Sonic.exe, but self-aware
I'm a big fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, just like most of my friends and acquaintances. And while I do get a kick out of newer games, I like the classics better, due to them being more easily accessible to me and spawning a plethora of awesome ROM hacks and fangames. Speaking of the latter...
One day, I was checking my e-mail when I got a message from my buddy Kyle with a .exe file (heh, that rhymed) attached. The message read:
"Yo, Tom! How's it going?
So, I found this Sonic fangame here and I think you should take a look at it. I won't tell you too much to avoid giving you any "spoilers", but I'll leave you with this: It tries really hard to be a horror game, but comes across as a comedy horror game with a jumpscare or two instead. Sooo.. yup. Let me know your verdict later, will ya?
Sincerely, Kyle"
Once I was done reading, I thought: "Huh. An attempt at a Sonic horror fangame? Interesting."
After downloading the file and booting it up, the Sonic 1 title screen showed up. At first, I felt a little gypped, but Kyle wouldn't come up with a troll that simple and inoffensive, so I decided to trust him. True enough, the second I pressed enter, the title image changed to something else before cutting to black. Since it was a split second thing, I could only gather so many details. Namely, Sonic's face: his eyes became black with red pupils (and I think they were.. bleeding, too?) and his smirk was a little wider.
After this pseudo-jumpscare, I was taken to a Sonic 3-esque save select, but the background consisted in the red clouds from Stardust Speedway's bad future, there were only 3 save files and the level preview image was just red static for all of them. Something else that called my attention was that Dr. Robotnik was one of the playable characters along with Tails and Knuckles. Unfortunately, Knuckles and Robotnik were still locked, so I picked Tails's file first. The game froze for a bit and, for some odd reason, I heard Kefka from Final Fantasy VI laughing. Sadly, Kefka himself was nowhere to be seen. Missed opportunity, if you ask me.
The screen stayed black for a little longer this time, then it showed the typical level title, except the oval circle was red as opposed to blue and the text showed only "Hill Act 1". Not "Green Hill", just "Hill". The screen faded in and the level title vanished revealing Tails in Green Hill Zone. But the music wasn't the iconic Green Hill tune, but yet a peaceful melody in reverse (still kinda catchy, nonetheless). I pressed the left arrow key and got moving. The level design was basically Sonic Forces 2D, but worse: Just a flat strip of land with no rings to collect or Badniks to destroy.
To make up for that, however, I ran into a section of the level that had the little animals lying dead on the ground bleeding. And let me tell you, they looked like they were killed rather gruesomely: the squirrels were hanged on a tree with what appeared to be their innards hanging out and the bunnies had all four limbs torn off. Man, thank God those were just pixels, 'cause otherwise I would probably pass out from throwing up so much.
After approximately one minute, the music stopped and Tails found Sonic on the other side of the screen with his back against the fox boy and his eyes closed. Tails looked happy to see his speedy hedgehog friend, but then he noticed that Sonic wasn't responding to him. A cutscene began, in which the fox boy walked slowly towards Sonic. As he did so, some faint static began, growing louder and louder as Tails approached Sonic. It got to a point I had to take off my headphones.
When Tails finally reached Sonic, his eyes opened and they were black with red glowing dots, just like that title image, except it was somewhat more noticeable. The screen then turned black and the static sound was off. I even let out a sigh of relief.
It stayed black for a few hot seconds and I heard a deep, demonic voice (presumably Sonic's) saying "Hello. Do you want to play with me?", with white text on the screen. This part kind of creeped me out, but only because I wasn't expecting the demon Sonic to speak. After that, another level named "Hide and Seek" began. This time, I was in Angel Island Act 2 (y'know, the one where the whole city jungle is on fire?), and I CRINGED at that fire effect. I mean, there already was fire sprites for that level! Why would you put this sorry excuse for fire on your fangame?! To be fair, though, the Ruins of Sadness song from Klonoa 2 was a good musical choice for the level.
Ok, back on track: Tails looked scared in this level. He actually looked at the camera and pointed forward. I thought it was a neat little detail, as if he was so desperate to flee from this place he would even resort to fourth wall breaking. But this built-up tension went away when I noticed his top speed wasn't very high. Make up your mind, dude! Do you want to get outta here or not?
