33:05 Oh my god. HOLY CRAP. For *years* I've had this childhood memory of seeing an automatic Sonic demo running on a screen in a store window display, which looked like Sonic 1, but had scrolling text alongside it. I never saw it again afterward, and the store has long since closed. Ever since I remembered seeing that, I'd been wondering whether it had been some kind of long-lost prototype preview version, but I'm pretty sure this Amiga demo might be it! Thank you for finding this, and finally giving me closure on that memory.
12:50 Can you name them all? A hearty thumbs up to you if you can. EDIT: Unfortunately there's a few frame rate drops in some of the video's footage. It's due to some technical limitations my side. Apologies if it negatively impacted your opinion of any of the games! I'll try and get better at this footage capture stuff.
Protips: - Use GPU Acceleration if possible, it is usually much faster for video encode. - Use a lower bitrate. It probably won't result in the sharpest footage, but will definitely have smoother motion.
Nearly 20 years before Sonic Mania, the Sonic fan games hq website was my first experience with the internet on my 56k modem.. It's hard to express how exciting it was being 10 and finding such a huge trove of free sonic games of all types. The creativity in some of these games was amazing and showed just how special the sonic community is.
Sonic X introduced me to Sonic as a little girl, and I loved loved loved it. We didn't have any game consoles, and I can remember discovering Ultimate Sonic Flash when googling 'free sonic x games online' and rushing to tell my mother "THEY MAKE GAMES OF SONIC!!!"
Honestly it surprises me you didn't mention Sonic P-06 by ChaosX. It's a fan remake of Sonic 2006 on the Unity Engine made by ChaosX, currently with all of the Sonic and Shadow levels made, and is soon to have Silver's levels as well.
That really isn't a fan game, it's more a fix up for of an older and "official" game. Hence why he probably didn't put it up on the list. It's like saying Sonic Rush is a fan game. It isn't.
As someone who grew up during the early 2000s, Ultimate Flash Sonic was as good as it could get even in spite of its wonkiness and short length. I kind of envy the selection of high quality fan games that the newer generations have to choose from. Then again, I also grew up with the Gamecube port of Sonic Adventure 2, the Sonic Gems Collection and Sonic Advance 1, so maybe growing up during that period wasn't so bad.
Sonic Before/After the Sequel's soundtracks I still listen to today frequently. Many of these songs are on my playlists :D I remember Jun Senoue himself openly praised After the Sequel's soundtrack back then?
I'm very surprised you didn't mention Sonic RPG or Final Fantasy Sonic. I remember spending a lot of time on those flash games, as well as a bunch of those Sonic scene creator sort of games. I'd love a part two of this where you just talk about more of the fan games, especially the more random and wacky ones.
I am glad you mentioned Sonic 1 The Next Level. It is my absolute favorite fan-game because everything there is extremly well made and has a unique aesthetic that no unnofficial or official Sonic media got to this day. I love Markey Jester's work on it. Also, I highly reccomend checking out Dr. Robotnik's Creature Capture, also made by Markey, and SRB2 Kart by Kart Krew.
Shoutouts to Feels. I always liked interpreting him as how Epic Mickey originally wanted Oswald to be. A sympathetic antagonist who's after the blasted smug hedgehog for stealing his light. Both are coincidentally rabbits.
@@ethandouro4334 Nah, Mickey does indeed embody a corporate overlord, not during his inception of the Golden age of animation, but certainly these days.
The impressive thing with Sonic Robo Blast 1 is that it's immensely impressive given the engine it was made on : the same Klik&Play engine of Sonic Boom, 1995, that CLEARLY wasn't made for platformers and still, somehow, managed to make this technical miracle despite the limitations of the engine.
Sonic BTS and ATS were also made in a more updated version of Klik n' Play called Multimedia Fusion 2, and have both had their source code released publicly. (I made a comment similar to this one but then scrolled down and saw this so I deleted it lol)
A 3D Sonic game called Sonic Worls is really popular surprised it wasn't mentioned here. There are also some prominent fan game Sonic RPGs like the Chantix trilogy and Chronicles of Acorn.
I have received the notification that I was @'d here... What can I say except I'm incredibly flattered!! My hub world making such an apparition genuinely made me smile. I am sooo flattered to be part of such an amazing video! I've been absolutely loving it (I'm missing a few minutes) and yeah, thank you so much for making my evening! Honestly needed that after a few rough events haha Have a fantastic rest of your day!
As somebody who's hosting a fan-game/hack ost channel i found this video very interesting and important to me! Heck I'm also SUPORTING fan/original works cause MOST of them can have potential! Not only in the music side but gameplay side! Also I'm technically working on a game (more details on gamejolt and Discord) and the reason why i started that and also starting to upload fan-game/hack music is because 1 i want to join the devs community 2 I'm also wanted to support them by sharing the musics of those games if they do have ones
6:30 There’s a 2.5D fangame called Sonic Incursion out there that involves the metallix as the main antagonists, though it’s not really talked about much. I think it might be worth looking into
Surprised you didn't mention Sonic XG or Emerald Ties, as those games both fall into the "Early 2000s" category. I'm not even kidding, the entire history of Sonic XG is so rich and crazy. You really have to step back and admire that both of these games are still going ever since 2004. Shoutout to every single fangame in this video that wasn't mentioned in this video, old and new. You guys are the real ones.
There’s 2 fangames I wanna let you know. First is the Sonic Classic (1&2) fangames which try to be close to the original games. Another one that will definitely be worth checking out once a demo or the full game is out, it should be Sonic Hysteria, as of now we only have the OST published by NicoCW, musician and director of the project.
I really love myself some Sonic Fangames despite getting into the franschise (and thus the fangames) relativelt late, around 2018 or so. Despite that, BTS/ATS/Chrono Adventure/SRB2 are some of my favorite games, period. My favorite part of fangame history was probably hearing Falk's arrangement of Believe In Myself from Cloudy Crowd in BTS showing up in the Sonic Symphony. It did, and still does, give me chills.
