My name is Josh, and I love ROM hacks and the fun they can provide. Be it in challenge, design, or in anything new they add to the source material. My favorite ROM hacks are the challenging type, the kind of difficulty that feels fun and fulfilling when you succeed. My favorite of these challenge hacks would be An Ordinary Sonic Rom Hack by Cinossu. There's just something about the fact that there's a timer placed on Sonic 1, in which everything goes right to hell, that really gets to me. Also, I guess I'm a sucker for Sonic.exe, haha. My experience with horror-based ROM hacks beyond that is very small, though. Sucks that there isn't a sequel. Or at least one made by Cinossu. I wish the one I played was by Cinossu, he would've made it more... tame. Enough rambling, let's actually get to talking about it.
My experience began at recess one day on our school track. My friends and I were talking about our favorite ROM hacks, as we do, when I brought up Sonic. Since we talked about pretty much every good Sonic hack we knew about, my friends just shrugged off the question. That is, except for one. My old friend Hank, who knew ROM hacking quite well, raised his hand and said "I can make you a good one!" Curious, I asked "What do you plan on making?" To which he smirked and said "I'll surprise you." running off to his hacking laptop at home. Shrugging off that bit of shiftiness, I returned to school to have a nice day of getting good grades.
It had been a few weeks since I had last seen Hank, but I wasn't worried, 'cause I knew he was busy with whatever he was working on at home. And around recess time that day, I saw him in the distance, with his laptop in his left hand and a small black box in the other. The hack he had been working on was finished. "Here ya go, buddy." He shiftily exclaimed to me, giving me the little box. "I think you'll enjoy it." He smiled and then walked away. I couldn't wait for school to be done so I could get back home and play my new game. And when I did, my lovely girlfriend Mindy greeted me with a nice warm hug, and I made my way to my game room, hooked up my Genesis, and unwrapped what my patience and I rightfully earned. It was indeed a SEGA Genesis cartridge, which was all dark gray, except for a big red "X" in the middle of it, with the words "ORDINARY SONIC 2" written with what looked like the font used on the startup screen in-game. Mindy walked in the room and picked up the controller next to me, also noticing the cartridge. "Aww, you love that guy's hacks!" Noticing the 2 on the cartridge, she asked if she could play as Tails. I of course said yes, starting up the game. "Let's pop this fucker in." Starting up, everything was, as the title suggests, ordinary, up until the title screen. The screen became covered in noise, revealing the true title screen.
The sky was completely dark, the water had completely evaporated, and the mountain was completely desolate. The ring in the foreground was rusted, with devil-like wings. Tails had gray fur and black and red eyes, with a slight look of anguish, and Sonic was a darker shade of blue, and, like Tails, had black and red eyes. The Hill Act 1 music was playing at a higher note than in the original game, starting in an F note rather than an E note. I actually think it sounds better like this. The 2P Versus option wasn't there, it only said START GAME, SCORE RECORDS and OPTIONS. Seeing as the original hack didn't have this option, I was curious. "Let's check out the options first." As we did, the music turned to the classic menu theme from Sonic 3, or at least what it would sound like in Sonic 2. We input the Level Select cheat: 19, 65, 09, 17 (Yuji Naka's Birthday), and rather than being booted to the title screen, like we expected, we got a cute little image of Tails.exe making a small pouty face, with some cute little dark clouds in the background. After a few seconds of that, THEN it booted us back to the title screen. The Score Records only allowed us to go up to Metropolis, But I didn't want to get that far from the start, so we reset the game and went back to the title screen.
When we began the game, me on Sonic and Mindy on Tails, Emerald Hill started up and immediately we noticed a change in music. A remix of sorts was playing, it sounded like a jazz song, almost as if it came out of the 80s, or something from that era. The timer displayed not just minutes and seconds, but also milliseconds, just like in the original hack. It felt like a dream come true for me. ...for the most part. Or at least until that first assault of noise hit the screen.
