Turbo the Hedgehog

 

I've never really been part of any fan communities, and thus, never participated in the phenomenon of making fan fiction original characters, of which the Sonic the Hedgehog series is pretty much the ur-example. I'm not even much into Sonic. I like the character well enough, but the games are very hit or miss, and I completely missed out on the cartoons and comics the fanbase grew up with.

And yet, somehow, even I once made a Sonic OC! However, this really wasn't an attempt to make a character, rather it was based on how I'd rather Sonic actually played in his games, because I found the levels frustrating to navigate at the time. This was back when I was in the third grade, and the only games that were out were Sonic (1) and Sonic 2.

Turbo the Hedgehog was basically just Sonic, but he had a giant shuriken on a string. This gave him a longer attack range, whipping the shuriken out to attack enemies a few squares ahead, so he'd have better range. While spinning in the air, you could press the attack button, and Turbo would whip the shuriken out for a single spin-slash with greater range. He could use the shuriken as a climbing aid, by jabbing it into a wall to hang off from, kick off the wall to gain some height, jab the shuriken into a higher spot on the wall, effectively letting him leap frog his way upwards to get out of pits. He could hurl the shuriken hard enough to smash small rocks and barriers. He could even spin it over head like a mini-copter in order to glide across gaps.

Well. Just like the time I created Beyblade before Beyblade came out, someone in Japan must have psychically tapped into my brainwaves, because in the very next two games, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, those exact moves were incorporated into the mechanics! Knuckles can glide, climb, and smash rocks, and in later games has a short-range power punch mechanic. Even Sonic gained an enhanced mid-air attack with the spiral slash move!

Naturally, when I got to play as Knuckles, I found him much more appealing because of additional traversal moveset he was capable of. And Turbo became one of many, many long-lost characters. Not that I ever planned on doing anything with him beyond the thought experiment, but I suppose if I'd kept him around, he'd have ended up in the Krazy Komix universe. This also reminds me of how I used to try designing games as a kid, but I just never really had the opportunity to learn how to do it, and did not have the resources to even attempt such things. I imagine if I'd been born twenty years later, I'd have grown up learning Game Maker programs and games would probably have been my foremost creative medium instead of comics or short stories.

Design wise, as I said, he wasn't really a character, but my attempt to consider alternate gameplay mechanics. Thus I thought of him as looking just like Sonic, but with the shuriken. Storywise, he was supposed to be Sonic's brother or cousin or something like that. For the hell of it, I decided to tweak a couple details, giving him a darker color scheme, blue eyes, and the bandana with lifted spines because why not?