I always wanted to make a Sonic fangame and I looked at a lot of fangames for inspiration and this video helped me see a lot of 2D Sonic fangames...and now I am developing my own Sonic fangame called Sonic Destiny isnpired by Sonic Mania,Sonic and the fallen star and other fangames...I aim for the game to be a Sonic Mania-styled fangame with returning classic stages such as Mystic Cave and Tidal Tempest and Completely new stages by me. This video really gave me a boost to make my dream become a reality,Thank you Johnny Vector for making this video because it helped me start make my own Sonic fangame. By the way,your videos are Peak! Keep up the good work Johnny Vector👍!!!
Besides the fun look back, loved the history lesson. I would shoutout Ultimate Robotnik Battles and Snack Dash as another two Flash games worth a look. And wow, I knew Felipe from just Spark so I had no idea he made Sonic Before the Sequel, or just forgot. Excellent video either way, cheers Johnny!
My favorite different-genre Sonic game is Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart. It was surprisingly addictive for a while with all the mods and lobbies it had and having hundreds of characters to play as (I mostly played P4 Aigis). I think my favorite thing about it is that it's a hack of a hack (a hack of Sonic Robo Blast 2 which is a hack of the Doom 2 Legacy Engine).
Shout out to the sonic fanfiction community. People like to make fun of cringy fanfics written by edgy middle schoolers and weirdo adults, but that community is actually full of well written and sometimes novel length fanfics. Tvtropes did a good job at recommending some of the better fanfics from that community. Another Shout out to the sonic fan comic community. There are some real classics out there like "Ghosts of the Future" and "Murder of me".
I mean, most fan fictions are badly written because there are narration methods that many people lacks. Cringy fan fics exists in every fandoms. But what's worse is when official writing is badly done (looking at you Rings of Power, Tolkien didn't write like that and don't ever pretend doing as good as him).
Finally, someone acknowledges Sonic: Time Attacked! While it's definitely shown its age now I absolutely agree that it still looks good today. The original music in that fangame is great, too- specifically the stuff that isn't Sonic Adventure midis, that is. I wouldn't mind seeing someone remake that in a more modern engine. It needs to make a residence resurgence before it, for lack of a better phrase, becomes lost to time.
oh heeell yes! i remember Omni Khaos! i actually went out of my way to redownload that game this year! also the sequel to Ice - Ice 2, was honestly a major improvement, I actually played it through to the end and had a good time - they even made Ice's sprites look pretty sweet :o
Sonic Advance/Rush inspired games are ones that I really enjoy, so I would like to suggest some of those: Sonic Dimensions, Sonic vs Darkness: True Nightmare Revived (trust me, it's good) and the recent Sonic Momentum, which is trying to "evolve" the 2d Sonic formula, something very interesting that not even Mania tried to do.
Mania tried to stay closer to the true Classic experience because it was an anniversary game. Especially after how messy Sonic 4 was. Sonic Advance tried to evolve the 2D gameplay but I feel like it added too much when less can be more.
@@ikagura I'm not saying that Mania is a bad game by any means, the level design and graphics make up for its lack of novelties, but I'm not a Time Attack guy, so I just did a slot for every character and then called it a day, coming back every 6 months or so to play a run as Sonic or Knux. Mania doesn't make me wanna come back after that, the game would have been plainly better if they added new characters with interesting twists to the basic gameplay, with levels designed around everyone, and also added general stuff to make the gameplay better, because they literally pulled all the way back to S3&K, throwing out all additions made in the Advance series, which are really good imo, and I'd like to know why you think otherwise. The boost mode, the tricks, Sonic's new moves, the ranking system, and most importantly, Amy from Adv1, which is the most fun character to play as in ANY Sonic game because of how you interact with stages in a completely unique way (like Knuckles in S3&K), they're all things that give the game depth, not like gliding over the level and trivializing the game as Ray, or stomping to cut all your momentum as Mighty, for some reason. I'd honestly play the Advance games over Mania any day if it wasn't for the fact that they're still confined to my Gameboy emulator :r
@@CableSpark872 The Advance series additions would've made the game too tricky. Classic Sonic is meant to be simple to understand (yet having strats to master such as jumping after a spindash or using the insta shield with a good timing). Having too many different gameplay style would've been detrimental to the game. Mania is supposed to be the ultimate celebration of Sonic's past so no Modern stuff from Advance. PS: I'd also say that Dimps' level design is inferior to the Genesis ones.
One fairly recent fan game I enjoyed was Sonic Battle R. It was a blessing since I've always liked the idea of Sonic R, and seeing someone make a "reimagined" fan game of some sort was amazing.
Sonic Rebirth could use a LOT more attention, though the game is pretty... well, not "difficult," but tricky to track down. Sonic Emerald Ties is another pretty good one.
A recent development that has been under the radar in the fangame community is the increasing number of tabletop roleplaying games set in the Sonic universe. Over the past few years a number of, shall we say, "quirky" and simple homebrew games have been made by influencers for spins and giggles. But a number of fans have taken on the task of translating Sonic to the ttrpg medium in earnest, including yours truly, resulting in a few up and comers offering distinct yet fleshed out experiences. I expect word of mouth on these projects will start to take off over the next few years, but you might say we're still..."Underground" _guitar riff_ 🎸
I'm making a fan remake of Knuckles Chaotix which I'm calling Chaotix Revamped. CR will have a toggle for the ring tether, better level design, a "revamped" story that links it to Sonic 3, elemental shields, unlockable abilities. And the best part is the fact that it will have Sonic, Tails, and Ray as playable characters, Sonic and Tails will have their own story and zones (there will be some other unlockable characters whom you'll find out about after the first demo gets released at SAGE '23). CR will also be at GameJolt, and SFGHQ
There was also Sonic the Hedgehog Classic 1 and 2. Yes, that's what it was actually called. I'm glad you mentioned Freedom Planet and Spark the Electric Jester. Otherwise, I would have to mention it myself.
