Google picks the one fight it will never win—with Sonic fans

The all-conquering tech giant that is Alphabet, nee Google, has finally overreached itself. The Google Play X account, essentially Google's public-facing games side, decided to do its own version of a popular meme, a thread that began with these fateful words: «Sonic, but as you scroll he gets older and older.»

I've been doing this job a long time, and one of my learnings is that you don't fuck about with the Sonic fans. You don't look too closely at the fanfiction, you never image search for Amy, and you certainly don't mention that most of the post 16-bit games are rubbish. More than anything, you just don't get the details wrong, and Google got everything wrong that it could have

Google Play got off to the most spectacular start possible, posting an image with the caption:

«1991 Sonic. The cover? Rotund. Husky. Still fast as lightning. The actual game? 8-bit GLORY.» Sonic the Hedgehog did see a release on the 8-bit Master System, but the game that made it a smash hit was the 16-bit Genesis / Mega Drive version. Google's crimes didn't end there though: the image features Tails.

Thus comes the first of many community notes, the X feature that allows community sourced corrections to popular tweets, which pointed out the above before going in with both red sneakers. «Tails (seen in picture) was not created until 1992 for Sonic the Hedgehog 2,» reads the note, «meaning this is not a 1991 Sonic, but rather a later port of the original game.»

Sit down and shut up, Google Play! Reader, it did not. In fact things got even worse.

1993 Sonic. Ok short king