#it does not remotely surprise me given my love of Xion and Roxas

[regallibellbright]

Incidentally, it should come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed me for more than about ten minutes that the Sonic game I spent the most time in as a kid (though I got stuck in I think Knuckles’s chapter? Maybe Rouge? Someone with a ton of the exploding bots. Never beat it, either way) was Sonic Battle.

A weird fighting game/at times almost JRPG-ish title for the Gameboy Advance starring a sweet little robot who is befriended by Sonic and company, learns skills as he fights by mimicking them, and has immense destructive power that ultimately leads to his heartbreaking death by self-destruction so he doesn’t destroy the world, over Sonic’s protests and to his friends’ dismay. Despite being an obscure GBA game that was never ported - I don’t even think it made it to the Wii U Virtual Console - it ended up introducing a lot of lore that was still referenced even as the main titles took a step back from in-depth stories, which was probably baffling to people who didn’t catch Sonic X and had no idea what a Gizoid is when this robot started cameoing in the Olympics Games.