“Sonic Frontiers” has been registered as a trademark in both English and Japanese, filed by Sega on October 22 (thanks, Gematsu).
Sega teased the next Sonic game in a Nintendo Direct-like presentation called Sonic Central earlier this year. Not much was shown in the trailer, just your standard ‘Sonic running fast through a forest’. And a title wasn’t revealed at the time either.
The only thing we definitely know about the next Sonic game is that it will be coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch, and PC, with a release window of 2022.
a new frontier
The game was originally thought to be titled “Sonic Rangers” because of the metadata of the teaser trailer. Sonic Rangers was also used in a press release from Sega. Though apparently they claimed it was from an earlier version. There’s a strong chance that was the name of the game, but that they’ve now opted for Sonic Frontiers instead.
There’s also been speculation that the next Sonic game would be an open world take on the fastest hedgehog around. A leak from January of this year claimed the game would be open world. And even correctly named the game Sonic Rangers.
We don’t know what the next Sonic game will be like for sure. But a reinvention of the series wouldn’t go amiss. Sonic games have mostly never successfully translated to 3D.
People (myself included) have a lot of love for the Adventure games, but they really, honestly are not good. The best received games have been Generations and Colours, both games that changed up the usual formula but not in too radical a way. Fan games like Sonic Utopia have managed to capture the most important thing about Sonic in an open world setting: you can go fast. Hopefully Sega are prioritising that fact in Frontiers, and hopefully they don’t have another flop on their hands.
When do you think we’ll see the next Sonic game? Let us know on our social channels!
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Featured Image Credit: SEGA