Here's my first day report on sonic
A sequence: standard three hit, pops them away on last hit.
Tilts
forward tilt: sticks out his foot, respectable (killable) knockback
dtilt: foot again, this one pops them up for juggling, probably won't kill without ridiculous percentage
uptilt: looks similar to Capt. Falcon's up smash, pops them up but probably won't ever kill them. Nonetheless its good for setting his upair game.
Smashes
Forward smash: winds up his arm during the charge, attacks with a short range punch. Knockback seems strong (nothing special for forward smashes) but the attack is fast and lacks range making it somewhat tough to connect with against a non-nood opponent like luigis
Down smash: spins dashes back forth over a short distance. Think ness' yoyo but with sonic as the yoyo. Has a somewhat low arc (maybe 45 degrees) and good knockback upon hitting.
Up smash: Like bowser's, sonic does a short jump, and hangs at its apex for a bit doing a spin. Enemy's hit are caught in the spin until the last hit when they go flying out. Nonetheless, the knockback is very, very weak for a smash.
Airs
upair: A flip kick. First he splits his legs apart and out, with no significant knock back. Then he kicks up knocking his opponents up.
bair: sticks his leg out. Strong knockback.
fair: drills at the enemy, last hit as weak knockback probably not enough to kill even in sudden death but knocks them far enough away to prevent sonic from continuing to attack them without altering his trajectory somehow (one of his b moves?) or landing.
dair: a diving kick similar to captain falcon's downb. Pauses in midair, then going flying down at an angle. Has significant lag upon hitting the ground. Decent knockback. It seems like it might be cancelable.
Bs
Neutral B: homing attack. Sonic floats up spinning for up to about a second if you charge it, then going flying at the nearest opponent. It has knockback that can kill, but will generally hit a grounded opponent into the ground since it comes from the air.
UpB: spring. As already demonstrated, sonic goes way high, and the sping lasts for a significant bit when used on the ground. It does hit in the initial ascent, but doesn't knock back at all. Heck I don't even know if it makes them flinch at all. Nonetheless I've open a smash ball with this move. If used in air the spring goes tumbling down and bop people. It doesn't deal significant damage or any knockback but is a great way to annoy people.
Side B- Jumping Spin attack: Visually sonic becomes a ball with faint blue ridges portuding from it. chargable for about a second. Sonic spin dashes at his opponent. If done on the ground he jump barely (about the three quarters the height of his short hop, or maybe his on height). Knocks up. The thing is though, that if he hits he also jumps up and it can be canceled at any time with any attack. At low percents then he can easily follow up this attack with aerials. Sonic can also turn around during this move.
Down B - Grounded spin attack. Can be charged by repeatedly hitting b. Does an attack similar to Jigglypuff's, but seems less seriously momentum based.
Spin Dash notes: the oddest thing about the spin dashes is that he moves slower during them than he does during his run. them Charging might increase their speed but it still seems they're slower than his awesome running speed. The speed is however, better than his horizontal air speed, so they can be used to aid his recovery though his spring jump launches him so high you probably will never need to use them in this manner.
Spin attacks down and side b. These seemed very worthless, so I focused my efforts on sonic's other moves. Sorry. I honestly couldn't figure out a significant difference between the two, other than the method of initial charging. In my experience with the spin dashes, charging makes ridges/spikes appear aroudn the sonic ball, though I don't know what the properties are. They seem to be very freely cancelable, by either neutral b or upb and maybe any a. I once might have went into an auto combo after connecting with an opponent in midair, or I might have simply been me canceling it into his fair.
Final Smash - Super Sonic: Screen pauses, chaos emeralds circle into sonic and he does his dbz impression. As of now, sonic cannot perform any attacks while in super sonic form, unlike yoshi. In fact, he cannot even land or pick up items. On the otherhand, he deals significant damage and knockback by simply touching people. He can also perform perhaps the ultimate cheesy ledge grap, by simply floating at the ledge. Pro. Sonic can dash across back and forth madly but that can simply be dodged. Instead, you slow sonic down upon approach and try to stand on your opponent, or where his dodge will end. Once you get the hang of controlling his inertia its relatively easy to keep standing where your opponent is going to go and keep hitting them until they die off the top or side of the stage.
Throws
Forward- I killed someone in sudden death with his forward throw which launches his opponent upward with kick where sonic does the splits vertically. Great for setting up his upair game, but can be very strongly DIed backwards.
Back- general suplex like move. Seems to have respectable knock back that will at least enable you to edge guard your opponent.
Up- I didn't see it many times. Seems pretty generic.
Down- tosses them down and spins on them. Does more damage low knockback.