When it was over, I was in for something much darker than what I anticipated. The grass was gray and the dirt was black, the water wasn't red, but rather, purple, the sky was pale dark gray, with some stormclouds raging above the land, complete with an animation of thunder striking the dark red mountains in the background. Certainly very impressive for the Genesis. Dead flowers were all over the place, with a wilted dark-brown color, almost like if it were burnt to a crisp. Of course, I didn't have much time to "admire" the scenery, because of course, after a few seconds, Sonic.exe slowly approached me to the haunting pitched down Drowning theme. I didn't know monitor locations in Sonic 2 as well as I did with Sonic 1, so I was caught. When I died, there was a new message. "SO MANY SOULS TO PLAY WITH, SO LITTLE TIME..." I love that line. Anyway, as expected, it killed me. So the level restarted, and, with Mindy having more knowledge of monitor locations, she agreed to take over as Sonic. So with my sweet lady love guiding me, I felt comfort in playing along with the wretch Sonic.exe.
I'm not gonna describe every little detail of every level in the game, as, well, that would take forever. So, I'm just gonna talk about the remixes and the Dark World alterations. I would cover the bosses as well, but the only thing about those is that they literally cannot die, and they take 4 hits to release a monitor. Beyond that, the Special Stages have been completely omitted, as in the original game, and Dr. Robotnik had a different look beyond just being completely black; His skin was gray, his clothes were darker shades of his normal colors, and his glasses were shattered. Nothing else to say beyond the basic changes, so let's move our story to Chemical Plant.
The second Zone in the game, the land of septic pipes and (for some reason not poisonous) water, Chemical Plant, had a bit of an acoustic vibe to it's music. It sounded like an old-timey piano, like what would play in a western saloon. Like, if Mirage Saloon Act 2 was made for Chemical Plant. Mindy found herself bopping to it's gritty beat. Going through the level, I saw some strange gibberish that flickered on the screen which looked like the unused "hovering platform" objects from the Nick Arcade prototype. A few more popped up on screen before the noise began its attack on our eyes once again.
The Dark World affected Chemical Plant heavily. Pipes were broken, oozing wine colored liquid, the buildings in the background were collapsed, all the gray on the walls was replaced with black, and some of the objects were on fire, which actually hurt Sonic. I didn't think the Dark World would actually add an obstacle, let alone one that works so well. I thought the Robotnik boss battle was gonna be difficult in this Zone, due to the pit below him, which the shifting platforms weren't there in the Dark World. But when it appeared, the monitor bounced out of the water, and on to the center of the platform. I figured this would be the case with any boss where Robotnik doesn't hover over a solid surface.
Aquatic Ruin is next in line. With a relaxing Conga type rendition of the original theme, with a sax playing the melody and a awesome double bass and clav covering the rest of the song, with a tumbadora producing a soft percussion. Like Chemical Plant, it felt like another Zone's theme if it were made for Aquatic Ruin, this time feeling like Mania's version of Hidden Palace. I also noticed the unused door placeable via debug mode purposed for the Zone, which did block our way back through areas like it was supposed to. These doors kept on tripping us up, either just in general, by blocking us from going back to a monitor, or just enemies blindsiding us. It wasn't long before this became really stressful. VERY stressful.
After the noise occurred, the stage around these delicate ruins was completely defiled. The sky background was dark muted blue, blocks were destroyed, and turned a dark brown color, there were strange stretches of black tiles in the background, the grass was all greyish and dead, the trees in the background were completely stripped of their leaves, and, as expected, the "water" was tinted fire brick red. Air bubbles were more scarce in the Dark World, some of the enemies underwater looked pale, some of them were even on the ground dead, and just being underwater in a hack like this is totally painful to deal with thanks to the second timer you have to worry about. We died a lot in this stage. Something to mention was that the Drowning theme sounded more menacing, giving more presence to this scene. It also happened in the last Zone, too. After quite a lot of close saves and a few failures, We beat Aquatic Ruin.
