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8 Fan-made Sonic Games You Should See
December 5, 2008 | 12:40 PM PST
Regardless of their position on the quality of recent games, I believe it's realistic to assume most Sonic fans would agree that the Sonic the Hedgehog of today isn't the same supersonic mascot we knew during the 90s. Today's games look nothing like the abstract world of checkered green hills, sprawling neo-metropolis, and endless casinos of old. Now we've instead got generic settings such as the time of King Arthur, Arabian Knights, Italy and Africa. The imagination is gone, the originality and attitude are gone, and the people currently in charge of the Hedgehog's destiny just don't seem to have their hearts in it anymore.
Fortunately for us, there is a group of people out there who do happen to give a damn. Sonic the Hedgehog has one of the most devout and dedicated fanbases in the history of video games, full of folks who keep the spirit of the Genesis days alive and well in their spare time. These are an elite group of video game fans who go the extra mile to keep the dream of what made Sonic great in the first place alive and well. Today we're going to take a look at some of the work these people have dished up. Some of it is based on hacking existing ROM code to make something new, and others are totally original PC projects coded from the ground up. Either way, you'll be introduced to a sea of creativity and familiarity you probably haven't seen in a Sonic title for some time. Let's see what these people do in their free time...
Sonic Forever
Sonic Forever is the tale of two fan games that became one. First we had Sonic XG: a great game with a great premise, sleek appearance, and loads of creativity, but lacking an engine that truly reproduced the precision of Genesis-era Sonic. Then we had Retro Sonic, a game started years ago that ran on the similarly named engine. The engine (which has been rewritten from MultiMedia Fusion to Visual Basic, and recently to C++) was literally perfect, but the game lacked originality. Both projects merged into a new joint venture named Retro Sonic XG, which has since again been christened Sonic Forever.
The premise is simple, what if the story of Angel Island hat not ended when the Death Egg was destroyed at the conclusion of Sonic 3 & Knuckles? Imagine if the franchise as we knew it hadn't gotten a collective reboot when Sonic Adventure hit in 1999. Imagine if it was still just Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles doing what they did best—running through cleverly designed stages, grabbing chaos emeralds, and beating up on mean old Dr. Robotnik with all-new special stages and a new wall jump. Sonic Forever basically tries to make you forget the last 14 years and takes you back to a time of sweet innocence before Sonic Adventure rewrote a lot of history.
Few projects have so perfectly interpreted the classic Sonic style, yet presented it to us as though it had been allowed to continue evolving rather than being abruptly cut off at the end of the Genesis era. Sonic Forever feels almost like what a Sonic game would have looked like had it been running on the SNES. You really get to see what classic Sonic could have been once removed from the shackles of the limited Genesis hardware. Sonic Forever shows that unlike the modern day Sega, fans really do understand the simple yet intuitive gameplay mechanics and colorful atmosphere that made classic Sonic games so enjoyable in the first place. Though having been in the oven for a long time, Sonic Forever hasn't yet reached a final release, but you can download a demo from the project's site.
Sonic Nexus
Here's a project that transformed midway from something impressive to something outstanding. Early on, Nexus began life as a one-man project by a programmer who goes by the name Slingerland. The early version of the engine the game ran on was adequate, but not exactly accurate to the original Sonic due to its more floaty feel. Now in 2008, the project has grown considerably since it's inception. The original Multimedia Fusion 2 engine was tossed for its shortcomings and replaced with "The Taxman's" outstanding Visual Basic Retro Sonic engine
Setting out to be a continuation of Sonic CD's take on the hedgehog, this is one of those games that just nails the style it is setting out to mimic while successfully building on the formula in logical ways. The physics are perfect, there are new elemental shields to try out, zone specific gimmicks, and the story is as goofy as the old days. Dr. Robotnik has built a giant clock tower in his image where he is developing a new creation that will be unleashed once the clock strikes a certain time. The best part is a completely custom soundtrack written by composer Hunter Bridges that feels like something right out of the Saturn era. Sonic Nexus is a perfect example of a Sonic game we could have been playing all these years had the original Sonic Team members not dissolved.
