UPDATE: We have learned that while the Sonic page wasn’t archived at Google until April 17th 2014, the images were uploaded to Michael Nagy’s site July 15th 2013. It’s now very likely that this is a scrapped project.

Thanks to Gatestormer at the SSMB for the heads up!

ORIGINAL ARTICLE BELOW:
It appears SEGA may be on the hunt for a sidekick for a new Sonic game they’re working on behind the scenes fronted by a new worldwide campaign titled The Search for Sonic’s Sidekick. In slides discovered by The Sonic Stadium at ad agency DDB Tribal artist Michael Nagy’s website there are images of an online mobile game SEGA will use in a competition to get fans involved in the new campaign. DDB Tribal are responsible for major campaigns for events such as The Queens Diamond Jubilee and advertisements for a variety of big brand companies.

The aforementioned mobile game sees players in twelve cities around the globe create a character and then race their character around their city using Google’s Street View technology. You then log your best time onto the leaderboard and the player with the fastest time at the end of the competition will see their character in the next Sonic game. The competition will run for eleven months and visit a new city every month.

We have created an online game using Google Street view where you compete to become Sonic’s sidekick. Your online avatar will be in the next game that is produced for Sonic. The competition will run for 11 months and move to a different city every month across the globe. The cities include Tokyo, Hong Kong, Berlin, Paris, London, Cape Town, Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Rio De Janeiro and Sydney.

The description doesn’t mention whether this is a console or mobile title, but for a campaign this big, it’s likely this could be for the next big console game from Sonic Team after Sonic Boom. We checked on Google and this page was archived just last week on April 17th 2014, so it’s very recent. The website http://www.runthestreets.com isn’t live yet, but the domain does appear to be up for sale and a Whois check doesn’t show any ownership by SEGA or Google just yet.

It’s also worth noting that there is no mention or indication of the new character replacing Tails as Sonic’s sidekick, so don’t panic, Tails fans. This new character could likely be playing a sidekick role similar to Chip in Sonic Unleashed or Yacker in Sonic Colours. Whatever the role, the character will obviously be important to the new game.

The images are currently still live on Michael Nagy’s website, but you can also find all of them in our gallery below.

What do you think of this campaign? Is it a good idea to get fans involved in the creation of a new character?