The Broken World

No Escape
Probably one of my favorite systems I own is my PlayStation 3, I love almost all the games I have for it, with a few minor exceptions. With the announcement of the PS4 I decided to go back and play some of the games in my collection. I had lots of fun playing through games like Sonic Generations, inFamous, and LittleBigPlanet again. Then I got to the dark part of my collection, the one game that stood out... Sonic the Hedgehog (or Sonic 06 as it's commonly referred to). I decided, "You know, why not?" and replayed Sonic 06. Now, everyone knows about all the terrible glitches and such throughout this "masterpiece" of a game, and by far the worst part of the game is the battle with Silver the Hedgehog. Silvers psychic hold is the bane of my existence in that game. Repeatedly he would freeze me in mid-air, with his trademark "It's not use!" phrase. I died repeatedly on that one fight alone.

It was around the second or third time I had lost all of my live and started over that it happened. Something I had never encountered before. Silver froze me and surrounded me in that green glow. I had ran into a wall when he froze me, so his attack caused me to actually clip through the wall. My character (Sonic) floated there, in black space for a while. Silver soon yelled "Taaake this!!!" As he launched me through the air. Sonic floated through empty space, and in an instant, the black space turned white. I started to fall downward, going towards the main area of the Soleanna hub world.

I landed, and looked around. It was definitely the hub world, but... emptier. It was missing things like trees, buildings, people, and a background. Just white space with ground and a few extra details, like that fountain in the center. I looked up. I could see something coming at me. Something small in the distance. It was Silver! He was coming after me.

I had forgotten that the boss fight was still going. I thought Silver at least wasn't going to clip through the wall like I did, and even if he did, I didn't think he'd get here! He came straight towards me. When I tried to run, the character would move super slowly, like when a level first starts in the game and Sonic starts really slow. Silver froze me with his usual "It's no use!" but this time it echoed throughout the whole level. The echo started to fade and get quiet, but eventually it started to get louder. Loud to the point where I had to cover my ears and turn down the volume.

As he held me, the camera zoomed in on him. Like when you talk to him in the hub world format. His face looked... different. Like, not with "hyper-realistic blood' or anything, he just looked angrier. His face had narrow eyes, his mouth showed his teeth grinding.  He was still just floating there, eventually a speech box opened up, but instead of saying "Silver" in the name box, it said "Sega"..

This thing was starting to get weird. I can handle glitches, even being launched into a broken hub world in the middle of nowhere, but there was NO WAY that this was just a glitch. The speech box simply said "..." then the screen zoomed out, showing Sonic still being held. Sonic was moving slightly faster, like, frantically. Similar to the old games when Sonic would drown. Waving his arms and looking like he was gasping for air. Was Silver choking him?

The screen zoomed back in and the speech box reappeared. It still said Sega on the name box but this time the speech box said "You can't run". When it zoomed out again, this time Sonic was holding his throat, and lightly moving, almost vibrating back and forth. The screen zoomed in for the third time, finally saying "No escape!". Silver yelled, in a strangely muffled, echoing voice "Taaake this!" as he launched me into the air. Sonic fell into the fountain at the center of the hub world, but he fell right through.

As Sonic fell into empty space. I assumed he'd fall and die with a usual "Noooooo!" and die, then maybe I could restart the fight or something, and forget about that "glitch!" However, he only kept falling, and falling through darkness, repeating the death animation over and over. The game didn't change for nearly 2 minutes so I just decided to turn off the system and come back to it.

When I turned on the game the next day, it was still just Sonic falling in darkness. It didn't even go to the title screen or anything. Even the PlayStation Home Menu didn't load up. It just opened to that animation. I gave up and just unplugged the PlayStation, and took it to my friends house to fix it, Sonic 06 was still inside. He was good at fixing broken game systems and stuff so I figured he might know.

The next day, he told me that he switched some stuff up, replaced the memory, and took out the Sonic 06 disc. I asked his if he could move any of my system data to the new memory. Unfortunately, he said that when he looked at the memory, it was all corrupted. I decided it wasn't a big deal. I never bought DLC, and replaying all my games could be kind of fun. I brought back my PS3 and hooked it up. I turned it on and decided to relax with some Metal Gear Solid 4. However, when I turned on the system, the PS3 opening logo soon turned to a black screen, with red writing covering the screen. The words said "FUN IS INFINITE... WITH SEGA COORPORATION..."