Sonic Frontiers free Monster Hunter DLC is available now

Sonic Frontiers has received free Monster Hunter DLC a week after launch, in a collaboration that lets Sonic fans dress up in the iconic Rathalos armour and cook a big whack of mystery meat from the bone.

Update: The Sonic Frontiers x Monster Hunter crossover is now live and free to download on PS5 and PS4. Players can now dress Sonic up in two versions of Rathalos armour and take part in a meat-cooking minigame that nets you easy fishing tokens — something you'll need if you want to save yourself a lot of grinding on your way to netting the Sonic Frontiers 'Trophies Completed!' platinum.

A tasty way to grind to the Sonic Frontiers platinum trophy!

How to access the Monster Hunter DLC in Sonic Frontiers

To access the cooking minigame, first make sure to download the DLC via the PlayStation Store, then go to any of Sonic Frontiers' fishing spots and you'll find the minigame is now an option offered by Big the Cat. Get the timing right when cooking the meat and net yourself 3 fishing tokens without spending any purple coins, making this a long-winded but sure-fire way to max out on your Koco collecting and claim trophies like Hypersonic Hedgehog — one of the grindiest trophies in the game.

If you want those trickier Sonic Frontiers PlayStation trophies, we recommend holding out until the final island of the game, Ouranos Island, and fishing at one of Big's more lucrative secret getaways — there you can earn fishing tokens a whole lot faster, so long as you have the purple coins (which by that point you most certainly will). Let us know in the comments how you find the Monster Hunter DLC, read below for a history of Sonic and Monster Hunter collaborations, and make sure to check out our best Sonic games list as we ponder Frontier's placement.

Sonic despondent at having failed to cook meat — fantastic.

Original Story: The Sonic Frontiers free downloadable Monster Hunter content will be released on November 15th, 2022 — six days after the game launches on PS5 and PS4. The collaboration will see Sega's Sonic don Capcom's famous Rathalos armour set, and screenshots show Sonic sitting over an open fire cooking monster meat — which he presumably will get to eat. This fascinating Sonic Frontiers collaboration marks at least the fifth time Sonic and Monster Hunter have crossed paths.

Looking good, Sonic.

Five times Sonic and Monster Hunter crossed paths before Sonic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers had already gifted Sonic Adventure 2 fans with free DLC that lets players wear his iconic SOAP shoes, but it seems the fun's only begun with the announcement that Monster Hunter DLC announcement via the Sonic Twitter account. To many, it likely seemed the announcement was a little bizarre, but to longer-minded fans of either series, this was just the latest in a continuing trend of Sonic x Monster Hunter collabs.

The problem for us PlayStation fans is that we never get to see these collaborations on Sony hardware — all of them have appeared on other consoles. Fans might expect, given the size and scale of PS Plus Essential title Monster Hunter World and its Iceborne expansion, that Sonic the Hedgehog has perhaps made an appearance in that game — sadly, not so. Take a trip over to Nintendo hardware, however, and Monster Hunter can hardly get rid of the guy.

A legendary collaboration.

Monster Hunter fans will likely recall Sonic's appearance in a DLC pack for the 2015 Nintendo 3DS title Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, in which you could reskin your felyne companion to sort of look like Sonic — complete with a timely reference to 2009's Sonic and the Black Knight, as your Sonic felyne brandishes that game's talking sword character, Excaliburn. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate director Ryozo Tsujimoto explains how this all came about (preserved by Nintendo Everything):

"There are actually a few people at Sega that we’re pretty close to. We were chatting and thinking if there was something we could do together—some kind of collaboration. Then we settled on Sonic, ultimately, because he’s not only popular here in Japan, he’s also extremely popular overseas. [...] I had an associate of mine at Sega introduce me to the person in charge [of licensing]. We shook hands, made the deal, and there you go.”

Sonic and, err, "Tails"

There's something exceptionally funny about how attaining the rights for putting Sonic the Hedgehog in your franchise was sealed over a handshake — either way, thus began a strange, beautiful partnership. From there, Sonic made a second appearance in a Monster Hunter game — 2021's Monster Hunter Rise for the Nintendo Switch. This time, Sonic appears far more fully formed in palico form, and your hunter could wear some sleek Sonic-themed clothes to boot. Also, Tails got a reference in this crossover as a sort of horrifying take on one of Monster Hunter Rise's palamutes, in which he looks capable of devouring Sonic at any moment.

Perhaps the most obvious connection between the two franchises, however, is in the Super Smash Bros. series. Sonic has been a mainstay on the Smash Bros. roster since 2008's Super Smash Bros Brawl — meanwhile, Monster Hunter has been making in-roads into the series since 2014's Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS. On the Wii U and 3DS edition the connection was tenuous — Monster Hunter appeared via a Rathalos armour set for the game's Mii Fighters. It was only in 2018's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that Rathalos himself appears as both an assist trophy and as a boss that Sonic can take on in the game's adventure mode.

The deepest pull.

In contrast, absolutely the least obvious connection between Sonic and Monster Hunter is via Archie's Sonic Boom comic series — yes, we're going this deep, and I'm sorry. At the time, Archie Comics was also publishing a Mega Man comic alongside its long-served Sonic output. In 2015, Sonic and Mega Man had a Marvel-esque multiverse crossover event called "Worlds Unite", which brought the two blue characters face-to-face with a wide roster of Sega and Capcom characters and worlds, including Alex Kidd, Street Fighter, Okami, and, yes, Monster Hunter.

The adventure saw Sonic Boom character Sticks fleeing from Gore Magala, an elder dragon from Monster Hunter 4. And so, we're back where we started, where Sonic and Monster Hunter first crossed paths, and now we can go back to thinking ahead to all the future collaborations beyond Sonic Frontiers — perhaps Rathalos will be a stand-in for Big the Cat in Sonic Adventure 3. Let us know in the comments what your favourite crossover of the above happened to be, and why it was the terrifying Tails one.

More SONIC FRONTIERS stories:

PlayStation 5

Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth), one eye on the past (PS Plus Premium, recent Sony news), and his secret third eye on the junk he really likes (Sonic Superstars, Final Fantasy 16). Then he uses his big mouth to blurt out long-winded opinions about video games.