Meet Haya, the hedgehog who lives for adventure. You may know him as just running fast, but he's also a singer, food connoisseur, and an all-around friend. With all of the friends he's gathered, he helps save his world from any threat daring to break this freedom.
Haya the Hedgehog was created by the lovely 2nd-party studio Heya, named in honor of the late Sega company who had previously designed Haya.
With our studio and IP now so closely tied to Nintendo after its purchase, they had the idea to tie Haya's world via that of Mario's, separated dimensionally, but holding the same rules.
We work close with Nintendo's character designers and writers to ensure that Haya's world closely matches that with Mario. Besides that, we're thankful to Nintendo for allowing us to keep our original idea with Haya, which includes his core theming and gameplay, something we believe is essential to the series' long-running success.
he he he...
hey. how you feelin' with the site? i'll just be here for a minute to break immersion and actually explain what's going on incase you haven't read the small text at the bottom.
Haya's a Sonic AU with the simple premise of: "Sonic in Mario's universe". this includes character design and worldbuilding.
this AU was born out of a game idea i had where Mario was called to Sonic's world to help save the world after everyone there had been captured. que Mario interacting with Sonic's gameplay. this idea survived as "Haya Forces" if you check Haya History.
Super Paper Mario established that there are different dimensions within Mario's universe. those dimensions hold different worlds, and were intermingled thanks to the Tribe of Ancients which resulted in ? Blocks, Warp Pipes, and other common iconography to appear there.
this AU writes that there is a dimension out there similar to Sonic, also messed with by the tribe.
to follow the AU closely, i creatively restricted myself with just 4 rules:
1. follow the basic plot beats; not the nitty gritty.
2. change whatever worldbuilding to fit in-line with Mario's.
3. Sonic's name is Haya.
4. lower some stakes so as to not cause Mario to travel there.
you've seen rule 4 was designed because of Super Paper Mario. all of the dimensions were at stake, so he was called.
you might be asking why i decided to only change Sonic's name to "Haya", with everyone else left with their original names. there are 2 reasons for that.
1. the concept of Mario and Sonic swapping together is pretty commonplace, and i can't just take sole credit for it via calling him Sonic. Sonic is also the name of the franchise, so just renaming him to Haya helps make the AU more personalized.
2. i can't just keep calling it Mario!Sonic when discussing it alongside the original Sonic. so saying "Haya" immediately corresponds to the Haya AU. yes yes, there'd still be cases like "Haya!Tails" but by then the topic has already been made clear.
why yes, both series have lore, stop pouting. i can't fully write how different both worlds are, so i'll just give an example.
did you know there isn't a "future period" to travel to in Mario? never established. this is a problem with Silver and Eggman Nega as they're from the future. so what's the solution?
well, with Silver he's a Shaman now. you might know those guys; those cloaked figures with a crystal ball on their collars first seen in Super Mario RPG and later on as NPCs in the Paper Mario games. some of them also have the ability to tell the future. so in Haya, Silver actually lives in the present time, but spends most of his time looking in the future. "living" there.
Eggman Nega, the destructive future descendant of Dr. Eggman who seeks revenge against him for tarnishing the Eggman family name. previously, he was a Sol Dimension parallel to Eggman, and it seems Haya's Nega will remain that way.
obviously, with Silver not being from the future, that causes some future troubles. Haya 06's plot would also have to be rewritten. my rule 4 also threatens Solaris to be nerfed hard. can't have Mario suddenly pop in at the end to defeat Solaris alongside Haya, although it would be pretty funny.
as for all of this out-universe corporate lore? by-product of trying to make sense of it. i heard Sacki reviewed the first game. she just loves rambling and getting off-topic, so maybe she'll start blabbering about stuff she isn't supposed to, such as the great Yakuza Bust of 1990. ha, ha, ha.
see you.