One obscure fangame I'm sort of fond of is Eggman Hates Furries. It's essentially a boss rush, putting you against a bunch of fairly creative bosses. It has the best kind of Sonic boss design, where getting good at the game helps you find more and more opportunities to damage the boss!
One particular fan hack I enjoy is Sonic Delta Reloaded by Esrael. An evolution of their previous Sonic 2 Delta project, it's a hack that combines the three games on Genesis/Mega Drive into one single game, allowing you to play from Green Hill Zone act 1 all the way through seamlessly to the Doomsday Zone (adding flowing transitions between the different acts of zones in Sonic 1 and 2 to make them like Sonic 3&K's). It also includes representations of the cut zones from Sonic 2, as well as a myriad of gameplay options and music tracks from the various prototypes that have surfaced over the years. Definitely worth checking out.
I remember playing 2000 of those games, they came on a pirate cd colections of fan games of sonic and mario like that knuckles 2 game and mario xp, the castlevania one
I never heard of Mi Ni Ikuzo, but I'm glad you mentioned it! I actually have an X68000 that I want to get running again and it'll be fun to try one of the oldest Sonic fan games on the real deal.
I always liked this Sonic 2 Rom Hack called Sonic Boom, of course it was made before Sonic Boom was actually made. At one point, I heard that one person created it and to this day, I will never forget the expirience it gave me and the music is extremely good, granted most of them are megaman genesis remixes
A pretty educational video I'd say. I recognize a lot of the older ones. Sonic Flash was definitely my first one I remember easily. The Spark games are also really good. Also here's a controversial one: Eggman Hates Furries XD. It's interesting to say the least. Very atmospheric and strange.
I think you really skipped out on the 3D Sonic fan games: Like Sonic GT, Sonic Worlds(and its sequel, Sonic Worlds DX), Sonic P-06, Sonic Encore, Sonic The Hedgehog 3D(if you want an old one, made in the Duke Nukem engine), Sonic Dimensions, LinkSonic5 Engine if you want another old one, Sonic GDK(the prequel to Green Hill Paradise 2)
I'd like to bring up a fangame from 2010 called Eggman Hates Furries. It's an insane boss rush game absolutely packed with spectacle that was honestly pretty impressive for the time and I enjoyed it a lot as a kid, even if I absolutely sucked at it back in the day. I should really revisit it one of these days!
you should make a video about the blue shoed tails. I've never actually heard about that until now but I've seen some fanmade projets giving tails blue shoes
Tails was supposed to have blue shoes in Sonic 2 but because of console limitations it could only be done by giving them Sonic's color palette which means that the shoes would have turned gold when sonic transformed into super sonic for example so they opted for red
I've been following the Sonic Hacking Contest ever since its beginning. Year after year, you get to see some amazing stuff. Same for the SAGE Expo Entries. One I hope to see being made (that is, if it'll ever be made...) is for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Basically, having the characters switched to others (Sonic - Blaze, Tails - Marine, Knuckles - Shade, Robotnik - Nega Eggman) and different level layouts, music and such. I'm no hacking content creator, but if I was, I'd surely make something like it. It's just an idea/suggestion I'd love to see being made. Hopefully in future Sonic Hacking Contests.
I was there, in SFGHQ in the early 2000s. There was no sonic worlds so everyone had to make their own engine by hand. I made Sonic Frenzy Adventure, one of the contestants to the best Sonic Fangame of SAGE 2005. It was extremely ambitious and I never managed to finish it.... although, thanks to my extra time due to the pandemic I decided to take a look at it and woah, I had like 20 levels done. So I compiled it as a complete game in the direction of Sonic 2, a succession of levels with barely any narrative, dropped unused characters, unfinished levels and it's there for download if anyone wants to see it.
one fangame i gotta mention is that weird RPG Sonic fan Game. i always grew up think it was a real sonic spinoff game XD I've got fond memories for that one. im not sure if it was good or not but it definitely has a place in my heart lol. the game's were split into episodes and i didn't realize this but "Nights" from "The Nights" is also included in this game lol.
The Sonic 1 Beta Hoax is a good "fan game" to mention, as it's potentially the very first Sonic romhack. In short, it got put together by Cyan Helkaraxe in 1999 and passed off as a potential beta of Sonic 1 in order to drum up more interest in the game, likely in light of the increasing attention on Sonic Adventure. The Sonic Retro page has more interesting information on the subject as well.
I think the obly thing you missed would be SRB2Kart; it's a kart racer with a Sonic motif, but the direct connection to SRB2 due to being a full modification off of it (and how different it can be from other racers) definitely would have made it worth mentioning. But the saucy Next Level and Storm were here, so all's still good
You forgot to talk about the vietnamese fangame that uses a virus to make sure the creator's "precious sprites" (which weren't his in the first place) aren't stolen, spoiler warning, someone ripped the sprites. It's called sonic gather battle.
Oh my god yeah what the fuck was that?! I think it even had kernel level access, meaning it could fuck with your motherboard's BIOS so even if you deleted every trace of the game from your hard drive or rolled back to a previous OS restore point the game would STILL be effecting your PC
From my "Massive" archiving and information look up experiences. I believe Tails 100 Rings started on 1996 with about 3 Demo versions extending to 1997 and finally the full game at 1998.
A 3d fangame I'd like to reccomend is Sonic World DX. It is an older one, but it is still being worked on (in fact, the latest update was around a couple days ago to a week ago). Most of the levels are zones from other sonic games, but their level designs aren't the exact same, and there are three original zones. There's also a very large roster of playable characters, ranging from ones you'd expect such as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Shadow, to ones you probably wouldn't such as Infinite, Jet, and a Shadow Android.