Suddenly I heard the Kefka laugh again, as flashes of the black-and-red-eyed Sonic popped everywhere. The music changed to the drowning jingle as I saw Sonic behind Tails slowly gaining up on him, but with a twist: the hedgehog was flying as opposed to running, just like Metal Sonic does. Right there and then, I had a minor epiphany: A flying Sonic with black eyes and red pupils... Was that supposed to be Metal disguised as Sonic?
When the organic Metal Sonic (for the sake of simplicity, let's just call him that from now on) caught up to Tails, he vanished and the music stopped. Tails laid there and started crying, and I didn't really know why. Organic Metal was gone, he wasn't on his tail(s) anymore. But I quickly ate my words, because organic Metal Sonic appeared right in front of an unsettled Tails. As he looked down at the horrified fox, blood came down his eyes and he said "I WILL EAT YOUR HEART!" after which he slayed the fox kid in cold blood. Right before the screen went black, there was a loud screeching noise that didn't even last 10 seconds. The text and creepy voice returned, only this time they said "You're too slow. Want to try again?" after the Kefka laugh.
Even though this was not canonical at all, I was actually flabbergasted by what had happened. Regardless of whether that creature WAS Metal Sonic or not, he definitely wouldn't do that to Tails, at least not on-screen.
After that admittedly brutal scene, the character select returned and the save file with Tails was different; the character was no longer in the box but in the TV screen itself, which was now flickering with that red static. Tails' expression also changed, his eyes were black and bleeding, his orange fur had gone black and he looked understandably depressed. Call me sadistic, but that got me curious to see what Knuckles and Robotnik would look like, so I picked Knuckles's file next.
The laugh came again and the screen cut to black again and stayed there for another handful of seconds. This time, the level said "You Can't Run". This one had the same brainless level design from Hill Act 1, but it had the ground from Scrap Brain Zone and the sky looked like the main menu. In the bottom left, there was an X key with Knuckles's hand, implying I could punch with him. Another highlight was, hands down, the music. It was one of Giygas's theme songs in Earthbound. I think it was called "Giygas Stirs" or something like that. Progressing through the level, the screen started to flicker red static a couple times, after which several bloodstains appeared on the metallic ground. Slowly, but surely, what Kyle said about this game was starting to make more and more sense. Suddenly, evil Sonic (in hindsight, organic Metal Sonic is a mouthful) appeared right in front of Knux and the red static appeared again showing nothing but black screen with text and creepy voice saying "FOuNd YOu" after vanishing. That raised a question: Why isn't THIS level named "Hide and Seek" if it's implied that Sonic was looking for me here?
Anyway, there was another red static and I was back at controlling Knuckles, who now had a smirk on his face, and some high-pitched squealing from the Silent Hill's final boss was playing. Was this some kind of boss battle with the demon Sonic? Let's fricken go! This conjunctivitis demon is getting punted back to Hell yesterday!
Sonic was right in front of Knuckles in what appeared to be black smoke. I made the echidna go to Sonic and punch him, but he vanished to the right of the screen before I could even land a hit. This kept happening over and over and over and it went from exciting to annoying and boring faster than you can say "Sonic SPEED!".
17 seconds of this back-and-forth nonsense later, give or take, another cut scene played: Sonic was on the tip of his toes with his arms crossed and Knuckles was kneeling and sobbing. Sonic said "YOU WILL DIE AT MY HANDS!" and lunged at the echidna warrior, turning his lights off too in the process. The screen went black with the same distorted screeching noise from Hide and Seek. During that scene, I was saying stuff to my computer like "Knux, what are you doing? Get up, bro! This.. Metal Sonic thingy is still not down! C'mon, man-" but then he was killed and I was ultimately disappointed.
The Kefka laugh played and another text message with voice appeared: "So many souls to play with, so little time... would you agree?" Eeeehhh.. what did that even mean? Oh, yes. Demon Sonic is playing with the characters' souls. Righto.
