In 2008, SEGA and Bioware teamed up to create Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, a RPG featuring Sonic The Hedgehog for the Nintendo DS.
An interesting piece of cut content surfaced online. The work in question is a short animated intro movie for the game, created by artist Joel MacMillan and animator Nick DiLiberto. The finished animation features Sonic engaged in battle with his arch nemesis Dr. Eggman, and can be watched in its entirety below as shared by @GameAnim on Twitter:
This fantastic 2D work was inexplicably cut by Sega so the game shipped with the same song backing gameplay footage. Some line tests here: pic.twitter.com/iAVTjmYmHD
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) December 21, 2021
This animation was ultimately not used in the final version of the game, which instead features clips of gameplay footage as its intro movie. At the time of this writing, it is not clear why the animation was cut from the game, although some speculate it could be because the style did not quite match the contents of the game.
About Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is a Nintendo DS console role-playing game based on the Sonic the Hedgehog series. It was developed by Canadian RPG developer BioWare, which is now part of Electronic Arts. The game was released in North America and Europe in September 2008. It focuses on the events surrounding the kidnapping of Knuckles the Echidna and the disappearance of the Chaos Emeralds, which leads into a much larger story. This game is notable for being the first (and so far only) RPG in the Sonic series.