As soon as Casino Night Zone began, an awesome techno remix of the already great theme came on, quite pleasing to me, as I actually try to make techno music in my spare time. Regardless of hobbies, this Zone was the same as it's always been. However, I did notice in the background that the windows of the buildings in the background weren't lit up, though. Nothing else to comment on, really. At least, not for long.
Dark World Casino Night was in ruins. All the neon signs were shattered, all the lights in the level were off, leaving the Zone near black, tiles were totally collapsed, even the conveyor belts weren't moving... what couldn't Sonic.exe do? Having the stage be really dark is actually pretty tough, especially the elevator segments which surprisingly still worked.
On the top of them all, Hill Top Zone was next. The theme rendition for this Zone was a single acoustic guitar for the lead, a slap bass and a standard drumkit recreating the original song, but the melody was being played differently, like Act 2 songs from Sonic 3. Hill Top didn't have any other graphical differences, beyond what will happen soon enough.
After the noise occurred, the grass became a dark and dying violet, all the bushes were dead, trees toppled over, the mountains were decayed, the sky was dark red and had dark gray clouds, the blocks inside the ground were cold sandstone, and the lava was complete black. I thought the ground tiles would be the same as Emerald Hill, seeing as the dirt is just blue instead of brown. The lava rising sections were even more difficult thanks to Sonic.exe's timer. Still, after some trial and error, and a surprising amount of lives for this game, Hill Top was conquered.
If you know Sonic 2 well enough, you'd know that there was something I was worried about in Mystic Cave Zone, specifically the pit in Act 2. The music sounded very Japanese, with the melody being comprised of a shamisen and piano, along with the occasional sax. In the level, I did see some of the tiles used in the Simon Wai prototype, which worked perfectly. Something else odd about this Zone was that the centipede enemy Crawlton were just dangling from the places they normally spawn, lifelessly. This happened with every Crawlton in the Zone. I always thought this place was creepy, but soon enough, it was about to get creepier.
The lighting looked more real, like if you were in a real cave. Every tile in the level turned to a dark gray stone, the background was completely different, looking like a crystalline cavern, even adding foreground stalactites on the top of the screen. The once dead Crawltons were on the ground now crawling towards you in a disturbing manner, all the other enemies were on the spikes, which were stalactites on the ground. The enemies were now safe to land on, creating a path on the spikes. What was extra strange was that in Act 2, upon transitioning to the Dark World, all the platforms up to the pit disappeared, making it impossible to see certain parts of the stage, making it take a while to beat this stage.
Definitely the crudest level design in Sonic 2, Oil Ocean had probably the strangest musical changes in the game. The theme was much slower and had a Grunge sound to it. Definitely more electric than the original. There's really less to the music of this Zone. The stage itself added the ball launchers from the Simon Wai prototype, and the holders for those balls. The Aquis badniks shot and sprayed oil at us, and when it hit us, it turned Sonic's sprite black and covered in oil. Once the noise hit, the Zone turned to something I was not at all expecting.
The biggest change in the Zone was that all the oil was on fire, and a fleet of Balkiry were in the sky, presumably waiting to attack from above, like vultures in the desert. The ground tiles were pure mahogany, and had sand all over them, the sky background was totally empty, except for the buildings, the foreground objects were cut in half, and the fire was white hot, and seemed to ignore invincibility frames. Thankfully, the oil slides weren't on fire.
So here we are, at the hardest level in the game. Metropolis Zone. With a fitting enough metal remix of the Zone's already epic theme. It was super fast paced, fitting the mood of the Zone, also being a semitone lower, which I thought made it more epic. The Zone threw everything it could our way, including some unused assets from Wing Fortress, like the weird pole badnik, the turbine fire platform, and even some ground tiles from the friggin thing. Act 1 and 2 were tough, but they were nothing compared to what that blue bastard had in store.