Sonic the Hedgehog: Megamix
Though ROM hacks can often come off as limited compared to custom games because you're forced to stay within certain hardware restrictions, here's an example of what masterful ROM hacking can achieve. What if you took some of the modern Sonic conventions such as the "homing attack" from the modern 3D titles and applied it to an old-school Sonic environment? Well, you'd get Sonic Megamix. But Megamix offers so much more than that. What you get here is five playable characters (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Mighty, and Shadow) each with new moves coded into the physics. Each offers a different way to play the game, yet without radically altering the base Sonic formula. New music and classic Genesis tunes are included as you play through a series of all new zones created with masterful level design, or you can play through the original Sonic the Hedgehog zones with the new characters and moves in place.
Sadly, the project was abandoned near the end for unspecified reasons, leaving a lot of bugs and a lackluster ending. The final stage just ends for no real reason other than to send you to a half-assed final boss and seal the game up. It's sad, because what the team accomplished here is nothing short of amazing. But there's still one more little perk to be had. Before killing the project, Sonic Megamix was compiled to run on the Sega CD. You can actually burn the game as a disc image and run it on the real Sega CD hardware. It almost feels like a lost Sega project that's been laying around for the better part of two decades. There's just something magical about playing a game like this on a real Sega pad.
Sonic 3D Blast: No Flickies Hack
Most people look back at Sonic 3D Blast with negativity for a myriad of reasons, but the most significant of them was the lack of Sonic's trademark speed and fluid gameplay. The main reason for the lack of fluidity was the level progression gimmick that had you collecting Flickies to progress to the next area of a zone. What if this burdensome mechanic was stripped out? That's exactly what this hack sets out to do, and the game is far better (albeit easier) for it. The Flickies still appear, but now they are nothing but scenery to confirm you killed an enemy, just like a Sonic game should be.
Isometric games have long since gone out of style, but this hack of the black sheep of the Genesis-era Sonic games transforms it from a collect-a-thon into traditional Sonic title played from an overhead perspective.
Sonic the Hedgehog GBA
Every Sonic fan remembers the hideous "official" port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog that Sega dropped on the GBA a few years back. It was disgraceful to the brand, and probably the single worst insult to the Sonic franchise ever. The engine was a mess, the music was reduced to screeching MIDI noise, and the gameplay was ridden with slowdown on a machine more than three times as powerful as the original Genesis. Sega tried to play the whole affair off by claiming they no longer had the original source code (which alone would have been shameful enough), but few bought the excuse. The real reason the game came out so poorly was because Sega really didn't give a damn and farmed it out to an unknown studio that refused to take credit for the finished produce because it was so poor.
Well, in a satisfying moment of turnabout, a lone programmer known in the Sonic fan community as "Stealth" has taken it upon himself to create an authentic port of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Game Boy Advance that includes all the additions of the Sega port while remaining authentic and true to the source material. Once again, a single hardcore fan does what the Sega corporation seemingly couldn't.
Sonic Robo Blast 2
Here's a project a little more ambitious than most. Interesting, because it's far older than many of the others listed here. Over ten years ago, a fan group named Sonic Team Junior began work on a simple 2D Sonic game named Sonic Robo Blast. It was glitchy and primitive, but it laid the foundation for their next project--a 3D Sonic platformer that runs on a modified version of the Doom Legacy Engine. This became Sonic Robo Blast 2, a game you would expect from a late 32x or early Sega Saturn-era 3D Sonic platformer that Sega never made.
Sonic Robo Blast 2 may seem primitive by modern standards, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it's simplicity lends to fun times as long as you take it for what it is. It's clear the game was inspired by the cancellation of Sonic X-Treme--the Saturn's 3D Sonic game we never got. The controls are fast and a tad slippery, but the gameplay and style are pure retro Sonic the Hedgehog. To top if off, Robo Blast even includes a NiGHTS mini-game that some would possibly mistake for a hack because it's so accurate to the source material. Work continues ever onward to refine and perfect Sonic Robo Blast 2, but you can play it in its current state at their website.
