chaos emeralds etc. Says that Infinite’s theme played during one of the fights, but I think it’s safe to assume it may be placeholder taking from Forces assets knowing how early in development the game was at this point.
SEPTEMBER 2020
Yet another Sonic related /v/ thread, yet another leak. This time another person debunking a fake sonic leak thread.
Another March 2020 play-tester that says about the same things as the others except this time mentioning that the boost is in the game and something about a “blur mechanic” that is not talked about by any of the other testers.
NOVEMBER 2020
Another tester debunking a fake sonic leak on /v/, this one also confirms the boost is back and also talks about the world of the game. Seeing official footage of the game now after TGA, we can see what they were talking about. It does have a very Sonic 06/Botw sort of feel and it seems even the play-testers were concerned about that.
JANUARY 2021
Behold, the mother of leaks. The one that sent us down a spiral. Here’s all of it:
Now regardless of what this play-tester thought of the game during their experience with it, they mentioned several new details not present in the other play-tester leaks as well as helped in confirming previous information from them. This is also the first leak to outright mention cyberspace levels and which may indicate that it’s a new build compared to the previous testers. There’s a skill tree, a new move called the “spin cycle”, the homing attack returns, orb currency and there is mention of a mysterious ghost girl that helps Sonic out.
There hasn’t been anymore known leaks after this January one until around May 2021 when Sonic Central occurred.
MAY 27TH (1:52AM PST) 7 HOURS BEFORE SONIC CENTRAL
Nick Robinson drops a cheeky tease that no one believes until that day’s later events.
AFTER SONIC CENTRAL
Websites like “TheGamer” and “Polygon” mention the name Sonic Rangers, taken directly from Sega’s press site and was later removed. Later on, twitter user Bluwolfboy digs through the metadata from the 4k version of the trailer shown at Sonic Central (also taken from Sega’s press site).
It was because of this we all found out that at the time the working title for Sonic Frontiers was “Sonic Rangers” and with that we were able to dig up the leaks from last year using the 4chan archive search.
Since then there have been many more leaks on “Sonic Rangers”, but those will not be covered in this article as with the popularity of the legitimate leaks, many people thought to hop along on the ride if you catch my drift. Instead we’re going to fast forward to October 2021.
This image began to circulate which can be traced back to a facebook group in which a user apart of it said they got a survey sponsored by Sonic Team asking about how feel about Sonic and how they would feel about various potential Sonic game titles.
NOVEMBER 8TH, 2021
It was on this day that we all found out that Sonic Frontiers has officially been trademarked by Sega, however the actual date of which it was trademarked was in fact October 22nd, not long after that survey was floating around. My guess is that they were already working with that as the new name and just wanted to make sure people got the right idea from it.
So you’d think that’s it. That’s all the leaks and then we got all the new information from The Game Awards, but no there’s still one more that comes soon after and it loops this whole thing back around to the very first one in November 2019.
DECEMBER 9TH, 2021
In an Polygon article that released shortly after TGA, they provided a brief synopsis on the story for the upcoming game. However, it was removed earlier today. In this synopsis, it mentions something about an AI program that Eggman uses to take over technology on Starfall Islands. This is essentially the same idea they were working with in Concept E from the 2019 leak. Meaning not too much seems to have changed since then and it looks like they have a pretty clear idea of what they want to do.
So there you have it, a fully detailed list of Sonic Frontiers leaks in order. This game’s been on quite the ride and I look forward to seeing how it shapes up throughout next year. Let me know what you think of all this in the comments below!
2 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationThis is a nice, thorough breakdown. Good work, KitKat.
Very interesting stuff. Let’s hope the new game’s good!