At Anime Expo this week, Sega shared a “sneak peek” of its upcoming 35th anniversary short form animation, Sonic the Hedgehog: Memories and Beyond.

This was revealed during the “Sonic the Hedgehog Animated Shorts: A Frame-by-Frame Retrospective panel”. As you can see, it stars Sonic and the rest of his crew, and will apparently focus on Eggman upgrading Metal Sonic with the help of Sonic’s data and the Chaos Emeralds.

It’s releasing at some point later this year and will have a runtime of 10 minutes. Sonic lore manager Chris Hernandez has shared a little more information, seemingly confirming it’s canon, and it should be “easy to figure out” what events took place before it, once it has been released.

“Action packed sequences and emotional story telling at its best! 35 years of action and fun squeezed into one animation you won’t want to miss! Look forward to the full release… Nothing but passion went into this and there’s not a single wasted second. This is one to get excited about!”

As part of the ongoing Sonic 35th anniversary celebrations, Sega has also recently released Sonic Frontiers – Definitive Edition on the Switch 2, and announced two physical collections for Switch. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds also got a free update adding “Classic Sonic” as a racer.

At the same event this week, Aaron Webber, who joined Sega of Japan as a Director of Strategy, Studio & Community Relations in 2020 (and actually left the company in 2022 due to burnout), announced he would be returning to assist Sega of Japan in the coming year.