INFO BURST

Format: Book
Initial Release Date: 4/1/93
Feature character: Sonic the Hedgehog
Villain: Doctor Ivo Robotnik
Other Characters: Doctor Ovi Kintobor, Badniks (Chopper, Moto Bug, Crabmeat, Buzz Bomber, Newtron, Caterkiller, Batbrain, Roller, Spikes, Burrobot, Jaws, Orbinaut, Bomb, Ball Hog, Buzzer, Masher, Coconuts, Grabber, Spiny, Whisp, Grounder, Chop Chop, Crawl, Rexon, Spiker, Flasher, Crawlton, Octus, Aquis, Asteron, Slicer, Shellcraker, Turtloids, Nebula, Balkiry, Clucker) Sophocles, Johnny Lightfoot, Sally Acorn, Joe Sushi, Tux (also mistakenly named Tiki), Chirps, Robo Sonic, Master Robots (Pit Master, Chick Master, Balance Master, Ring Master, Charge Master), Silver Sonic (also mistakenly named Mekka Sonic), Miles “Tails” Prower, Aseg Eporue
Locations: Mobius, South Island, Green Hill Zone, Spring Yard Zone, Marble Zone, Labyrinth Zone, Star Light Zone, Scrap Brain Zone, Emerald Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Aquatic Ruin Zone, Casino Night Zone, Hill Top Zone, Mystic Cave Zone, Oil Ocean Zone, Metropolis Zone, Sky Chase Zone, Wing Fortress Zone (also mistakenly called Sky Fortress), Death Egg, Robotropolis
Items: Cogwinder Retractable Particulant Corer (C.R.P.C.), Retro-Orbital Chaos Compressor (R.O.C.C.), Rings, Chaos Emeralds, Item Boxes, Kinetic Gyratosphere, Power Sneakers, Egg-O-Matic (Egg Drillster, Egg Poison, Egg Hammer, Egg Claw, Egg Scorcher Mk. II, Egg Digger, Eggmarine, Egg Bouncer), Laser Prison, Death Egg Robot, Crystal Egg Zone boss
Continuity: Sonic Bible
Synopsis: Part series bible, part factual handbook, Stay Sonic is presented as “The Ultimate Guide to the World of Sonic the Hedgehog.” The book gives origin stories and character profiles to Sonic, Tails and Doctor Robotnik as well as an overview of the Zones of Mobius seen in the first two Sonic the Hedgehog Mega Drive video games and the Badniks players might encounter in those Zones. The book also includes gameplay tips for both 16-bit and 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog 2 titles, a tongue-in-cheek quiz to determine if the reader is a Sonic superfan and rapid-fire style interviews with celebrity Sonic fans of the day.

CREDITS

Writer: Mike Pattenden with Tony Takoushi and James Wallis

Review

In a way it’s difficult to know how to review Stay Sonic. It’s so many different things and yet also not quite any of them. It adapts Sega of America’s internal series bibles into a more digestible narrative form, yet it isn’t solely interested in that. It has prose sections, yet it isn’t entirely a storybook either – at under a hundred pages it would barely even qualify as a novella even if it was. It has a spotlight focus on the world Sonic and his friends inhabit and presents these in an in-universe style, yet it also recognises it’s about a fictional video game series, with gameplay tip sections.

But one thing is absolutely certain: Stay Sonic is a vital document for understanding early series lore and how that helped shape the entirety of the Sonic series’ British face, most notably Sonic the Comic. What’s most interesting about all of this is the book is built off the back of Sega of America’s internal production documents created when the series was being localised – the oft-spoken of “Sonic Bible” in particular. The reason this is so interesting is the Sonic Bible was created by Americans to differentiate and localise the series from its Japanese story, was abandoned almost immediately by every American continuity and adopted wholesale by the UK continuities. Effectively, Sega of America’s decision to change the story of the series in the west actually created three distinct “canons,” if you can call them that. And make no mistake about it, the backstory presented in this book was used in every Sonic continuity to come out of Britain in the 1990s (which, of course, is all of the ones to come out of Britain at all). It also makes the book an incredibly useful piece of kit to understand the culture surrounding Sonic in 90s Britain. While North America leaned more strongly towards Nintendo and Mario thanks to Nintendo’s incredible market share in that region, European gamers on the whole felt more of an affinity towards Sega and Sonic – and this tome was the holy text for many a youngster who held Sonic in any kind of esteem.

