Sonic Test Product
I’ve had my PlayStation 3 for around 7 years now, and I homebrewed it around 3 years ago which in all honesty was the best thing I ever did with it — I can’t picture myself using the PS3 vanilla now.
I originally hacked my PS3 when Sony announced they were gonna pull the plug on the store, however they went back on that so I just decided fuck it, no use trying to “unhack” it. Plus, the homebrew let me import PS3 games and shit free of charge, it even let me import roms, PlayStation or not, so of course I kept it as is.

My favorite pastime to do with my PS3 is change my location with the homebrew’s built-in VPN to browse the Playstation store in other countries. It's just fun to see what other countries have to themselves. Unsurprisingly, Japan is my go-to place for this, they usually have some weird shit on their end of the PS Store; hell I’ve even gotten some games from Japan I’ve beaten 100%, they have some fun games on their end.

Around a week ago, I was browsing the PS3 Japan store — looking for games to check out since I had nothing better to do as I’d called in sick that day. While scrolling through games, I saw a game on the store that I never noticed before, “Sonic Test Product'', I’m surprised that I never noticed it since it’s apparently been up since 2007, it might’ve just fallen under my radar since I’ve only recently became a huge Sonic autist.

The icon was as simple as can be, with Sonic in his idle pose with “TEST PRODUCT” displayed boldly over Sonic in a completely white background. I used my phone to translate the text to see if it was downloadable, and sure enough, it was. Since I’ve never heard of this “test product” and wanted to know more, I went to the /VG/ boards to ask about it, unsurprisingly, anons did not take the post seriously, seeing me as merely a troll — and calling me a “lying faggot”, so they were no help.

Seeing as I had no good sources for information, I guess I just had to go in blind and see it for myself. The game took little to no time to download as it appeared on my Home Screen soon after, the icon was just a white box — clearly unfinished.

I started the game as the screen faded to black, in which I was then greeted by the modern Sega logo. The screen then faded to black for a strange amount of time, like it was trying to load a bunch of assets in. After the black screen had departed, I was greeted by an extremely unfinished title screen.

The title screen was a PNG of Sonic and Tails both posing for the camera in an unfinished sketch of a Green Hill Zone like environment. A strange silhouette loomed over Sonic dawning a similar shape, which I assumed to be an integral part of this weird test. Interestingly enough, this test product appeared to be an unfinished version of some unreleased Sonic game, not one that I’ve ever heard of. Everything seemed new from the art to the music; however the title was lacking as all that stood in place of a title was large text.

“プレースホルダー”
(PLACEHOLDER)

Yeah, because I didn’t want to know what the game was called anyway, but it still had my interest. I hit the X button on my DualShock controller as instructed by the game, which faded the screen to black. Music began to play as the level's title card slid onto screen.

“Sunflower_Sanctuary 1/2 9018829”

Ignoring the unfinished text, the level started, and it was then when I noticed this game seemed to be using the classic Sonic formula in which I was pleased to see as I always had preferred the 2D classic Sonic games. The game felt a lot like Mania with its colorful sprite work and new locations; and what you see is what you get, it controlled just like classic Sonic and looked like classic Sonic. It seemed like this was a project Sega made to please fans of the original Genesis games, several years before Generations did.

I was playing as Sonic with Tails tagging along beside him — acting like how he did in Sonic The Hedgehog 2, both Sonic and Tails both had very different colors from the originals, sporting an oddly nice looking color palette similar to the colors of their modern counterparts. The enemies' sprites seemed to be placeholder sprites of the Badniks from Sonic 1, as they were nothing like them besides looks, shooting completely new projectiles and having brand new attacks. The music was also catchy and charming as usual, which isn’t surprising as Sonic hasn’t usually failed on delivering good music so it’s no different here.

Besides the placeholder enemies, this level looked to be completely finished, even with a new stage mechanic of moving sunflowers Sonic could bounce off, which were very reminiscent of the mushrooms from Sonic & Knuckles. This was also pretty fun for a simple test game, I honestly had more fun with this than more recent Sonic titles, which just made me curious as to why this never saw the light of day.

As I breezed through the level, and soon after, past the goal sign; the level concluded, counted my score, and faded to black — like all classic Sonic games.

However, once the screen had fully gone black, instead of being greeted by the next act, a figure slowly faded onto the screen. The more this figure faded in, the more it seemed to be some weird Sonic recolor, with shorter messier quills, a long strand of hair coming off the front of his face. He also had weird sharp blue boots with no straps or decoration and had brown fur; he looked like a weird kids Sonic OC. After he’d fully appeared, a text bubble appeared with Japanese text — accompanied by a Japanese voice reading the dialogue off in a cocky male voice.

“十分速いですか？さあ、タフな男に会いに来てください！
-レックス”

Seeing this, I took my phone out to translate whatever this character had just said, after pointing my camera at the text for it to read, the translation roughly read.

“Is it fast enough? Come meet the tough guy!

-Rex”