Emerald Ties: Crossing Fates
From Team Chao Killer comes Emerald Ties: Crossing Fates, a Sonic fan game that has been in development since 2005 and undergone a couple of reinventions. Emerald Ties attempts to take the classic Sonic style and introduce a story mode alongside a neo-classic style. The sprite set has been completely redone with a fresh style. A new Wind Shield has been added alongside the classic Lightning, Bubble, and Flame abilities as well as both the spin-dash and super peel out from Sonic CD.
The level design here feels more in tandem with games like Sonic Rush than it does classic era Sonic with an emphasis on running full-out so you get a good mix of the old and the new. Emerald Ties also requires higher specs than most PC titles, so it seems slower than you would expect if you don't have a decent PC.
Okay, this one isn't finished yet so you can't play it... yet.
Are you one of those people who drooled the first time Super Street Fighter II HD was unveiled to the public? Well, then get a load of this. Back in December 2007, an artist identified simply as "Billy" on a web site called "Alchemist Defined" drew a picture that drove a lot of retro gamers mad in unhinged desire. The image (of the final boss in Sonic 2's Death Egg) depicted what Sonic the Hedgehog 2 would look like re-mastered in high-definition. This image was passed across every gaming blog on the planet (even here at Kombo). This was around the same time that Sega released that very game on Xbox Live Arcade, but the best Sega bothered to do was emulate and up-scale and artificially smooth out the graphics with some blurry filters that did nothing but give you a headache. The dream of Sonic 2 being re-mastered was just that--a wet dream far beyond anything we could have hoped for.
Flash forward to 2008. The Retro Sonic community got hold of this stunning concept art and decided to take some initiative. What started as a concept image of Sonic's running animation redrawn in 720p resolution has since transformed into one of the most amazing open-community homebrew projects ever. With it's authentic custom written game engine, re-mastered music, and redrawn artwork that stays true to the source, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD is bringing back to life one of the most beloved video games of all time in a way we could have only imagined not long ago. Though the project is yet far from completion, it has already broken the expectations of most by existing at all.
There is a different type of Sonic fan out there who is generally disinterested in the modern work of Sonic Team due to its deep separation from the source material. I consider myself one of them. Thanks to hobbyists whose work we've taken a peek at today, we can see that the Sonic the Hedgehog of our childhoods is alive and well in the homebrew community. These Sonic fans truly are doing it for themselves.
Like this article? Please Digg it!
Fortunately for us, there is a group of people out there who do happen to give a damn. Sonic the Hedgehog has one of the most devout and dedicated fanbases in the history of video games, full of folks who keep the spirit of the Genesis days alive and well in their spare time. These are an elite group of video game fans who go the extra mile to keep the dream of what made Sonic great in the first place alive and well. Today we're going to take a look at some of the work these people have dished up. Some of it is based on hacking existing ROM code to make something new, and others are totally original PC projects coded from the ground up. Either way, you'll be introduced to a sea of creativity and familiarity you probably haven't seen in a Sonic title for some time. Let's see what these people do in their free time...
Sonic Forever
Sonic Forever is the tale of two fan games that became one. First we had Sonic XG: a great game with a great premise, sleek appearance, and loads of creativity, but lacking an engine that truly reproduced the precision of Genesis-era Sonic. Then we had Retro Sonic, a game started years ago that ran on the similarly named engine. The engine (which has been rewritten from MultiMedia Fusion to Visual Basic, and recently to C++) was literally perfect, but the game lacked originality. Both projects merged into a new joint venture named Retro Sonic XG, which has since again been christened Sonic Forever.
The premise is simple, what if the story of Angel Island hat not ended when the Death Egg was destroyed at the conclusion of Sonic 3 & Knuckles? Imagine if the franchise as we knew it hadn't gotten a collective reboot when Sonic Adventure hit in 1999. Imagine if it was still just Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles doing what they did best—running through cleverly designed stages, grabbing chaos emeralds, and beating up on mean old Dr. Robotnik with all-new special stages and a new wall jump. Sonic Forever basically tries to make you forget the last 14 years and takes you back to a time of sweet innocence before Sonic Adventure rewrote a lot of history.
