Mostly Harmless

It was another one of those days where my homework was all done and I had no idea what to do for 3 hours until my brother got back from work. After sitting on the couch and talking to the dogs got old (which wasn't that long), I went on YouTube for a while. Somehow I went from watching Spongebob YouTube Poops to some weird thing called Ode to New Spongebob to a video about Sonic.exe to a review of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker on SEGA Genesis. It looked awful, but I couldn't help but think about how funny it would be to go around killing bad guys while hearing Beat It, so downloaded it along with a Genesis emulator. One that was on the Nintendo Wii, might I add. Believe it or not, it was just as bad as it seemed in the video. I proceeded to get some of the better Genesis games like Toejam and Earl, Earthworm Jim, Space Harrier, Battletoads and Double Dragon, and a bunch of others I can't recall. I skipped over Sonic the Hedgehog, though. As a diehard Nintendo fan(boy), that blue porcupine was the bane of my existence. Eventually I just had to give it a try, because what's the point of having a Mega Drive emulator without Sonic? That's like getting a Nintendo 64 to play Superman. I downloaded it, and instantly loved it. The graphics were all nice and colorful, the music was very Genesisy for lack of a better word, and the gameplay was addicting. It was fun watching him roll around at the speed of blast processing. I played the heck out of it until I knew where almost every enemy was. To up the challenge a bit, I looked around to see if there were any ROM hacks available. There was one called Sonic Megamix, but it looked boring, so I kept going. I found another that caught my attention by the name alone. It was called "An ordinary Sonic ROM hack". Ordinary? Clearly the title was supposed to be ironic and the hack was anything but ordinary, but how? Did it add some super cool new ability? Would the gameplay be completely different? Could I play as Mario, Simon Belmont, or something like that? Or, did it maybe show something so twisted and evil that it wouldn't even be possible to describe? After having watched Ode to New Spongebob, I tried to push that last possibility out of my mind. The question still persisted: what did this game contain? Maybe the author was being honest and it really was an ordinary hack. Clinging to this possibility, I renamed the file to "Mostly Harmless", after the 2 words that replaced Ford Prefect's 15 years of hard work on Earth. (Fun was definitely not infinite with InfiniDim Enterprises.) I kept my distance from the game, but it was always there, beckoning me to just play 2 levels of it. Eventually I said, "What's the worst that could happen?" and loaded the file.
Everything went just fine until I got to the title screen. At first, everything was normal; Sonic was present in his ring with the ocean in the background, but then the screen was filled with static and a new title came up. Sonic's eyes were now black and bleeding with red pupils, the water in the background was now blood (what else would it be at this point?), and only I would know that the music was a concert B-flat chromatic scale going down, being played on what sounded like a bell of some sort. I wasn't really scared by any of this. I had seen more blood while playing Mortal Kombat (not to mention it reminded me of red Kool-Aid) and the music wasn't much worse than anything by Avenged Sevenfold. I pressed start and proceeded to the game. Once again, Green Hill Zone was exactly how I remembered for a few seconds, but then static came and ruined everything that made Sonic so rad in the first place. The graphics sucked; the ground was a tasteless grey and the grass was neon orange, probably to stand out from the now red water. The timer went completely apeshit, but I could tell that I had already been in this world too long. The music sounded incredibly familiar, with its slow, backwards piano notes. The gameplay was the worst. The enemies refused to die when hit, my score shot down fast, and collecting what were now blood-soaked rings made my ring total go down. Again, nothing too horrifying, but very jarring. I tried to proceed with the level, which was probably the only thing that went unchanged, when suddenly something blue appeared from the left and the drowning music played. As it came closer, I started to recognize what was happening. But this time, I had plenty of places to hide in the level, so I thought I was safe. I found a secret area in the ground and waited, but whatever was on the left showed no sign of stopping. When it touched me, I instantly died, but not before a black screen with white text saying "HELLO" appeared. The second time it was "YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE COME HERE". Yeah, no shit. Too bad I couldn't control it. Allow me to just say that there's nothing I hate more in a game than white text on a background of complete nothing. It seems like every game does it, too, from Ghostbusters's "Conglaturation!" message to the Wii's "The disc cannot be read" screen. Anyway, there was only one thing that could be saying hello at this point, and it clearly didn't want to play hide and seek this time. I tried again, only to have the same happen. I noticed that the blue thing looked like the title screen Sonic after the static, which in turn, looked like... So that was where I knew the music from...
I was playing a game that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Sonic.exe. (Don't worry, I won't make anymore Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy jokes. Maybe.)
After getting over that fact, I still had no idea what to do. I was down to my last life, so I had to think fast. Any possibility I could think of didn't work, and the exit to the level was missing, so I was more trapped than a fly in a Spiderman web. As Sonic.exe got me one last time, I started to panic. The game over text came up, which meant that something really bad was about to happen. To my surprise, the SEGA logo came up, which would have been expected under any other circumstance. But then...
Remember how earlier I suggested that the hack might contain something so twisted and evil that it wouldn't even be possible to describe? Well, I was right.
