Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

I have a bit of fondness for the Chaotix, the oddly-named Sonic side characters, just because they’re so bizarre. They’ve never headlined a game themselves, and actually haven’t been playable that often, but they keep turning up.

They started out as helpers in Knuckles Chaotix, that bizarre 32X game that kind of played like Sonic, except instead of Sonic you had Knuckles, instead of Tails you had one of a randomly-selected number of weirdos including Vector the Crocodile, Espio the Chameleion, Charmy the Bee, and also Mighty the Armadillo, and robotic challenge characters Heavy and Bomb. And also, you were connected by a chain, that made playing something like having your fingernails pried off.

The nebulous word “Chaotix” was declared in Sonic Heroes, the other major game where Vector, Espio and Charmy are playable, to be the “Chaotix Detective Agency,” where they presumably make their anthropomorphic animal living hunting down child support evaders and doing miscellaneous disreputable work. After that, they’ve stuck around as bit players in the Sonic saga, always on the sidelines but frequently present. After all, the Sega All-Stars Racing games need bunches of characters to match Mario’s populous cast, and the Chaotix help to do that.

So, there’s these two reptiles and an insect that hang out with Sonic and pals for some reason. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (and i guess a third unspecified person) are a crocodile, chameleon and bee.

Yet, I like them! They’re nuts! If your world is gonna have anthropomorphs in it, that no one questions the existence of, then there should be more than just the heroes. That’s who the Chaotix are: True Neutral hangers-on in the Sonicverse. If they make a Sonic 4 movie they rightfully should be in it, although I wouldn’t put any money on it in any way at all. Also, I like that, addition to wearing headphones constantly, when tall and thin Vector jumps and spins, he becomes a loop.

So we move on to the videos. In this animatic (1½ minutes, by sideofmeggs, audio by Jehtt) they ponder their existence in a way they’re never allowed to do in the games.

In this one (also 1½ minutes, by Jehtt, they’re in some way responsible for all of these), they decide to forget about being detectives and try to make a Youtube video.

And (1 minute, yes by Jehtt) here Shadow the Edgehog (not a typo) tells them how to be popular on Twitter.

(EDIT: Forgot to embed the third video, also fixed a couple of textual problems.)

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Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

I’ll admit it, there’s this cable that goes into my brain directly from Youtube, and I use it to cut the number of game-related things I have to post daily on this site by a full seventh. I know you all suspected it, I’m just confirmin’ it. I’m like a vermin, for confirmin’. I’m a squirmin’ vermin for confirmin’! In German! No, no let’s not write Shecks my language skills cannot kassieren.

Record scratch you know who does fun cartoons sometimes? Doobus Goobus. Like that other person, Pringus McDingus. I’d understand if you mixed them up from their names. But DooGoo posts more often, and longer things! Just a little less polished. Pringus has a really appealing art style, while Doobus traffics in the internet’s default art style: purposefully ugly. Nothing against that as a style, just calling a misshappen spade that thing that it is.

The requisite preamble now complete, please enjoy five Sonic the Hedgehog characters using profanity at each other in an entertaining manner.

The Chaotix Neighbors (& Knuckles) (Youtube, 1 1/2 minutes)

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The podcast Arcade Attack interviews former Atari designer and programmer Ed Rotberg, creator of Battlezone! His introduction identifies him as the creator of the first FPS. Is he? I do not know for sure, but it seems awfully plausible. I think it’s a little distasteful identifying him by his connection to a genre that, when he created Battlezone in 1980, wouldn’t even exist for a decade yet. Rotberg’s accomplishment feels more profound than that, but Battlezone is definitely foundational!

Arcade Attack: Ed Rotberg interview (an hour 16 minutes)

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