Few projects have so perfectly interpreted the classic Sonic style, yet presented it to us as though it had been allowed to continue evolving rather than being abruptly cut off at the end of the Genesis era. Sonic Forever feels almost like what a Sonic game would have looked like had it been running on the SNES. You really get to see what classic Sonic could have been once removed from the shackles of the limited Genesis hardware. Sonic Forever shows that unlike the modern day Sega, fans really do understand the simple yet intuitive gameplay mechanics and colorful atmosphere that made classic Sonic games so enjoyable in the first place. Though having been in the oven for a long time, Sonic Forever hasn't yet reached a final release, but you can download a demo from the project's site.
Sonic Nexus
Here's a project that transformed midway from something impressive to something outstanding. Early on, Nexus began life as a one-man project by a programmer who goes by the name Slingerland. The early version of the engine the game ran on was adequate, but not exactly accurate to the original Sonic due to its more floaty feel. Now in 2008, the project has grown considerably since it's inception. The original Multimedia Fusion 2 engine was tossed for its shortcomings and replaced with "The Taxman's" outstanding Visual Basic Retro Sonic engine
Setting out to be a continuation of Sonic CD's take on the hedgehog, this is one of those games that just nails the style it is setting out to mimic while successfully building on the formula in logical ways. The physics are perfect, there are new elemental shields to try out, zone specific gimmicks, and the story is as goofy as the old days. Dr. Robotnik has built a giant clock tower in his image where he is developing a new creation that will be unleashed once the clock strikes a certain time. The best part is a completely custom soundtrack written by composer Hunter Bridges that feels like something right out of the Saturn era. Sonic Nexus is a perfect example of a Sonic game we could have been playing all these years had the original Sonic Team members not dissolved.
Sonic the Hedgehog: Megamix
Though ROM hacks can often come off as limited compared to custom games because you're forced to stay within certain hardware restrictions, here's an example of what masterful ROM hacking can achieve. What if you took some of the modern Sonic conventions such as the "homing attack" from the modern 3D titles and applied it to an old-school Sonic environment? Well, you'd get Sonic Megamix. But Megamix offers so much more than that. What you get here is five playable characters (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Mighty, and Shadow) each with new moves coded into the physics. Each offers a different way to play the game, yet without radically altering the base Sonic formula. New music and classic Genesis tunes are included as you play through a series of all new zones created with masterful level design, or you can play through the original Sonic the Hedgehog zones with the new characters and moves in place.
Sadly, the project was abandoned near the end for unspecified reasons, leaving a lot of bugs and a lackluster ending. The final stage just ends for no real reason other than to send you to a half-assed final boss and seal the game up. It's sad, because what the team accomplished here is nothing short of amazing. But there's still one more little perk to be had. Before killing the project, Sonic Megamix was compiled to run on the Sega CD. You can actually burn the game as a disc image and run it on the real Sega CD hardware. It almost feels like a lost Sega project that's been laying around for the better part of two decades. There's just something magical about playing a game like this on a real Sega pad.
Sonic 3D Blast: No Flickies Hack
Most people look back at Sonic 3D Blast with negativity for a myriad of reasons, but the most significant of them was the lack of Sonic's trademark speed and fluid gameplay. The main reason for the lack of fluidity was the level progression gimmick that had you collecting Flickies to progress to the next area of a zone. What if this burdensome mechanic was stripped out? That's exactly what this hack sets out to do, and the game is far better (albeit easier) for it. The Flickies still appear, but now they are nothing but scenery to confirm you killed an enemy, just like a Sonic game should be.
Isometric games have long since gone out of style, but this hack of the black sheep of the Genesis-era Sonic games transforms it from a collect-a-thon into traditional Sonic title played from an overhead perspective.
Sonic the Hedgehog GBA
Every Sonic fan remembers the hideous "official" port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog that Sega dropped on the GBA a few years back. It was disgraceful to the brand, and probably the single worst insult to the Sonic franchise ever. The engine was a mess, the music was reduced to screeching MIDI noise, and the gameplay was ridden with slowdown on a machine more than three times as powerful as the original Genesis. Sega tried to play the whole affair off by claiming they no longer had the original source code (which alone would have been shameful enough), but few bought the excuse. The real reason the game came out so poorly was because Sega really didn't give a damn and farmed it out to an unknown studio that refused to take credit for the finished produce because it was so poor.