I am enjoying the video so far, I’m at about 16:10, and man the frame rates for the gameplay showcases is really hard to watch. I’m not sure if it continues like this for the rest of the video, but I figured I’d mention it. Also I thought it was TH-cam messing up but the scrolling background on the sides on 4:3 gameplay is still smooth, so I’m assuming it’s the video itself.
I think the only thing missing here is a mention of the multiple Lost Level remakes from the late 90’s and early 2000’s None of them were fully playable, some literally just the lost assets from the first few games, but they’re definitely a fascinating look at what could have been
I love fangames they were a part of my childhood, my first fangame is a Sonic mugen game that i don't actually remember the fangame but there were Honey the cat playable which was awesome then i played sonic the hedgehog 3d and it was so cool ! We can play Mighty in that game ! (oh yeah and i'ts not Toei Sonic but Junio Sonic cuz the studio junio realised sonic cd opening) really good video
There's a hack of, I think, Sonic 1 I remember enjoying called The S Factor. I don't recall the plot, or if there even was one, but you played as Sonia the Hedgehog from Sonic Underground, I believe she was a strength based character that was able to punch through walls like Knuckles but unlike him had a double jump instead of a glide, and Silver the Hedgehog who had a hover and could even pick up and throw Badniks using telekinesis. You could also unlock Scourge the Hedgehog but I believe gameplay wise he was just a Sonic clone, but that's fitting for him. I have no idea if it was ever actually finished or just abandoned at some point.
I'd like to point out the jEnesis emulator for the DS. It was a homebrew emulator made to be used with flashcards back in the day but Sega eventually invited the developer to work on Sonic Classic Collection on the console
Sonic Utopia is still the best proof of concept for an open world sonic game. They tried that in Frontiers but without the much better visual style based on classic Sonic. I still like the Sonic adventure 2 gameplay the best for 3D Sonic and think boost was the worst thing to happen to Sonic. 2D Sonic 16bit style is perfect. I really want more mania.
I'm surprise that rom hacks like sonic classic heroes and s factor weren't included on the video, those are some of the best rom hacks that sonic have.
One thing i strongly believe is that the Sonic fanbase is one of the strongest in the entire industry, the seer amount of amazing stuff they createm, not just fangames is mind blowing, and of course part of it it's thanks to SEGA, for allowing people to just create their fangames, unlike Nintendo with Mario, that they threw the dogs to you, even if the game is a non profit project.
@@shresthasengupta8984 hey man i have a little question i have seen this sonic sprite before i think, but i don't remember where it's from so it would be nice if anyone gave me the source to the sprite 9:25
33:05 Oh my god. HOLY CRAP. For *years* I've had this childhood memory of seeing an automatic Sonic demo running on a screen in a store window display, which looked like Sonic 1, but had scrolling text alongside it. I never saw it again afterward, and the store has long since closed. Ever since I remembered seeing that, I'd been wondering whether it had been some kind of long-lost prototype preview version, but I'm pretty sure this Amiga demo might be it! Thank you for finding this, and finally giving me closure on that memory.
12:50 Can you name them all? A hearty thumbs up to you if you can.
EDIT: Unfortunately there's a few frame rate drops in some of the video's footage. It's due to some technical limitations my side. Apologies if it negatively impacted your opinion of any of the games! I'll try and get better at this footage capture stuff.
Of course! Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny & Johnny!
Jonny (Ed Edd and Eddy), Johnny Lightfoot, Johnny Cage, Johnny Blaze, SomecallmeJohnny, Johnny Thunder, Johnny Silverhand and Jonnhy Bravo
I like the implication that Somecalllmejohnny is a fictional character
Protips:
- Use GPU Acceleration if possible, it is usually much faster for video encode.
- Use a lower bitrate. It probably won't result in the sharpest footage, but will definitely have smoother motion.
It's missing one Johnny... Johnny Test man.
Nearly 20 years before Sonic Mania, the Sonic fan games hq website was my first experience with the internet on my 56k modem.. It's hard to express how exciting it was being 10 and finding such a huge trove of free sonic games of all types. The creativity in some of these games was amazing and showed just how special the sonic community is.
Love your videos strider!
@@christosdoesthings Thanks Christos! Best of luck with your animations!
@@phantomstrider thank you :) Best of luck with your videos too!
Hey Strider!
Hey strider
Sonic X introduced me to Sonic as a little girl, and I loved loved loved it. We didn't have any game consoles, and I can remember discovering Ultimate Sonic Flash when googling 'free sonic x games online' and rushing to tell my mother "THEY MAKE GAMES OF SONIC!!!"
that's adorable and wholesome.
aw, that's adorable
👏 😮
Are you secretly my twin sister? that's exactly how she got into Sonic!
Women aren't gamers
Honestly it surprises me you didn't mention Sonic P-06 by ChaosX. It's a fan remake of Sonic 2006 on the Unity Engine made by ChaosX, currently with all of the Sonic and Shadow levels made, and is soon to have Silver's levels as well.
Eh, it's still Sonic 2006 at the end of the day.
Sorry but even without the glitches the game is really poor/bad.
@@ikagura You haven't played P-06 and it shows
That really isn't a fan game, it's more a fix up for of an older and "official" game. Hence why he probably didn't put it up on the list. It's like saying Sonic Rush is a fan game. It isn't.
@@ikagura ah yes judge it without playing. That’s smart! 🙄
@@rachaelrandomassname1848 He mentioned sonic fan remakes though… at the very beginning of the video too.
As someone who grew up during the early 2000s, Ultimate Flash Sonic was as good as it could get even in spite of its wonkiness and short length. I kind of envy the selection of high quality fan games that the newer generations have to choose from. Then again, I also grew up with the Gamecube port of Sonic Adventure 2, the Sonic Gems Collection and Sonic Advance 1, so maybe growing up during that period wasn't so bad.
