Takashi Iizuka, a key figure in Sega’s Sonic Franchise, told IGN’s Jeffrey Vega about the unique difficulty the company faced in giving the Blue Blur a playable skin in Fortnite.
While Shadow is somewhat famous for being an edgy, pistol-toting anti-hero, Sonic is a totally different character. The yang to Shadow’s yin, Sonic is an upbeat hedgehog who uses his extremely fast speed (and occasionally, the power of the Chaos Emeralds) to take down enemies.
That’s why Sega balked when it was first approached by Epic games with the idea of giving Shadow and Sonic their own Fortnite skins, according to Sonic Creative Officer Takashi Iizuka. Luckily, they were able to come up with a creative solution: Why not make a new Sonic variant?
“Epic Games came and spoke with us a couple years ago about putting Sonic in Fortnite, but Sonic is a character that will never hold a gun,” he told us. “And when thinking about the design of Fortnite, it was really hard to think about Sonic being in the game. But this time, we were able to take creative liberties and created Android Sonic.”
In the same vein as Metal Sonic, the team cooked up an Android version of the character that would be realistically capable of using a shotgun, thus allowing a variant of Sonic to be the one doing the shooting as a clever workaround.
“Because we made this Android version of Sonic, we were able to get this Android Sonic into Fortnite, have him hold a gun, and have him be able to really play inside Fortnite and be integrated into the game,” Iizuka explained.
This week’s Shop is going full adventure mode 👀 pic.twitter.com/thT6CMd7Vq
— Fortnite (@Fortnite) August 20, 2026
Of course, this meant changing his design a bit in order for him to fit within the game — most notably, giving him longer legs.
“One of the things that’s really important in Fortnite is to be able to have all the weapons and items and things to be used amongst all the different characters. So, if we had our regular version of Sonic in there, it really wouldn’t work. Like, you couldn’t use all the items and things to apply to your character,” he continued.
“We needed to have a character shape that is similar to all the other Fortnite characters. That was something that Epic Games said was really important, that we need to make sure we have the same shapes as all the other characters. And from there, it was really working with the Epic Games team on making sure the Android version really felt like a Sonic character but still fit the requirements of what the body proportions and shapes needed to be.”
Sonic, Shadow, Tails, Knuckles, and even Dr. Eggman are available in Fortnite, along with a new area modeled after Green Hill Zone. You can check out more from our interview with Takashi Iizuka, or catch up on the latest Fortnite news here.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
Jeffrey Vega is the Lead Social Host/Producer at IGN and is probably feeding his neopets right now. You can follow him on Twitter @jeffreyvega, Instagram, and IGN’s TikTok.