Well, in a satisfying moment of turnabout, a lone programmer known in the Sonic fan community as "Stealth" has taken it upon himself to create an authentic port of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Game Boy Advance that includes all the additions of the Sega port while remaining authentic and true to the source material. Once again, a single hardcore fan does what the Sega corporation seemingly couldn't.
Sonic Robo Blast 2
Here's a project a little more ambitious than most. Interesting, because it's far older than many of the others listed here. Over ten years ago, a fan group named Sonic Team Junior began work on a simple 2D Sonic game named Sonic Robo Blast. It was glitchy and primitive, but it laid the foundation for their next project--a 3D Sonic platformer that runs on a modified version of the Doom Legacy Engine. This became Sonic Robo Blast 2, a game you would expect from a late 32x or early Sega Saturn-era 3D Sonic platformer that Sega never made.
Sonic Robo Blast 2 may seem primitive by modern standards, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it's simplicity lends to fun times as long as you take it for what it is. It's clear the game was inspired by the cancellation of Sonic X-Treme--the Saturn's 3D Sonic game we never got. The controls are fast and a tad slippery, but the gameplay and style are pure retro Sonic the Hedgehog. To top if off, Robo Blast even includes a NiGHTS mini-game that some would possibly mistake for a hack because it's so accurate to the source material. Work continues ever onward to refine and perfect Sonic Robo Blast 2, but you can play it in its current state at their website.
Emerald Ties: Crossing Fates
From Team Chao Killer comes Emerald Ties: Crossing Fates, a Sonic fan game that has been in development since 2005 and undergone a couple of reinventions. Emerald Ties attempts to take the classic Sonic style and introduce a story mode alongside a neo-classic style. The sprite set has been completely redone with a fresh style. A new Wind Shield has been added alongside the classic Lightning, Bubble, and Flame abilities as well as both the spin-dash and super peel out from Sonic CD.
The level design here feels more in tandem with games like Sonic Rush than it does classic era Sonic with an emphasis on running full-out so you get a good mix of the old and the new. Emerald Ties also requires higher specs than most PC titles, so it seems slower than you would expect if you don't have a decent PC.
Okay, this one isn't finished yet so you can't play it... yet.
Are you one of those people who drooled the first time Super Street Fighter II HD was unveiled to the public? Well, then get a load of this. Back in December 2007, an artist identified simply as "Billy" on a web site called "Alchemist Defined" drew a picture that drove a lot of retro gamers mad in unhinged desire. The image (of the final boss in Sonic 2's Death Egg) depicted what Sonic the Hedgehog 2 would look like re-mastered in high-definition. This image was passed across every gaming blog on the planet (even here at Kombo). This was around the same time that Sega released that very game on Xbox Live Arcade, but the best Sega bothered to do was emulate and up-scale and artificially smooth out the graphics with some blurry filters that did nothing but give you a headache. The dream of Sonic 2 being re-mastered was just that--a wet dream far beyond anything we could have hoped for.
Flash forward to 2008. The Retro Sonic community got hold of this stunning concept art and decided to take some initiative. What started as a concept image of Sonic's running animation redrawn in 720p resolution has since transformed into one of the most amazing open-community homebrew projects ever. With it's authentic custom written game engine, re-mastered music, and redrawn artwork that stays true to the source, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD is bringing back to life one of the most beloved video games of all time in a way we could have only imagined not long ago. Though the project is yet far from completion, it has already broken the expectations of most by existing at all.
There is a different type of Sonic fan out there who is generally disinterested in the modern work of Sonic Team due to its deep separation from the source material. I consider myself one of them. Thanks to hobbyists whose work we've taken a peek at today, we can see that the Sonic the Hedgehog of our childhoods is alive and well in the homebrew community. These Sonic fans truly are doing it for themselves.
Like this article? Please Digg it!
February 8, 2010