Sonic Before/After the Sequel's soundtracks I still listen to today frequently. Many of these songs are on my playlists :D
I remember Jun Senoue himself openly praised After the Sequel's soundtrack back then?
a man of fine tastes~ 🍻
I listen to the ost often, so many bops~
I'm very surprised you didn't mention Sonic RPG or Final Fantasy Sonic. I remember spending a lot of time on those flash games, as well as a bunch of those Sonic scene creator sort of games. I'd love a part two of this where you just talk about more of the fan games, especially the more random and wacky ones.
I am glad you mentioned Sonic 1 The Next Level. It is my absolute favorite fan-game because everything there is extremly well made and has a unique aesthetic that no unnofficial or official Sonic media got to this day. I love Markey Jester's work on it.
Also, I highly reccomend checking out Dr. Robotnik's Creature Capture, also made by Markey, and SRB2 Kart by Kart Krew.
Shoutouts to Feels. I always liked interpreting him as how Epic Mickey originally wanted Oswald to be. A sympathetic antagonist who's after the blasted smug hedgehog for stealing his light. Both are coincidentally rabbits.
Yes! Oswald and Feels seem so similar to one another. I think it’s all a mere coincidence, but a really cool connection nonetheless. :)
not only Oswald and Feels looks familiar, but Sonic and Mickey also have it's own similarities!
@@ethandouro4334 Sonic isn't a corporate overlord
@@WilfredCthulu Neither is Mickey, however, Disney and Sega are pretty much corporations if I recall corectly 💀 💀
@@ethandouro4334 Nah, Mickey does indeed embody a corporate overlord, not during his inception of the Golden age of animation, but certainly these days.
The impressive thing with Sonic Robo Blast 1 is that it's immensely impressive given the engine it was made on : the same Klik&Play engine of Sonic Boom, 1995, that CLEARLY wasn't made for platformers and still, somehow, managed to make this technical miracle despite the limitations of the engine.
The game still kinda sucks but I agree about the feat.
Sonic BTS and ATS were also made in a more updated version of Klik n' Play called Multimedia Fusion 2, and have both had their source code released publicly.
(I made a comment similar to this one but then scrolled down and saw this so I deleted it lol)
@@superhs Thought it was Clickteam Fusion
Sonic Before the Sequel is what pulled me into the fans games all those years ago as well. Amazing game.
A 3D Sonic game called Sonic Worls is really popular surprised it wasn't mentioned here.
There are also some prominent fan game Sonic RPGs like the Chantix trilogy and Chronicles of Acorn.
I have received the notification that I was @'d here... What can I say except I'm incredibly flattered!!
My hub world making such an apparition genuinely made me smile. I am sooo flattered to be part of such an amazing video! I've been absolutely loving it (I'm missing a few minutes) and yeah, thank you so much for making my evening! Honestly needed that after a few rough events haha
Have a fantastic rest of your day!
As somebody who's hosting a fan-game/hack ost channel i found this video very interesting and important to me! Heck I'm also SUPORTING fan/original works cause MOST of them can have potential! Not only in the music side but gameplay side! Also I'm technically working on a game (more details on gamejolt and Discord) and the reason why i started that and also starting to upload fan-game/hack music is because
1 i want to join the devs community
2 I'm also wanted to support them by sharing the musics of those games if they do have ones
6:30 There’s a 2.5D fangame called Sonic Incursion out there that involves the metallix as the main antagonists, though it’s not really talked about much. I think it might be worth looking into
No one ever really mentions the about 10 million Sonic GDK games. Probably because there are just too many of them.
@@eMorphized or they are all just demos.
Surprised you didn't mention Sonic XG or Emerald Ties, as those games both fall into the "Early 2000s" category. I'm not even kidding, the entire history of Sonic XG is so rich and crazy. You really have to step back and admire that both of these games are still going ever since 2004.
Shoutout to every single fangame in this video that wasn't mentioned in this video, old and new. You guys are the real ones.
This vid was pure nostalgia, we had similar childhooods!
There’s 2 fangames I wanna let you know. First is the Sonic Classic (1&2) fangames which try to be close to the original games. Another one that will definitely be worth checking out once a demo or the full game is out, it should be Sonic Hysteria, as of now we only have the OST published by NicoCW, musician and director of the project.
I really love myself some Sonic Fangames despite getting into the franschise (and thus the fangames) relativelt late, around 2018 or so. Despite that, BTS/ATS/Chrono Adventure/SRB2 are some of my favorite games, period. My favorite part of fangame history was probably hearing Falk's arrangement of Believe In Myself from Cloudy Crowd in BTS showing up in the Sonic Symphony. It did, and still does, give me chills.
I always wanted to make a Sonic fangame and I looked at a lot of fangames for inspiration and this video helped me see a lot of 2D Sonic fangames...and now I am developing my own Sonic fangame called Sonic Destiny isnpired by Sonic Mania,Sonic and the fallen star and other fangames...I aim for the game to be a Sonic Mania-styled fangame with returning classic stages such as Mystic Cave and Tidal Tempest and Completely new stages by me. This video really gave me a boost to make my dream become a reality,Thank you Johnny Vector for making this video because it helped me start make my own Sonic fangame.
By the way,your videos are Peak!
Keep up the good work Johnny Vector👍!!!
Besides the fun look back, loved the history lesson. I would shoutout Ultimate Robotnik Battles
and Snack Dash as another two Flash games worth a look. And wow, I knew Felipe from just Spark
so I had no idea he made Sonic Before the Sequel, or just forgot. Excellent video either way, cheers Johnny!
My favorite different-genre Sonic game is Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart. It was surprisingly addictive for a while with all the mods and lobbies it had and having hundreds of characters to play as (I mostly played P4 Aigis). I think my favorite thing about it is that it's a hack of a hack (a hack of Sonic Robo Blast 2 which is a hack of the Doom 2 Legacy Engine).