To be absolutely fair, “lore” is an unusual word to use in this context. It wasn’t something that Sonic-loving gamers were really all that bothered about at the time and that’s because almost none of it ever translated to the screen. The beauty of Sonic’s earliest adventures is their simplicity – you don’t need to read reams of character backstory to understand Sonic is the hero, Robotnik is the villain and it’s your task as the player to help good triumph over bad. Modern “fandom” for so many series is completely obsessed with lore and timelines and continuity that it often tangles itself up in knots with arguing and in-fighting. Take this back to the early 90s and while we wouldn’t have called it “lore” at the time, most kids who enjoyed Sonic would have seen Stay Sonic for what it is – a companion piece for the games. None of the games were particularly changed or enriched for Stay Sonic’s existence, but our understanding of the character of Sonic and his world was informed by it just the same. It certainly helped that any child who loved Sonic enough to read a book about him would most likely also read a fortnightly comic about him, and the synergy in the storytelling across British Sonic media helped make the world he inhabited that much more believable.

It’s always been interesting to me that series enthusiasts from the same generation but with a North American background are much more likely to rankle over the differences in retellings of the character, whereas British Sonic lovers would be more likely to see the cartoons as their own little thing outside of a bubble of stories connected through a shared universe. The world of Stay Sonic is not exactly the world of Sonic the Comic, but there are enough similarities that it doesn’t matter and a reader of both can understand they have a shared root, contrasted with the multiple concurrent American continuities which were largely incompatible. It’s just fun to me that Sega of America had hoped to tie the series together and their territory ended up being the most disparate, whereas the only territory that adopted the Sonic Bible outright was the UK and Europe!

The nature of the book means it’s somewhat tricky to give a generalised overview to, so instead of that, let’s take a look section-by-section at what works most effectively and what doesn’t work quite as well with modern eyes.

Roughly the first sixth of the book is given over to the origin story of Sonic and Doctor Robotnik. This is largely a tidied up version of events seen in the internal Sonic Bible and it sticks the landing perfectly. There’s a sincerity present here not seen in other, conflicting origin stories for the character from around the same time that works massively in the favour of Stay Sonic. The book knows this is an inherently silly series – have you actually really thought about who the title character is recently? – but silly doesn’t have to mean bad, silly can mean fun. There’s plenty of playing around with the eccentricities of Doctor Kintobor and the personality of Sonic himself that give this version of events a wonderful charm. The intent and realisation is clear: this is not stylistically serious, but if you take the story seriously you can spin something worthwhile. Personally, I’m of the opinion that it’s a real shame we didn’t get this kind of worldbuilding from Sega again because it’s all presented so genuinely. The reader is given a reason to care about Sonic and Robotnik’s conflict (Sonic lost his friend when Kintobor transformed into Mobius’ greatest enemy) and elements of the video games such as the Rings, Item Boxes and Chaos Emeralds are all included in a logical way that doesn’t feel clumsy or ham-fisted. There’s even a handy explanation provided for why there’s a seventh Chaos Emerald introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit) rather than the real world explanation that the game developers were simply inconsistent on this matter in the 1990s and wanted to pay homage to Dragon Ball with the seventh gem and Super Sonic transformation.

After this, we have a profile section for Sonic which sums up his personality and gives us more of a personal backstory to him prior to his meeting with Kintobor. This is also very welcome as it helps flesh out Sonic and his friends. The Animal Friends in the games are, let’s be fair here, generic cutesy animals that act basically as a MacGuffin to get Sonic into action against Robotnik. But here we learn each of them had a vital role to play in shaping Sonic into the hero he is, teaching him tricks and skills that are vital to his navigation of Mobius. Despite the fact this all comes from some of the earliest internal documents the series had, a lot of Sonic’s personality has remained surprisingly consistent in the decades since then.

