Fighting Vipers - Sonic The Fighters

Fighting Vipers has a direct link with Sega's famous blue mascot Sonic the Hedgehog via the less known Sonic title Sonic the Fighters (a.k.a. Sonic Championship). The story behind Sonic the Fighters is that a bored Sega AM2 programmer working on Fighting Vipers decided to put in Sonic the Hedgehog in the game for amusement (through hacking both Sonic and Tails are playable). After winning the approval of Sega AM2 head Yu Suzuki and Sonic Team head Yuji Naka, Sega AM2 commissioned a Sonic fighting game that became Sonic the Fighters. Sonic the Fighters plays very similar to Fighting Vipers, minus the armor feature and with the addition of the depleting Barrier System (limiting how much you may block an opponent's attacks). An early screenshot even shows the game using the character select screen of Fighting Vipers (or possibly Tails and Sonic in Fighting Vipers).

Hidden within the data of the arcade version of Sonic the Fighters is an additional character named Honey, a yellow cat wearing Candy's red plastic fairy costume, even the name being a nod to this character. Through hacking of the arcade version rom, she is fully playable, has multiple face expressions, and Knuckles' moveset. Honey's model was removed from the Sonic the Fighters port on Sonic Gems Collection. However, in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 port, she is a playable character.