There's now a mod for SRB2K which backports the SRB2 movement as a character
srb2 is such an amazing fangame, one of my personal favourites
there's not many fangames that are bad, i'd say 90% are at least decent
It's barely even a fangame at this point. It's its own thing that just happens to use Sonic characters and concepts.
And even exist Sonic robo blast 2 Riders,Kart and Persona.
My favorite Sonic fan games are made by 'Sonic Team'. Even though they aren't always the best I'm glad they keep trying.
Sonic FGX was one of my favourites when I was young, and Sonic GT is probably my current favourite because of how fun the gameplay itself is.
Sonic Robo Blast 2 is without a doubt the greatest Sonic game of all-time.
Shout out to the sonic fanfiction community. People like to make fun of cringy fanfics written by edgy middle schoolers and weirdo adults, but that community is actually full of well written and sometimes novel length fanfics. Tvtropes did a good job at recommending some of the better fanfics from that community.
Another Shout out to the sonic fan comic community. There are some real classics out there like "Ghosts of the Future" and "Murder of me".
I mean, most fan fictions are badly written because there are narration methods that many people lacks.
Cringy fan fics exists in every fandoms.
But what's worse is when official writing is badly done (looking at you Rings of Power, Tolkien didn't write like that and don't ever pretend doing as good as him).
25:50 anyone hear the faint “I’m blue” music? I do!
Finally, someone acknowledges Sonic: Time Attacked! While it's definitely shown its age now I absolutely agree that it still looks good today. The original music in that fangame is great, too- specifically the stuff that isn't Sonic Adventure midis, that is.
I wouldn't mind seeing someone remake that in a more modern engine. It needs to make a residence resurgence before it, for lack of a better phrase, becomes lost to time.
oh heeell yes! i remember Omni Khaos! i actually went out of my way to redownload that game this year! also the sequel to Ice - Ice 2, was honestly a major improvement, I actually played it through to the end and had a good time - they even made Ice's sprites look pretty sweet :o
Sonic Advance/Rush inspired games are ones that I really enjoy, so I would like to suggest some of those:
Sonic Dimensions, Sonic vs Darkness: True Nightmare Revived (trust me, it's good) and the recent Sonic Momentum, which is trying to "evolve" the 2d Sonic formula, something very interesting that not even Mania tried to do.
Mania tried to stay closer to the true Classic experience because it was an anniversary game.
Especially after how messy Sonic 4 was.
Sonic Advance tried to evolve the 2D gameplay but I feel like it added too much when less can be more.
@@ikagura I'm not saying that Mania is a bad game by any means, the level design and graphics make up for its lack of novelties, but I'm not a Time Attack guy, so I just did a slot for every character and then called it a day, coming back every 6 months or so to play a run as Sonic or Knux.
Mania doesn't make me wanna come back after that, the game would have been plainly better if they added new characters with interesting twists to the basic gameplay, with levels designed around everyone, and also added general stuff to make the gameplay better, because they literally pulled all the way back to S3&K, throwing out all additions made in the Advance series, which are really good imo, and I'd like to know why you think otherwise.
The boost mode, the tricks, Sonic's new moves, the ranking system, and most importantly, Amy from Adv1, which is the most fun character to play as in ANY Sonic game because of how you interact with stages in a completely unique way (like Knuckles in S3&K), they're all things that give the game depth, not like gliding over the level and trivializing the game as Ray, or stomping to cut all your momentum as Mighty, for some reason.
I'd honestly play the Advance games over Mania any day if it wasn't for the fact that they're still confined to my Gameboy emulator :r
@@CableSpark872 The Advance series additions would've made the game too tricky.
Classic Sonic is meant to be simple to understand (yet having strats to master such as jumping after a spindash or using the insta shield with a good timing).
Having too many different gameplay style would've been detrimental to the game.
Mania is supposed to be the ultimate celebration of Sonic's past so no Modern stuff from Advance.
PS: I'd also say that Dimps' level design is inferior to the Genesis ones.
Cool video!!! You're very good content-creator
Sonic the Fighters Blitz shown at 1:20 is PURE 🔥
One fairly recent fan game I enjoyed was Sonic Battle R. It was a blessing since I've always liked the idea of Sonic R, and seeing someone make a "reimagined" fan game of some sort was amazing.
Thanks for discovering the best sonic fan games I really love sonic cause sonic is very important to me!
Sonic Rebirth could use a LOT more attention, though the game is pretty... well, not "difficult," but tricky to track down.
Sonic Emerald Ties is another pretty good one.
"Somecallmejohnny isn't real, he can't hurt you" -Johnny Vector
I want to mention Chaos Dynasty Honey, from last year's SAGE. The game is one of the few ones to make Honey the Cat playable and that is awesome.
A recent development that has been under the radar in the fangame community is the increasing number of tabletop roleplaying games set in the Sonic universe. Over the past few years a number of, shall we say, "quirky" and simple homebrew games have been made by influencers for spins and giggles.
But a number of fans have taken on the task of translating Sonic to the ttrpg medium in earnest, including yours truly, resulting in a few up and comers offering distinct yet fleshed out experiences.
I expect word of mouth on these projects will start to take off over the next few years, but you might say we're still..."Underground" _guitar riff_ 🎸
One of my favourites not mentioned is chao resort island
I recommend to anyone that loves chao/the chao garden
I'm making a fan remake of Knuckles Chaotix which I'm calling Chaotix Revamped. CR will have a toggle for the ring tether, better level design, a "revamped" story that links it to Sonic 3, elemental shields, unlockable abilities. And the best part is the fact that it will have Sonic, Tails, and Ray as playable characters, Sonic and Tails will have their own story and zones (there will be some other unlockable characters whom you'll find out about after the first demo gets released at SAGE '23). CR will also be at GameJolt, and SFGHQ
Sonic 2XL has been a Family Favorite for Close to a Decade Easily
There was also Sonic the Hedgehog Classic 1 and 2. Yes, that's what it was actually called. I'm glad you mentioned Freedom Planet and Spark the Electric Jester. Otherwise, I would have to mention it myself.
