Fortnite has shown off its character roster for Overdrive, the battle royale’s upcoming season themed around legendary video games.
Players will have already seen numerous franchises confirmed to be getting crossovers, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, Kingdom Hearts, Persona, Tetris, Pac-Man, Mega Man and 99 Nights in the Forest. Indeed, teases for many of these popped up briefly in the game’s latest live event this past weekend (more on that later).
Today, Fortnite maker Epic Games has highlighted the skins set to be available in the Overdrive battle pass, which feature a string of legally distinct video game parodies (plus the actual Sonic the Hedgehog, sort of).
There’s been plenty of discussion over the weekend among fans that the actual video game collaborations seem to have mainly been left out of the next Fortnite battle pass, to be sold separately via the game’s shop. On the one hand, this is nothing unusual — Fortnite typically only features one or two licensed characters in its battle pass lineup. On the other, fans had been operating under the impression that the lineup would likely feature more of the famous faces used to tease the season so far.
Instead, today’s admittedly excellent 32-bit trailer features Fortnite hero Jonesy scooping up a series of original characters from various video game realities. There’s a Link look-alike named Bastion, a Mario Kart racer named K1TTYW1NS, a blocky Minecraft-like character named Wrixel, and a Lara Croft-esque soldier named Grace Crowne.
Rounding out the pass are Mortal Kombat-esque fighter Mali and Call of Duty-style soldier Phantom. These will be joined by a Sega-sanctioned Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as a new skin for Fortnite’s ultimate Big Bad, Geno.
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A fun note here on Sonic the Hedgehog, for Sonic lore fans. The version of the character in Fortnite has been confirmed to be not the actual Sonic the Hedgehog, so don’t worry about him shooting guns or dancing the Griddy. An official Fortnite and Sonic crossover comic not only confirms that Geno is working Dr. Robotnik, but that the version of Sonic (and Knuckles, and Shadow) playable in Fortnite will be a more humanoid-sized android imbued with the actual Sonic and crew’s bio-data.
Why is all this happening? It’s a good question. Well, in last weekend’s live event, bad guy Geno and the heroic Seven fought for control of reality — resulting in it essentially being rebooted with video game cheat codes. For Fortnite lore fans, the story drop actually clarified some questions about how Fortnite’s reality loop operates (the conceit of its battle royale is basically a programmed layer on top of the “real world”). Conveniently, it also saw the game “hacked” with various retro gaming franchises, and the Zero Point macguffin replaced with a giant video game cartridge. (Physical media lives!)
To play with Robo-Sonic and crew yourself, Fortnite: Overdrive kicks off later this week on August 20, meaning you have just a couple of days left to level up your existing battle pass and collect any remaining Sprites a whole new generation rolls around.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
