In a bizarre set of posts, the official Google Play account on Twitter/X has shared a wildly inaccurate timeline of Sonic the Hedgehog designs over the years.
Sonic has had quite a few design iterations since his debut on the Sega Genesis in 1991, and quite a few of those have even appeared in the Google Play Store. Despite that fact, it’s still a bit odd that Google Play decided to share a thread dedicated to Sonic the Hedgehog. The premise seemed simple enough – Sonic gets older in each tweet – but things fell apart immediately. As noted by @cnviolations, almost every tweet in the thread received a well-deserved Community Notes correction.
Starting on a subtle note, an image shows an oddly cropped image of Sonic and Tails facing the wrecking ball boss battle in Green Hill Zone. However, Tails was not originally introduced until 1992’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Instead, this is the 2013 remake of the original game. We can almost forgive this error, as that iteration of the game is the one officially available in the Play Store.
Unfortunately, the caption – besides being oddly written – also inaccurately refers to the game as being “8-bit GLORY.” While there was indeed an 8-bit companion game released that same year for Sega’s Master System and Game Gear, it’s clear they meant the Sega Genesis version, which was 16-bit.
Going completely off the rails, Google Play’s next post talks about “1993 Sonic” with an image of the bescarfed design that debuted with Sonic Boom… in 2014. The following post, despite being labeled “1996 Sonic,” shows the “way past cool” hedgehog’s design from the 2020 movie as depicted in the mobile game Sonic Dash – hey, at least that’s a connection to the Play Store.
The inaccuracies continue throughout the thread. Even once you get into the modern era, the post about “2020 Sonic” is noted to include a photo from 2022’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The included caption – “It was a strange year for us all let’s leave it at that” – almost works as a joke about both the pandemic and the utterly terrifying design that almost made it into the final film.
Google Play’s final tweet, and easily the most quotable one, at least gets its core facts right by including a genuine image of “2022 Sonic” (albeit from an episode that debuted in 2024). However, the image is very clearly edited in an attempt to hide some of the background characters, and many are convinced that the edits were done by AI.
Taken as a whole, there are two ways to think about this wild thread from Google Play. The prevailing thought in the community is that the whole thing was generated by an AI and not checked before publishing. Since AI is known to confidently spew inaccuracies, this could be a straightforward explanation.
Alternatively, this could be some of the greatest engagement bait ever conceived. After all, what better way to get clicks and replies than to stir up the fervent Sonic the Hedgehog community? (It got me to write this post, after all.)
As for the hedgehog himself, the official Sonic account had just one question for the folks at Google Play:
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