One obscure fangame I'm sort of fond of is Eggman Hates Furries. It's essentially a boss rush, putting you against a bunch of fairly creative bosses. It has the best kind of Sonic boss design, where getting good at the game helps you find more and more opportunities to damage the boss!
Silver and Sonia the S factor is criminally underrated
8:35 Sonic looks like his pupil is suuuuuuuuuuuuper small, making him terrified.
once you see it, you can't unsee it.
35:52 I approve his words. I've played both of them and it was very fun experience! Highly recommend!
I love the way someone made a fan game of the old Sonic and had Feels the Rabbit
I've made an OC based off of that Blaze game! (I saw it in the thumbnail!)
That's awesome. I was really impressed by 'Blaze'; it played really well on the Amiga 500 emulator I booted it up on. Very cool.
@@JohnnyVector Thanks! sorry for the late reply though :(
The hero here is johnny's PC. It's receiving a beating from all of these fangames and it is still chugging along
One particular fan hack I enjoy is Sonic Delta Reloaded by Esrael. An evolution of their previous Sonic 2 Delta project, it's a hack that combines the three games on Genesis/Mega Drive into one single game, allowing you to play from Green Hill Zone act 1 all the way through seamlessly to the Doomsday Zone (adding flowing transitions between the different acts of zones in Sonic 1 and 2 to make them like Sonic 3&K's). It also includes representations of the cut zones from Sonic 2, as well as a myriad of gameplay options and music tracks from the various prototypes that have surfaced over the years. Definitely worth checking out.
I actually know the developer of freedom, he said that he's been thinking about killing the project unfortunatley.
I remember playing 2000 of those games, they came on a pirate cd colections of fan games of sonic and mario like that knuckles 2 game and mario xp, the castlevania one
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Project 06
I never heard of Mi Ni Ikuzo, but I'm glad you mentioned it! I actually have an X68000 that I want to get running again and it'll be fun to try one of the oldest Sonic fan games on the real deal.
I always liked this Sonic 2 Rom Hack called Sonic Boom, of course it was made before Sonic Boom was actually made. At one point, I heard that one person created it and to this day, I will never forget the expirience it gave me and the music is extremely good, granted most of them are megaman genesis remixes
It's Junio Sonic because Junio Studio had most input of the Sonic CD cutscenes
Sonic and the fallen star wooooo
Good spot from the thumbnail!
Should've been an official game like Mania.
A pretty educational video I'd say. I recognize a lot of the older ones. Sonic Flash was definitely my first one I remember easily.
The Spark games are also really good.
Also here's a controversial one:
Eggman Hates Furries XD. It's interesting to say the least. Very atmospheric and strange.
Love to hear that the Triple Trouble remake has been updated! Fang the Sniper is one of my favorite characters, can't wait to play it!
Smackdown is probably my favorite
Has so much love for both Sonic and mvc put into it, plus they've put in roll back netcode
I think you really skipped out on the 3D Sonic fan games:
Like Sonic GT, Sonic Worlds(and its sequel, Sonic Worlds DX), Sonic P-06, Sonic Encore, Sonic The Hedgehog 3D(if you want an old one, made in the Duke Nukem engine), Sonic Dimensions, LinkSonic5 Engine if you want another old one, Sonic GDK(the prequel to Green Hill Paradise 2)
I'd like to bring up a fangame from 2010 called Eggman Hates Furries. It's an insane boss rush game absolutely packed with spectacle that was honestly pretty impressive for the time and I enjoyed it a lot as a kid, even if I absolutely sucked at it back in the day. I should really revisit it one of these days!
love how he snuck in somecallmejohnny when he talked about "truly great fictional johnnys"
you should make a video about the blue shoed tails. I've never actually heard about that until now but I've seen some fanmade projets giving tails blue shoes
Tails was supposed to have blue shoes in Sonic 2 but because of console limitations it could only be done by giving them Sonic's color palette which means that the shoes would have turned gold when sonic transformed into super sonic for example so they opted for red
I've been following the Sonic Hacking Contest ever since its beginning. Year after year, you get to see some amazing stuff. Same for the SAGE Expo Entries.
One I hope to see being made (that is, if it'll ever be made...) is for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Basically, having the characters switched to others (Sonic - Blaze, Tails - Marine, Knuckles - Shade, Robotnik - Nega Eggman) and different level layouts, music and such. I'm no hacking content creator, but if I was, I'd surely make something like it. It's just an idea/suggestion I'd love to see being made. Hopefully in future Sonic Hacking Contests.
I was there, in SFGHQ in the early 2000s. There was no sonic worlds so everyone had to make their own engine by hand. I made Sonic Frenzy Adventure, one of the contestants to the best Sonic Fangame of SAGE 2005. It was extremely ambitious and I never managed to finish it.... although, thanks to my extra time due to the pandemic I decided to take a look at it and woah, I had like 20 levels done. So I compiled it as a complete game in the direction of Sonic 2, a succession of levels with barely any narrative, dropped unused characters, unfinished levels and it's there for download if anyone wants to see it.
one fangame i gotta mention is that weird RPG Sonic fan Game.
i always grew up think it was a real sonic spinoff game XD
I've got fond memories for that one.
im not sure if it was good or not but it definitely has a place in my heart lol.
the game's were split into episodes and i didn't realize this but "Nights" from "The Nights" is also included in this game lol.
You forgot to mention the Sonic Freedom Fighters and Sonic Nebulous duologies
But props for shouting out Ashura Dark Reign
Hello Johnny! It's a shameless plug, but have you tried Sonic 3D in 2D?