The tiles were completely intact, but everything was totally grayscale, there were scrapped robot bodies all over, including Silver Sonic from both the 8-bit game and the 16-bit game, the lava in Act 2 was a deep dark blue, there were broken Chaos Emeralds everywhere at the end of the acts, if you made it to the end in the Dark World... this bastard wouldn't relent. Act 3 wasn't much different. except for whatever reason, Sonic.exe didn't chase us. It's as if he knew this was the last level, and so he wanted us to feel victorious in our efforts. It's at least far better than ending with a stupid jumpscare on Labyrinth Zone. We were expecting a near impossible boss battle at the end, but... something else, something beyond what we were expecting, or what anyone could've expected, occurred instead.
Act 3 ended with Robotnik on the ground pleading for mercy, similarly to Dr. Wily at the end of a Mega Man game. Sonic began to walk closer to the poor, defenseless doctor. As he did, the level palettes began to flicker back and forth quicker and quicker. Certainly gave my eyes a run for their money. Then once Sonic reached the center of the screen, the flickering stopped, and the level palette returned to normal, but Sonic... Sonic just... changed into Sonic.exe. "Wh-What the... What the hell?" He then dashed at Robotnik, going for the killing blow. His head was being held by that blue scoundrel, being crushed by his menacing grip. My mind was trying to come up for an explanation for what was happening. Then the ending of the original hack came to me. What if Sonic.exe had actually destroyed Sonic at the end of the first hack? And the Sonic.exe we saw in this hack is actually the original Sonic trying to return to his body? Whatever the case may have been, we've been playing as Sonic.exe this entire hack. Once my mind pieced it together, it had been 25 seconds since he had killed Robotnik. He then stared at the camera, before rushing right at it, smashing it into bits, leaving the view to fade out to black.
After all that, a message appeared in the same font as the startup screen.
"Still here, after all that?"
"Don't you want to see what happens next?"
"Well..."
"Don't say I didn't warn you."
A glitchy level title appeared on screen, saying nothing more than 'G C', however, once it was about to go off screen, it turned into 'Genocide City'. Genocide City, for those unaware, is a scrapped Zone from Sonic 2's development, which later got turned into Metropolis Zone. In a public beta of the game, it's a blank blue screen where Sonic instantly falls and dies. But here... it's an actual completed level. The tiles looked like a gothic futuristic castle, almost like a darker Grand Metropolis or Hang Castle from Sonic Heroes. The ground tiles were very lowly saturated purple, spikes were red, there were light purple pipes that Sonic could destroy, and finally instant death poisonous water. The background was the inside of a dark factory, with chains hanging from the ceiling, with certain enemies hanging from them. No badniks appeared in the level, there were only robotic bodies everywhere. Like in Mystic Cave, enemies on spikes could function as platforms. The level went on for a bit longer than other levels in the game. Finally, after a long while, the level ended with the background and the ground tiles transforming into a moonlit field with a lake in the background. A couple faded in to the center of the screen, looking at the moon, with Sonic.exe on the other side of the screen. a textbox appeared at the top of the screen, with him saying this.
"Quite the scene, isn't it?"
"I've never seen anything like it."
"At least, not in this world."
"I've never been able to leave."
"But with your help..."
He pulled out a dark red spear from nowhere, making a laughing animation.
"I'M GOING TO BE FREE."
He then rushed the spear through the couple and Sonic, making the screen cut to black. After all that, I myself didn't know what to say. Mindy sure did though.
M: "Wow, Joshie! That sure was the hardest Sonic game I've ever seen! All of that sure was intense, that, um, well, Sonic sure put up quite the fight!"
J: "Sure did. That last level, though." M: "Uh... what do you suppose happened to Sonic?"
J: "Sonic? Perhaps he was sent to this version of Genocide City upon death in Labyrinth? I don't know what happened between games."
Suddenly, a subtle wind was heard. with one last text message appearing in the middle of the screen, simply saying one thing.
"Ready For Round 2?"