Craig Stitt has been posting a lot of old video game content on the SEGA Retro Gamers Facebook group, if you don’t know Craig Stitt worked at SEGA Technical Insitute on Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Kid Chameleon, Sonic Spinball, Spyro the Dragon and many more games. He was also one of the artist at SEGA Technical Institute that was part of the competition to create Sonic’s buddy, for the sequel, which we all know was won by a Fox we all know as Tails. But did you know that Craig Stitt designed “Boomer” or as the document called him “Boomy” as competition for the orange fox?
“For Sonic 2 we needed a buddy / player two for Sonic. This little guy was my submission. He would have been tough with the shell, but vunerable, needing Sonic’s help, if he got flipped on his back. He would have helped out Sonic by being able to ‘fly’ if Sonic pushed him up to speed. Then Sonic would jump up and ride on his back over lava, spikes etc etc.” – Craig Stitt
When we did notes for the SEGA Talk Sonic the Hedgehog 2 podcast, we talked about “I wonder what Boomer would have looked like” and I love that Craig Stitt posted these documents so I can rest easy. So what you think of Boomer the Turtle?
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So that’s where they got the idea for the flying turtles in Sky Chase Zone.
Sounds like they all had a lot of really dumb and unfitting ideas for Sonic. Looking at the beta content in S2, prototypes like that Sonic SatAM themed game mockup, Sonic Xtreme and now this stuff being unearthed makes me glad their clueless visions and ideas for the franchise had to go through Sega of Japan and people who actually knew what they were working on. Just picture having to stop, turn around and back up to push this thing around just to get across gaps or spikes in a momentum based pinball physics game. Reminiscent of all the worst parts of Sonic 1 level design. All while bouncing off of walls and falling on your butt for 5 seconds to penalize you for going fast in a game mostly about going fast.
I think he would’ve been a decent character in sonic under ground
Ok concept with poor execution if it came to be