Up next is “Are You A Sonic Nut?” which is a comedic quiz to determine if the reader is a Sonic mega-fan. It’s a funny couple of pages but serves mainly as a buffer between some of the meat of the book. For what it’s worth, the scoring system also doesn’t to make perfect sense as some answers reward a reader with scores that don’t match what one might expect. Oddly enough, the quiz even seems to want you to score down the middle and not be too much of a Sonic fanatic.

Following this we have a profile of Doctor Robotnik, followed by sections on the Egg-O-Matic and the Badniks of the first two 16-bit Sonic video games. Robotnik’s profile is more good stuff, particularly the further fleshing out of Kintobor’s life before he met Sonic, though it does sometimes fall into the trap of making him evil for evil’s sake. Robotnik is a villain who has motivations and desires and just because he’s the inverse of Ovi Kintobor doesn’t mean he thinks good is bad and bad is good – he’s not Bizarro after all. There’s also a lot made of Robotnik’s love of eggs and his weight and poor hygiene, the former being slightly more important to the character than the latter two, and while I’m not going to cry foul at the bullying of Doctor Robotnik, it does wear a little thin. Unlike—(Snip!). the Egg-O-Matic (that’s the Egg-Mobile for those of you keeping score) section is interesting with a neat piece of art showing the cockpit view and an explanation of how it’s powered. The fact its exhaust would smell like rotten eggs is actually a much more fun and creative touch than “Robotnik smells.” The Badnik rundown is a nice bit of fun with each getting a short paragraph summing them up and how best to avoid their most dangerous parts.

After that we have back-to-back gameplay tip segments (which are almost certainly the sections written by game guru Tony Takoushi), with the first covering Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit) and the second covering Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit). These are perfectly fine and would likely have been very welcome at the time of the book’s publication, but they are what they are – quite dry game guides that steer struggling players in the right direction. They’re obviously serviceable and completely inoffensive but they’re unfortunately lacking the rest of the book’s flair.

The next section is the most bizarre as a selection of celebrities are asked for their thoughts on Sonic. The celebs in question are all 90s British musicians, so it’s fairly likely they were all cornered at the same event or the questions were posed via a music-focused outlet. Some of the celebs’ responses are fun and make clear they care about Sonic, whereas others are just bizarre. Some of the interviewees are better known than others in 2025 and not all remain well-known for the right reasons. Moving on.

Next is Tails’ profile, which gives an overview of his character and personality. Compared to Sonic and Robotnik, this section almost feels like the odd one out as it seems less well fleshed out, arguably as Tails is, of course, absent from the Sonic Bible which Stay Sonic is based off due to not being in the original game. This section does a decent job of getting over Tails as well-intentioned but a bit dim, making him stand in stark contrast to his later characterisation of a boy genius.

Following this is a decent character piece, an interview with Sonic by Aseg Eporue (an anagram of Sega Europe, for those of you not paying attention). In a way, it feels like a character exercise fleshed out into a feature and represents the first of numerous “interview with Sonic” segments across British Sonic media. It’s harmless and sometimes pretty fun, though doesn’t particularly bring much new to the table.

After this we have The Zone Zone, which is a rundown of the locales of the first two 16-bit Sonic video games and Mobius itself. This is a really neat piece of worldbuilding as it greatly fleshes out the world Sonic inhabits and gives a real logic to Robotnik’s thought process in taking an interest in these locations. It’s clear a lot of thought went into this segment.

Finally, Sonic wraps things up with a quick send-off that somehow leaves us wanting more. Fortunately for us all, though we never got another Stay Sonic, there was plenty more still to come from the hedgehog himself.

Stay Sonic’s greatest strength is its sincerity. There’s a tacit understanding that the young readers likely to enjoy this book hold Sonic and his series in high regard. Though the book understands the Sonic series is a bit daft, it never once condescends or acts ashamed of its subject matter, instead embracing it in a manner any young reader should find encouraging – yes, Sonic is silly but if you’re willing to have fun with that then you’ll love this series so much more.