Sonic Superstars changes the series' direction once again

Sega revealed the next installment of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Sonic Superstars is a co-op-focused title that's coming this fall on consoles and PC.

The news comes from this year's Summer Game Fest kickoff stream and it's notable considering that Sonic Frontiers was a no-show at the event's 2022 stream, despite teasing it beforehand. This year, though, Summer Game Fest made up for that by nabbing the surprising reveal.

A trailer for the game showed classic 2D Sonic gameplay in a modern art style We see Sonic zipping around familiar zones, including some of the series’ classic bonus stages. It looks like a throwback to the series’ Sega Genesis days with some modern twists.

Most notable is that the game features co-op. Players can control Sonic, Tails, Knucks, and Amy, working together in stages. The trailer ended with a tease that more characters might be playable too, as the trailer ends with Fang appearing on screen.

The news comes as a bit of a surprise considering that Sonic Frontiers, the series’ most recent installment, just launched last November. Last year, director Takashi Iizuka told Digital Trends that the game would mark the start of the "third generation" of Sonic games, implying that future games would follow its open-zone template. Sonic Superstars isn't going in that direction though, instead going back to traditional 2D gameplay.

Sonic Superstars will launch this fall on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.