I loved a obscure Sonic Fangame called Sonic Incursion.
The Sonic 1 Beta Hoax is a good "fan game" to mention, as it's potentially the very first Sonic romhack. In short, it got put together by Cyan Helkaraxe in 1999 and passed off as a potential beta of Sonic 1 in order to drum up more interest in the game, likely in light of the increasing attention on Sonic Adventure. The Sonic Retro page has more interesting information on the subject as well.
I think the obly thing you missed would be SRB2Kart; it's a kart racer with a Sonic motif, but the direct connection to SRB2 due to being a full modification off of it (and how different it can be from other racers) definitely would have made it worth mentioning.
But the saucy Next Level and Storm were here, so all's still good
You forgot to talk about the vietnamese fangame that uses a virus to make sure the creator's "precious sprites" (which weren't his in the first place) aren't stolen, spoiler warning, someone ripped the sprites. It's called sonic gather battle.
Oh my god yeah what the fuck was that?! I think it even had kernel level access, meaning it could fuck with your motherboard's BIOS so even if you deleted every trace of the game from your hard drive or rolled back to a previous OS restore point the game would STILL be effecting your PC
Sonic 1 the next level is super nostalgic for me, even if i first played it 2 years ago.
19:34
In case you didn't know, Sonic.EXE actually got an official remake, it's really good, I suggest you try it out.
why was the frame rates so low on a LOT of the footage for certain fan games. it might lead people to the wrong impression
12:50 Why is Somecallmejohnny there?! He's a real person! 🤣
From my "Massive" archiving and information look up experiences.
I believe Tails 100 Rings started on 1996 with about 3 Demo versions extending to 1997 and finally the full game at 1998.
Didn’t have too many frames to spare on some of these clips, didja?
Sonic Classic Heroes is a fun hack. It's like a Sonic Mania+ / Sonic Heroes mode for Sonic 1 and 2.
A 3d fangame I'd like to reccomend is Sonic World DX. It is an older one, but it is still being worked on (in fact, the latest update was around a couple days ago to a week ago). Most of the levels are zones from other sonic games, but their level designs aren't the exact same, and there are three original zones. There's also a very large roster of playable characters, ranging from ones you'd expect such as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Shadow, to ones you probably wouldn't such as Infinite, Jet, and a Shadow Android.
I am enjoying the video so far, I’m at about 16:10, and man the frame rates for the gameplay showcases is really hard to watch. I’m not sure if it continues like this for the rest of the video, but I figured I’d mention it. Also I thought it was TH-cam messing up but the scrolling background on the sides on 4:3 gameplay is still smooth, so I’m assuming it’s the video itself.
I think the only thing missing here is a mention of the multiple Lost Level remakes from the late 90’s and early 2000’s
None of them were fully playable, some literally just the lost assets from the first few games, but they’re definitely a fascinating look at what could have been
Oh man, Sonic fan remix reminded me of that mushroom hill recreation that looked similar, don't think it was a playable game tho. Also, Sonic world
23:01 it's been etched into my mind over time, and i'll never forget 5953131313131313
i swear to god, if i got that wrong...
speaking of the Tokyo Toy Show remakes, there's someone working on a Sonic fangame that's based on the nightmare world concept
I love fangames they were a part of my childhood, my first fangame is a Sonic mugen game that i don't actually remember the fangame but there were Honey the cat playable which was awesome then i played sonic the hedgehog 3d and it was so cool ! We can play Mighty in that game ! (oh yeah and i'ts not Toei Sonic but Junio Sonic cuz the studio junio realised sonic cd opening) really good video
my man playing fan games in 50hz (jokes aside, good vid.)
There's a hack of, I think, Sonic 1 I remember enjoying called The S Factor. I don't recall the plot, or if there even was one, but you played as Sonia the Hedgehog from Sonic Underground, I believe she was a strength based character that was able to punch through walls like Knuckles but unlike him had a double jump instead of a glide, and Silver the Hedgehog who had a hover and could even pick up and throw Badniks using telekinesis. You could also unlock Scourge the Hedgehog but I believe gameplay wise he was just a Sonic clone, but that's fitting for him.
I have no idea if it was ever actually finished or just abandoned at some point.
I'd like to point out the jEnesis emulator for the DS. It was a homebrew emulator made to be used with flashcards back in the day but Sega eventually invited the developer to work on Sonic Classic Collection on the console
Sonic Utopia is still the best proof of concept for an open world sonic game. They tried that in Frontiers but without the much better visual style based on classic Sonic.
I still like the Sonic adventure 2 gameplay the best for 3D Sonic and think boost was the worst thing to happen to Sonic.
2D Sonic 16bit style is perfect. I really want more mania.
Cool sonic fan game
Where did you get the sonic transition things? (the ones where hes holding up a sign saying "it's")
You need to see SONIC NEWTROGIK PANIC, an amazing classic sonic fangame, the bosses do not hold back
I'm surprise that rom hacks like sonic classic heroes and s factor weren't included on the video, those are some of the best rom hacks that sonic have.
In 90s sonic fangames were basically roms ports or bootleg version of official games until 1996 .
One thing i strongly believe is that the Sonic fanbase is one of the strongest in the entire industry, the seer amount of amazing stuff they createm, not just fangames is mind blowing, and of course part of it it's thanks to SEGA, for allowing people to just create their fangames, unlike Nintendo with Mario, that they threw the dogs to you, even if the game is a non profit project.
35:46 I approve his words. Freedom Planet 1 & 2 are good great awesome outstanding AMAZING!!!!! Highly recommend!
As if writhing this, I have completed Lilac story in Freedom Planet 2.
@@shresthasengupta8984 hey man i have a little question
i have seen this sonic sprite before i think, but i don't remember where it's from
so it would be nice if anyone gave me the source to the sprite
9:25