 Finally, Amy Rose is playable in Sonic Origins Plus, and a five-year fan campaign has succeeded. Back when Sonic Mania Plus was announced, earnest fans such as myself took to our social media soapboxes to insist that classic Amy should be included as a playable character alongside Mighty and Rey. Why, then, have Sonic Team and Sega finally listened? Way back in 2018, the hashtag Room for One More Fan campaign clearly left an impact on decision makers at Sega. In response, Sega's social media whiz Aaron Webber said, quote, if we had all the time and money in the world, Amy would certainly be in there. But it's one of those cases of the developers had an idea of what they wanted to make, from a development, from a production standpoint, and they made those characters. But please note that a lot of us here are huge supporters of Amy in general as a character, and we love seeing her as much as possible. Webber has since moved to a more senior role at Sega of Japan, and he's taken his appreciation of the Amy fan community with him. In what seemed to be a knowing nod to these dedicated fans, the final Christmas episode of the Sonic Mania Adventures YouTube cartoons featured Amy saving and delivering Metal Sonic back home. The marketing and animated cutscenes for Sonic Origins feature Amy prominently. It's clear that Sega and Sonic Team want to give Amy fans what they want, and they've been laying the groundwork for quite some time. But then, just because Sonic fans want something, it doesn't mean that it's profitable. Classic Amy is a potent unique selling point for the updated Sonic Origins, and with modern Amy similarly being added to Sonic Frontiers as a DLC playable character, it's clear that Sega sees Amy as an important part of their Sonic sales strategy going forward. Why? Well, I can only answer for my family here. The reason why this particular 30 something year old man is so desperate to play as a tiny pink hedgehog in a dress, because I want to share Sonic with my daughter. And believe me, I have played plenty of Sonic games with my daughter. And as Amy rose as well, thanks to mods and Sonic Adventure 2 Battles 2 player mode. I'd wager that my daughter could beat 98% of other 7 year olds City Escape without breaking a sweat. The thing is though, in some ways Classic Amy has arrived too late. My daughter's kind of moved on from playing Sonic with me. Lately she's been more into Mario Party, Mario Kart, Splatoon 3 and Ooblets. The unifying factor here is that all of these games either let her A, play as a princess, or B, let her create her own avatar. I know some people watching this are tired of discourse around representation in games, but it does matter. Not just to the gaming community, but to the finances of big companies like Sega and Nintendo. Amy is a gift to fans, but she's a gift that Sega anticipates will help them appeal to a wider demographic of players. We were going to use the following anecdote in a video about Metroid primary mastered, but we didn't get the video done in time, so I'll just use it now instead. When debuting Metroid Prime at E3, Satoru Iwata specifically requested that the game be played in front of journalists by a woman. Why? Because he was tremendously impressed with Risa Tabata, one of the developers working on the game. When she played the game to show it off to him while it was in development, he had an epiphany. He said, quote, As someone who has become an advocate for expanding the gaming population, it was, even though I know I shouldn't hold such stereotypical views, still amazing to see a lady like Tabata-san playing an FPS style game in such a smooth and effortless manner. The image had a strong impact on me. Therefore, this image became something that I really wanted to show off to everyone, so I ended up suggesting to Nintendo of America to have a young woman demo the game at our 2006 E3 press conference. This was an idea that came to me when I sought Tabata demoing the game. When game companies include more female playable characters in their games, they help foster a more welcoming community. They also widen the target audience for their game, which increases sales, the primary motive for any decision in the gaming industry. It's going to be nice for my daughter to play Sonic Origins as Amy, she's going to like that. And it's going to be nice for Sega to have 20 or 30 pounds more of my money, which I will gladly give them because I'm a Sonic fanboy. It's a move that benefits fans and the big company's bottom line. Everyone wins. That is why Amy is playable in Sonic Origins Plus.