yeah this is really shit i'm sorry

SPEEDY HOG 7, least that's what the label on the cartridge (also featuring stolen and crappily edited fanart) appears to translate to.
It's a bootleg Genesis game that appears to originate from Asia. Found it at a flea market, the seller said they never bothered to play it, since they didn't even own a console. It comes with a manual written in Chinese that contains no pictures of the game itself, only poorly edited pictures of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Eggman. Sorry, what I meant to say was "Hog, Fox, Punch, and ..." They gave the crew poorly done redesigns, and somehow they never bothered to actually give Eggman a new name, No big deal since it would've been shit anyways. The manual is also useless, even after being translated, it seems to be nothing more than a basic rundown on who Sonic is and how the game controls (no different from Sonic 3). Interesting however is that it lists the zones. It uses confusing bootleg names, but from what I can gather, the first 4 zones seem to just be the same as those of the first Sonic game, and then the last two zones are Hidden Palace and Launch Base. I imagine they are added in lazily. It's time to actually play this thing.

It starts similarly to Sonic 3 itself, albeit with the title screen and save select graphics completely changed. The character select shows a preview of how each character has been changed. Sonic, or "Hog", appears to be a lighter blue, with black colored shoes. He also appears to have a different, happier looking face. Tails, or "Fox" appears to be brown, with similarly black shoes, and a similarly happier face. Knuckles or "Punch" appears the exact same but pink. I think they just got lazy here. Eggman isn't changed at all. I decided to go with Sonic first.

The zone name was in Chinese, but as I thought, it's just Green Hill, with a different palette. The sprites seem to be really poorly implemented, broken in quite a few places... I was about ready to call it quits, but I decided I needed to keep going, someone had to document this, I guess it was gonna be me, whether this hack was anything interesting or not. I kept going through the act, and it was just act 1 from the original Sonic 1 with special stage rings placed around. Interestingly, "Hog" was behaving really erratically around these rings, almost like I was losing control of him, but I managed to get past it. For that reason I decided not to enter the special stage, at least until Act 2. Act 1 ended with the miniboss of Angel Island Act 1, fitting for how lazy this hack seemed.

Act 2 began, and I decided to flag down a special stage ring. Once again, Hog behaved erratically around it, but he actually seemed to be pushing towards it, which worked in my favor, and I entered the special stage. Inside the Special Stage it was just Sonic. Nothing new or interesting, no changes, it was just Sonic 3's special stages. Fucking figures, but what WAS weird was that it just completed itself. After collecting the emerald and returning to the main game, Hog's appearance seemed slightly different. Nothing noticeable unless you're really autistic. I decided to shrug it off, since it wasn't that different and I was probably wrong about it changing.

I'll spare you the details as I nabbed the remaining Chaos Emeralds or "Gems" as the game called them (for some reason using a really uninteresting name). As I collected them, my suspicion was proven correct, as Hog's appearance DID change! His appearance seemed to be changing in palette back to Sonic's appearance, which was odd, but even weirder was as I did it, he behaved even more erratically, even while I wasn't near Special Stages at all! It really felt like I was losing control over him, but when I got the 7th gem, that really did it. Now sonic just stood there, I couldn't move him or anything. He tried to go Super on his own and the game just freaked out at the thought of it, like completely fucked up and crashed.

I had to reset the game, and when I got back to the save select to reload...it was gone. Even worse, I couldn't select Sonic (I'm gonna stop calling him Hog now.) to play as, I only had Fox and Punch. I decide, fuck it, let's keep going, I'll go in order of who I like the most...alright, Fox. I chose Fox, but I'm gonna call him Tails because that's what he's called, dammit. He started immediately in what looked like Spring Yard with a really shitty palette. This was a new save file too. Either way, I made it through Act 1 without any issues. The miniboss was that of Carnival Night's, being the fourth zone, which was...kinda fitting, I don't know? Act 2 started off normal enough, but then halfway through, a clone of Tails came on screen and started chasing "Fox" who I was playing as. As I was quickly outrunning him, I noticed not only that version of Tails had semi corrupted sprites, it's palette was also closer to how Tails normally looks.

This is a really fuckin weird bootleg, anyway at the end of act 2 the boss was the same, but it was piloted by...Sonic? He looks how he normally does, if that means anything. After defeating the boss, Sonic was just, standing there, in place of the animal capsule. When I approached with Tails, he tried to go super again for some reason, and the game did the same thing it did before when he tried that, it just freaked out, broke the graphics, and crashed. After reloading it once again, I just had one character left. Punch. Who is Knuckles. With a shitty name. Let's fucking do this.

Knuckles started in Hidden Palace, which had a palette change just as bad as every other zone I played, which due to the erratic nature of this shitty hack was literally just Green Hill, Marble, Spring Yard, and this zone. One thing I immediately noticed was that this was on what is usually Sonic's route, and Sonic fights Knuckles...so guess who Punch fights here. That's right. Sonic. The fight is exactly the same as the Knuckles fight in S&K, with Sonic using incredibly unfitting sprites for gliding, along with his sprites being somewhat broken in general.. After being defeated, there are suddenly two Sonics. No explanation why. Though, the second Sonic that suddenly spawned appears more like the "Hog" I was playing as at the start. Then this Hog suddenly became the CPU character following Punch, like how Sonic follows Tails.

Sonic ran into the area with the Master Emerald (no super emeralds were present here), and I followed with "Punch" and "Hog". Sonic jumped on top of the Master Emerald, and tried to transform, which ended about as well as it could've. The Master Emerald simply disappeared. No, I don't know what it would've been called in this bootleg hack, but it would've been a shitty name. I couldn't have been prepared for what happened next. The screen turned completely green, and then it let out the most ear-piercing sound possible, like holy fuck this was SO FUCKING LOUD it actually hurt a lot. The screen then began to completely freak out, spawning random sprites in random places, mostly just Sonic's sprite and the Game Over text, and then...the game just stopped. Cut to black.

I looked over to the console and smoke was coming out of the cartridge, I'm not sure how it was even doing that... I tried to reload it, it gave nothing, no doubt the game was fuckin fried. I bought some equipment online and later tried to see if I could dump the ROM off of it...no such luck, it was simply too far gone. Nothing that happened in the game was ever explained, so I was just left to ponder on my own what the fuck just happened. Man I wish I had recorded this shit.

(This is no better than Jack's writing.)
(In fact it is most likely worse.)
(Yes, this name fucking sucks.)
(Punch is a shitty name for a bootleg.)
(I don't know why I kept the name Hog.)
(I actually do know why, it's laziness.)
(This is nothing serious, this is just practice.)
(Sonic doesn't kill anyone, the game is just horrible and deletes characters.)
(This was churned out in only a few minutes. Not like it would've been better if I had taken my time.)
(I want you to listen to this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFI6cV9slfI)