I was brought back to the main menu and Knuckles was in the preview screen now. his red fur had darkened to a wine-like red, his dreadlocks were dripping with blood, his eyes were black and bleeding and he had an angry expression. I guess he, too, was ashamed of himself, huh? Like "Dude, I still had energy and all I did was kneel and... mourn? The heck is wrong with me? God dang it.."
One glass of water later, I selected Robotnik next. I still thought that was wacky playing as him... then again, that was the least of my problems at this point, wasn't it?
The level title appeared again and this time it said "...". I was in some kind of hallway, didn't really look like it was from any classic Sonic game, though it had the 16-bit style; the floor was shiny and checkered, the walls were a dark purple with animated torches and a few bloodstains here and there. The music was oddly pleasant, a piano playing a rather sad yet peaceful song, but it somehow hit me: this was the song that played in Hill Act 1, only it wasn't in reverse.
The doctor looked a bit less nervous then Tails, but he did have a sweat drop in his forehead. When moving, he did his usual running animation (The one we see before the final bosses in Sonic 2 and 3) as we continued going through the hallway. As the doc went down some stairs, the walls had gotten more reddish and the red torches were now blue. Then we landed onto another hallway, this one feeling longer than the last one, and we headed down another long set of stairs that took at least 1 full minute, I think.
And then I heard that Kefka laugh again. I was so focused in traversing the stairs that the laugh actually managed to scare me for once, heh. The music abruptly ceased, the walls turned black and the torches' flame were gone (either that, or they were a black flame now and blended with the walls). After a few steps, Sonic popped right in front of Dr. Robotnik, just like with Tails and Knuckles, and then YET ANOTHER red static. It lasted for about.. 15 or so seconds and then it showed me an unexpected image: a really realistic pic of demon Sonic staring right at the screen. Not gonna lie, he looked SICK AS HELL (pun not entirely intended): he had the black/red eyes I've gotten used to (except with a little less blood under them), a wide grin with some albeit weird whale baleen-looking teeth and last but not least, his fur was really on point. Too bad I could barely see blue in the fur, but still. Whoever drew that should start a career as a hyper realistic artist.
In hindsight, I should have downloaded and played this on my phone, this way I could have taken a screenshot of that picture and made it my wallpaper.
Then the screen flickered with red static again thrice, and on the 3rd time I heard Kefka laughing, except this time it sounded distorted and.. loud and causing me to remove my headphones again! Cut it out, game! You're not scaring me, you're just hurting my ears!
As the laugh played, the screen went back to the image again except this time it had a red filter and some text that said "I AM GOD."
Ok, now I mean it: What on Earth could that possibly mean?? Like I get it, Tails and Knuckles are powerful and Dr. Eggman is a genius, so killing them isn't an easy feat. But, does it REALLY take "being God" to do so? Besides, God wouldn't kill anyone, so you're Satan at best. Well, anyways, more red static showed up on my screen. However, this one in particular was so loud I could hear it from my headphones, even though they weren't in my ears. What's with this game and obnoxious loudness?
Then it stopped and showed nothing but black screen. As I sat there looking at it, one last dubbed text came up, which said "Ready for Round 2, Tom?" However, the demon voice stopped after the word "2". Another image popped up, this time it looked like a more detailed red sky, an angel halo with wings, demon Sonic grinning and Tails fleeing and crying in fear. It had a text that said "GAME OVER", the same crappy fire effect from the Hide and Seek level and the US version of Sonic CD's game over theme played in reverse, just to add some more to the creepy factor.
To finish it off, there was a black and red background with a Japanese text that read:
"There is a way to free yourself. A spell to get our soul again. But we have to speak it, but when we speak there is no sound. We are all hearing impaired. Therefore, failure is inevitable. And I ever regret getting into my inner bet.
The devil and immortality in me vs. soul snatching
Jake Shanley vs. Gary Look
Ambition is overrated." (Of course I used Google Translate)
Welp, that was Sonic.exe. Kyle, if you're reading this, here's my verdict: 2.3/10. Would only play it again to get that cool Sonic image. But I do have a question for you: How does this game know my name?
(In the comments, let me know how many times I used the words "Sonic", "after", "and then", "laugh", "screen" and "demon")
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