Sonic Colors: Ultimate Glitches Could Cause Seizures

Sonic Colors: Ultimate isn’t even officially out yet, but as VGC reports, Sega are already putting out statements addressing the buggy state it’s in. While the game’s full release is tomorrow, pre-orderererers were able to get the game last Friday, and apparently haven’t been having a great time of the remastered Wii game. So much so that the blue hedgehog’s official social media manager is trying to put out fires.

“Hey everyone!” Katie Chrzanowski greeted her followers over the weekend. She continued in a similarly ebullient tone, “Appreciate all your feedback on Sonic Colors: Ultimate, and the teams are listening and assessing for an upcoming patch. Thank you all for your patience as we dig into this!”

However, because it’s 2021 and everything is awful, it’s not as simple as that. As Chrzanowski goes on to say, not all the reports and videos of glitches are entirely… real. It seems quite a few are based on people playing an “emulated” version of the game, i.e. not on official Nintendo hardware. “Trying to figure out what bugs are legitimate can really slow down the QA process,” Sonic’s PA continued, having pointed out that emulated (pirated) versions of the barely-released game aren’t really in Sega’s bug-fixing remit.

Quick aside: we've seen some graphical issues that were caused by an emulator which is unfortunately outside our control.

Trying to figure out what bugs are legitimate can really slow down the QA process. If you're having issues, please do flag them here: https://t.co/vymOVVEyZp

— Katie – MiniKitty (@KatieChrz) September 5, 2021

However, there are bugs and glitches, and a lot of the issues raised are real. That’s demonstrated by GameXplain, who put together a video of the bugs they encountered while playing on a proper real-life actual Switch:

Other outlets have confirmed the bugs, including Nintendo World Report, who linked (and reproduced) this video, which I won’t embed due to the extreme likelihood of its content causing seizures. Which is, well, not so great for Sega.

The game is due out tomorrow on Xbox One, PS4, PC and Switch, so while the seizure-inducing bugs do seem to require quite some jiggery-pokery to cause, those with epilepsy may want to hold off until the patch is rolled out.