Fortnite Goes 32-Bit for New Season: Parodies of Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat, and the Real Sonic the Hedgehog

Fortnite has unveiled the character roster for Overdrive, its upcoming season that pays tribute to legendary video games. Players have already seen teases for numerous crossover franchises, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, Kingdom Hearts, Persona, Tetris, Pac-Man, Mega Man, and 99 Nights in the Forest. Many of these appeared briefly during the game's latest live event last weekend.

Now, Epic Games has highlighted the skins available in the Overdrive battle pass, which feature a mix of legally distinct video game parodies and the actual Sonic the Hedgehog. Fans have been discussing that the real game collaborations seem to be mostly left out of the battle pass, likely to be sold separately in the item shop. This isn't unusual—Fortnite typically includes only one or two licensed characters in its battle pass—but fans had hoped for more of the famous faces teased for the season.

Instead, the new 32-bit trailer shows Fortnite hero Jonesy collecting original characters inspired by various video game realities. There's Bastion, a Link look-alike; K1TTYW1NS, a Mario Kart racer; Wrixel, a blocky Minecraft-like character; and Grace Crowne, a Lara Croft-esque soldier. The pass also includes Mali, a Mortal Kombat-style fighter, and Phantom, a Call of Duty-style soldier. These are joined by the Sega-sanctioned Sonic the Hedgehog and a new skin for Fortnite's ultimate villain, Geno.

For Sonic fans, there's an interesting twist: the version of Sonic in Fortnite is confirmed to be not the real Sonic, but rather an android with Sonic's bio-data. An official Fortnite and Sonic crossover comic reveals that Geno is working with Dr. Robotnik, and the playable Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow in Fortnite are humanoid-sized androids.

So why is all this happening? In last weekend's live event, Geno and the heroic Seven fought for control of reality, which was rebooted with video game cheat codes. This clarified some lore questions about Fortnite's reality loop and saw the game 'hacked' with retro gaming franchises, with the Zero Point replaced by a giant video game cartridge.

Fortnite: Overdrive kicks off on August 20, giving players just a couple of days to finish their current battle pass and collect any remaining Sprites before the new season arrives.