We're all familiar with Super Sonic - the form that the Blue Blur takes when he has all seven chaos emeralds. But back in the retro era, this was far from the limit to Sonic's power. In Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the super emeralds were introduced, allowing our hero to turn into Hyper Sonic, an even more powerful form. So powerful, in fact, that Sega never brought it back.Well, until now that is. After an almost 30-year absence from the series, Hyper Sonic finally appeared in an official product. It just happens that this official product is a texture pack for Minecraft. Hey, we've got to start somewhere, right? This revelation was spotted by a Twitter user, sharing this surprising little cameo with fans. True enough, tucked away in the corner and just below Shadow, we can see what appears to be Hyper Sonic, glowing much brighter than his chao emerald counterpart. However, in the context of the texture pack, it's possible that this was just a mistake in the colouring. This whole creation seems to focus on the chaos emeralds, showing all seven of them in one corner, as well as illustrating how Shadow uses them to power up too. With this in mind, it seems plausible that the creators of the pack meant to depict Super Sonic too, since Hyper Sonic doesn't come from the chaos emeralds.
That being said, maybe I'm being way too pessimistic. The detailing on Shadow's gloves shows that the creators could have easily recreated Super Sonic's golden glow. So maybe it really is a shout-out to his lesser-known form.
Or, because I care about this daft story far too much, maybe there's a third option - this isn't Sonic at all! Maybe the texture here is meant to be depicting the process of Shadow turning into Super Shadow, with the first panel showing him gathering all of the chaos emeralds. While he's also meant to have a gold tinge to him, it's far less prominent than Sonic's yellow glow. Sure, this model would also be inaccurate, since he's missing his red stripe, but hey, options.
All in all, I reckon I'll join the optimists and say this is actually a reference to Hyper Sonic, hinting that this stronger form of the Blue Blur hasn't actually been forgotten about. Maybe he'll even appear in the next game, if Sega is looking to up the ante from Sonic Frontiers. Although given that Frontiers is still receiving support, it'll be a long wait for the next game right now.