Nothing in the world is better than the experience of finding lost media. 10 second clips of a forbidden episode turns into a full release, art pieces that were presumed missing or destroyed turn up in somebody’s attic but the one thing that really gets my interest is lost video games. Resident Evil for the gameboy, Rayman for the SNES, Star Fox 2 but the ones that really get me interested are the Sonic ones. Stuff like Sonic X-Treme and Sonic Crackers really get my interest because I’m also a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. Usually the two interests are kept separate but when the two intersect, ideas race through my head of what the full games could’ve been and coming up with concepts for Sonic games using the canceled ones as a basis. Reason I’m telling you all of this is so that you can understand me, on some level. So you can understand why I jumped at the chance of owning a copy of what could be the greatest piece of lost media related to Sonic. Understand why I went through all of this.

A friend of mine got in touch with me recently about some crazy piece of lost media that never got released to the general public. Sent it to me in a parcel, a decently big external hard drive that had about 10 TB of storage on it. Came with a letter talking about it being ‘the find of the century’ or something like that. What was supposed to be inside the drive was the thing that had me intrigued; A copy of a sentient artificial intelligence that looked like Sonic. Looked everywhere on the internet to try and see if anyone else talked about it, the only one being a guy who made a series of videos “talking” to it. Videos looked pretty fake but it was the only evidence that corroborated with what my friend Kyle was talking about. The videos of that Sonic never looked like the real deal though, he was purple instead of blue and had these big long pupils. Plus that grin…eugh. Not sure whether or not it was some weird beta design or that youtube channel trying to make some scary videos but nonetheless, I had his artificial intelligence all in a 10 TB drive. All that was left to do was plug it in.

Thankfully had a spare USB port to stick the thing into and as expected, the PC registered the drive and opened up what was inside. There were only two folders inside the drive, one called ‘Sonic Game’ and ‘DO NOT OPEN - RAW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FILES’. Seeing the obvious warning sign, I decided to check out the former folder first. Inside it was another folder that was much more clearly titled, being "Sonic 2 Beta: Clown Edition." Guess this was going to be how that AI was going to be used for those sick kids or whatever those videos were talking about, have a special copy of the game for the hospitals where Sonic can cheer them up. Only one way to find out if this was the real deal. Booted up the emulator, selected the rom and it was time to play. Title screen started up as normal with Sonic and Tails popping into the logo but a sudden change that came to the forefront was a loud dinging sound that came before a large black and white box flashed onto the screen. It said the words;

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

YOUR GAME HAS A DETECTED COPY OFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOFOF

YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND!

RESTART THE CONSOLE TO MEET YOUR NEW PAL

Guess it fitted well with the whole thing being incomplete considering the box and text looked like placeholders, and they seemingly hadn’t decided on a name during development. The screen froze shortly and gave a hard crash on the emulator so I had no other choice but to boot up the game again. Everything went by normal again up until the title screen again where instead of normal Sonic, the weird purple one popped up and gave a thumbs up. Tails took longer to pop out than normal but he eventually did, giving less of a smile then he usually did. For a moment I forgot to press a button to continue and just stared at the Sonic who was staring at me. Those long and tall pupils kept looking and his grin was as big as it was in the video. There were some changes I noticed though, such as a large blue nose and some clown makeup with some blue cheek spots and eye makeup. Snapped back to the present eventually, and pressed the start button to begin. Hopes were starting to pick up but it hadn’t reached a peak. At most, it would probably end up being some weird rom hack that might’ve fooled my friend. Wouldn’t really explain the full external hard drive but I digress. It was time to play.

Emerald Hill Zone began and there I was playing as this weird clown. He moved more…fluidly than the original sonic. A lot less tight in the controls which made platforming more hard but he made up for that with a powerup that replaced the spindash, stretchy arms that he could use to grab onto high ledges as well as attack enemies if he couldn’t jump on top of them. It was actually pretty fun, the controls and change of gameplay made this version of Sonic feel pretty unique, it felt like playing Knuckles in Sonic 3 all over again. Despite the weird first impression, it was a blast going through the first couple of stages. The boss battle at the end was a bit tough to get used to because of the fluidity but when I realized I could use the stretchy arms as a sort of homing spin dash, it was a breeze to beat. Jumped on the button to end the level and that was the first stage completed.

The screen jittered and froze for a second before it cut to what seemed like a pre-rendered 3D cutscene ala the intro of Sonic 3D Blast, of this weird sonic in a black void with only a small ray of light illuminating his face. It wasn’t long before some text popped up on screen, a way for this sonic to speak to me.

HEY THERE!

GLAD TO SEE YOU’VE BEEN ENJOYING MY GAME SO FAR

THE FUN ISN’T OVER JUST YET

I’VE GOT TONS MORE LEVELS IN STOCK JUST WAITING FOR YOU

SO KEEP THOSE FINGERS ON THAT CONTROLLER!

AND TO KEEP THIS POINT IN MIND

THAT SMILE IS WHAT KEEPS YOU HAPPY

SO DON’T THINK ABOUT LETTING IT GO

OR ELSE I’LL HAVE TO KEEP YOU SMILING IN A MORE

DIRECT

MANNER.

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT ZONE!