Taunts
Sides: Figure eight running in place
Down: Break dancing
Up: Does a small somersault in place.
Properties
Sonic can walljump. (Though few stages have long walls, I believe the edge wall jump trick is still in the game as I think I did it once during part of delfino plaza.)
Sonic doesn't seem especially light or heavy.
Sonic is of course very fast along the ground. Thankfully, Sakurai hasn't taken out dash-dashing .... yet. (However, the classic controller is seems much more responsive than the gamecube controller, and dash-dashing was a bit tougher due to unintended jumps) Like the space animals though, he is significantly slower in the air than on the ground, but not nearly to their extent. Nonetheless, he's quite slower aerially than the smash ball, which is very annoying as I have yet to crack it open in a single jump sequence.
Alternate Colors
Sonic has no special costumes, only color changes as of the demo. When changing a color, his wristbands change to match that color, and he turns a different shade of blue. The color of his person and wristbands do not match, but if he has red wrist bands then I presume he's a more reddish blue, green wristbands, then greenish blue, etc.
General Strategy
Upair- As played during the demo, a non-noob sonic's game generally relied on his upair flip kick as his best finisher, but also for comboing up his opponent's percent. He has an advantage fox and falco wish they had in that he can also use the incredible vertical boost from his upb to help in chasing his oppoents.
Speed - Sonic was the fastest character on the ground in the demo, and may still be the same in the final game (That would make sense at least). His speed is strong asset of his, helping him to initiate on his own terms. However, his air speed is only around half his running speed, making it slightly more problematic for him on stages with lots of platforms. Running grabs were decently effective, since his forward throw and/or up throw may possibly be used to start his upair game. His backthrow can also be used to toss his opponent off the state and initiate an edge guarding game. His dash-dancing also holds great promise, but was not used extensively during my time at the demo (maybe in part due to the increased difficulty of dash-dancing with the classic controller.)
anit-noob - his spin dashes do this incredibly well, but I don't forsee them being terribly effective against opponents who are actually aware and capable of doding or simply attacking sonic out of them.
anti-final smash sonics upb launches him so he has no problem getting out of the way of many final smashes. The final smashes of mario and Samus can easily be avoided in this manner. I was also extremely successful of not getting hit once during diddy's final smash by simply soaring above him with his jumps and upbs, then dodging on my way back down.
Misc: Other viable finishers include his back air, but his aerial horizontal speed is nothing special so positioning this attack is somewhat difficult. Under the pressure of sudden death his neutral b and his side b's were frequently used, often to great success. Sonic cannot edge hug (simply running off then hitting back at the last second to snap onto the edge), or at least cannot do so easily because his tremendous forward momentum sends him clear of the ledge.
Non-Sonic stuff
Unanounced Items: Mario Kart lightning. Get it and all your opponents are zapped and shrunk. Gimpyfish won what may have been the first money match with this incredibly imba ball, going down in history or perhaps infamy depending on your view. Either way I think this item will as the most cheap, powerful, and lamest. (Not that gimpy even knew what it was when he grabbed it or anything)
Assist trophy: Singing? background lady - walks around in the background, radiating a large shimmering orb. This orb reflects all projectiles.
Brinstar: Metroid doors. Miny passages frequently appear on platforms a bit before the lave rises or comes pouring down as a lavafall. You can hit these mini passage on the side, to open them up and take shelter.
As you know wavedashing is out. (Correctly predicted by Zauron and others in the list of Advanced Techniques Thread.)
Meta-Knight doesn't seem that broken, just easy to pick up., especially with b moves that are very easy to hit with coupled with decent smashes.
/edit I'll be checking this thread periodically tonight. Feel free to give more things to research or ask me questions. I plan to try to figure out what the difference is between sonic's side and down bs but I'm honestly pretty tired of him and would prefer to just have fun try out the other characters tomorrow.
/edit #2 A rant: The Wiimote sucks for brawl. I cannot seriously understand why nintendo keeps pushing it. In their "tournament" in which you could only use the wiimote controls, I had to listen to them keep telling us about how intuitive and easy to use this control scheme was. How is hitting a trigger button not intended to be used when flipped sideways like that to do some as essentially as blocking intuitive? Or how is double tapping to run more intuitive then smashing the analog stick in a direction? Are these now advanced techniques, skills only to be used by overly competitive purists who insist on using controllers that afford them an adequate number of accessible buttons?! (Short hopping and dash-dashing much more reasonable "advanced techniques" are moved even further out of the reach of not just casual players but pretty much anyone through the wiimote.)
/edit #3 alts added
/edit #4 observations from second day of expo added. More info about spin dashes.
