Stay Sonic

Stay Sonic was a guidebook to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog published in the United Kingdom in 1993 by Fantail. It was written by Mike Pattenden.

Based on an internal Sega document and released close on the heels of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Stay Sonic recounted the personal history of Sonic, particularly his conflict with Doctor Ovi Kintobor and his Retro-Orbital Chaos Compressor. Although ignored most everywhere else in the world, Stay Sonic served as the basis for all UK Sonic the Hedgehog fiction, including a series of novels written by Martin Adams and published by Virgin Media.

Tropes used in Stay Sonic include:

• Animal Talk: Sonic learned human language through the Lingua Scrambler.
• Bowdlerization: The original document was grimmer:
  • Sonic's father dies by falling into toxic waste.
  • Sonic is mentioned as being extremely poor.
  • He is almost non-morphic in this story, rather than simply brown.
  • Hibernation is important to the plot.
• Canon Discontinuity: The contents of this book, although based on internal Sega documents, were completely ignored by the various Sonic Spin-Off works released in North America.
• Create Your Own Villain
• Earth Drift: Inverted.
• Face Heel Turn: Kintobor/Robotnik.
• Parental Abandonment: Sonic.
• Translation Convention: Used in the early scenes in the forest.