SEGA has filed a trademark for what appears to be another Sonic game, “Sonic & Friends.” The trademark was published today in the Japanese trademark website “Chizai Watch,” where it was filed on June 23rd. Some cursory research suggests this is almost definitely a game, as it shares many many of the same categories including Machines and Appliances, Toys, Clothing, Paper, and perhaps most importantly, Education and Entertainment. Toys, paper and clothing likely apply to merchandise, as Frontiers’ trademark possessed both of these categories in addition to “leather.”
The trademark also makes mention of “commodity service programs for home-use television game machines.” As is typical of game trademarks, a variety of potential media and other things are also mentioned, including magnetic tape and magnetic disks. But most importantly, ROM cartridges and optical disks are also mentioned. The trademark does mention games for mobile phones, but Frontiers did as well, so that is not necessarily relevant to the platform.
For a look at the full trademark, translated on the website by Google, take a look at the screenshot below:
So, this being a game seems to be extremely likely, but what could this be, exactly? We’ve known for some time that a new mobile game from SEGA Hardlight is in development. I attempted to compare this to a mobile game trademark from SEGA, but the only one I was able to find was 404 Game RE:SET, which more or less utilizes the same game related categories as this and Frontiers. So it could certainly be a mobile title.
Alternatively, it could be some sort of spin-off. Perhaps a party game? Well, whatever it is, we’ll probably find out about it in the coming months. You can find a link to the trademark here, though as of this article’s publication the page appears to be having issues loading.
Please note that the Sonic & Friends logo used for the feature image is not the logo the game itself will use. Special thanks to Twitter user Dejimon11 for the news tip!