Sega isn't a big supporter of fanmade Sonic the Hedgehog games. The publisher is incredibly protective of the IP, and Nitrome, the UK mobile development team that created Bomb Chicken, Super Leap Day, and the upcoming Shovel Knight Dig, recently revealed that Sega rejected its pitch for an official mobile Sonic game.
Nitrome shared the clip of the demo for its mobile Sonic game on Twitter yesterday, which is a vertical wall-running platformer inspired by the classic Sonic games on Genesis (Mega Drive for international gamers) that shows Sonic performing parkour as he runs up and jumps from wall to wall on his way up to the capsule. According to Nintendo Life, the company said that the engine the demo was running on was "pretty authentic" and "very close to the Sonic engine logic," hence the fast frame rate. While there was no proper name attached to the demo, it said that the wall-running mechanic in its latest Apple Arcade release, Super Leap Day, was inspired by the unreleased mobile Sonic game.
Unfortunately, Nitrome's pitch didn't appease the higher-ups at Sega, or the "Sega gods" as they were called, because they didn't see any potential in it appealing to the audience, so they flat-out denied it. Nevertheless, Nitrome decided to keep the mobile Sonic demo because it was proud of the wall-running mechanic it applied to it. Super Leap Day would not have been born from it otherwise.
Even so, Nitrome is still interested in exploring the idea of a "one-button" Sonic game and has asked Sega to reconsider its decision and revisit the demo. Fans have shown their support for the unreleased mobile Sonic game in the comments telling Sega to let Nitrome make it in its entirety.
In another tweet, Nitrome added that the one thing it couldn't get to program into the mobile Sonic demo was a way to get the Blue Blur rolling on the floor and wall within the confines of the one-button control scheme. However, it rectified that problem in the form of Goop rolling around in Super Leap Day as long as the button is held down for a long period of time.
The scrapped mobile game is the second piece of unreleased Sonic media to come out of the woodwork on social media this week after former BioWare developer Jonathan Cooper shared a clip of an unused animated intro for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. He said that the team worked hard to create the opening cutscene for the Nintendo DS-exclusive Sonic RPG, but Sega "inexplicably" cut it and replaced it with generic gameplay footage.