A sound I can't do justice played. Imagine taking the sound of someone smashing a set of chimes against a sidewalk and combining it with a dying man's last pain-filled moan. That's not even remotely as demented as it sounded. But the picture that came up... Oh boy. It was that infamous "I AM GOD" fiasco. Even having known what it was and seeing it a few times, I nearly shot through the ceiling. The strangest part was how the rest of my body reacted. I felt my pulse quicken and my breathing become heavier as though I had just ran a mile to save my life, but it seemed to slowly increase rather than immediately go to 200 BPM. I wanted my bro to come home already. He would know what to say. Above all, I just didn't get it. I didn't the first time I had seen it and still didn't. Was the programmer some hardcore atheist who just really wanted to get his thoughts out? I wasn't the most religious myself, but that just didn't make sense. [Allow religion flamewar to start here] Of course, right at that moment, my brother decided to come home. I shut the Wii off as quickly as I could and pretended like I was just talking to the dog. I couldn't bring anyone else into this, that would have been outright selfish to show someone that just so I could comfort myself. He immediately asked, "What have you been doing?" In a panicked and unsure voice, I responded, "Just sitting here." He gave me his infamous "O RLY?" stare and said, "Which movie was it this time?" "Nightmare on Elm Street." Protecting someone can sometimes be more important than telling the truth. "You're a terrible liar, you know." We both laughed. "How about a game of Brawl to take your mind off it?", he suggested. "I'll even play as Sonic if you want me to." Every time he tried to play as Sonic, he used the down-B move and rocketed right off the stage. Normally, that would have been funny, but, well, you know. Hiding my shock with arrogance, I said, "Nah, I can take you." I got creamed, but at least it wasn't that other thing. Eventually bedtime came, but I just laid there, watching Sonic getting killed over and over which always led to the same screen. I wondered, "What did I miss here?" Despite everything, the game seemed playable.
The next day was a school day. I tried to perform to the best of my ability, but I couldn't quite do that with most of my thoughts being in blue and red. Not like it mattered or anything, the end of the year was coming and we hardly did any learning. After science class, my friend whom we'll call C.C. since I have Poison on the mind and I were having our traditional post-science discussion. We had known each other a while and... Anyway, about 2 minutes in, she asked, "Are you okay?" Trying to suppress my thoughts of Sonic, I nonchalantly said, "Yeah, why?" She said, "I don't know, you just don't seem like yourself." "How so?" "It's just.. I don't know, you just seem different from usual. I mentioned that I found a turtle in my yard, and you didn't even ask if it was a Ninja Turtle! What's your deal?" "I guess I'm just feeling a bit tired." I thought about that for a few seconds. I could tell from her face that she was thinking the same thing I was. "I can't tell you." All day she hounded me about it, but I clearly hadn't lost my stubbornness. No one else asked about it, but I could tell they all knew.
The next day I woke up in a really, REALLY, bad mood. That right off the bat should have been a sign. I'm almost never in a bad mood unless provoked. Aside from that, it seemed like I viewed everything in the worst light possible. When someone complimented me, I took it as sarcasm and said nothing. Come to think of it, I hardly said anything to anyone. I was afraid they would make fun of me for being so scared of a Sonic game. Even when some of my best friends said hi, I didn't respond with much more than "Hello." I knew from the looks I got that they could all tell I was acting strange, but being any other way would have felt fake. On the rare occasion that anyone did make fun of me, I found myself unable to retaliate and stood there taking it. On the way home, there was a lot of pennies scattered about. I picked them up, needing all the good luck I could get, but it seemed like the more I picked up, the less I had in my pocket. As soon as I got home, I played some Doom to fight off the hell that had become my world. It was satisfying as anything to blast everything in sight with the BFG, but eventually it got boring and I quit. I noticed my wallpaper had changed. I dare you to guess what it was.
Did you guess that it was Sonic.exe?
...getting strangled by Earthworm Jim while Zitz pounded his head to oblivion and Toejam and Earl kicked it as hard as they could with their Super Hi-Tops, re-painting the walls blue and red? Because that's what I would like to have seen!! Especially after I found out what it really was. Of course, it was the "I AM GOD" picture, but with different text. This time, it said, "Like what I've done with the place? The only things I forgot were the visuals and my sweet piano riff." I thought about what that could have meant. I went to bed thinking about how my day went, and it hit me.
That blue assface was trying to recreate his world in my head.
I was in a bad mood as it was, but this really pushed it over the edge. He made my day the worst it could be on purpose? And for what? Probably for some sick kicks. When my alarm went off in the morning, I snoozed my clock so hard I broke it. It was no loss, the thing was a faulty piece of trash. I then realized that it was finally Saturday. That in itself put me in a way better mood than I was. I decided to go for a nice long bike ride. On the road, something happened that I thought would never happen again.
I felt happy. I was having a thoroughly good time traversing the streets and saying hi to anyone who was outside. I even stopped to make sure that someone who took a tree branch in the face was okay. I didn't want to go back home and face reality, but eventually I found myself with no other choice. I wanted to go on my computer again to do my usual geek stuff and text complete technobabble to my friends until they gave up trying to understand, but I was afraid of what I might see on my wallpaper. My good mood was probably just the calm before the storm, and I had seen how bad the weather could get. I eventually ended up doing it, and was immediately disappointed by what I saw. Instead of Sonic.exe, it was an ordinary-looking Sonic. There was no blood in his eyes or on his face, and the eyes themselves were white with black pupils, just like they should be. He did appear saddened, as though he had actually witnessed the animals he saves being captured. And his message? First off, it wasn't red, it was white, and in that cartoon-like font from Team Fortress 2. I love that font. As for the actual message, I again didn't understand. It said, "I, uh, see you figured out the secret." Secret to what? Life, the Universe, and Everything?(Ok, now no more Hitchhiker's Guide jokes. For real this time.) The game? My brain clicked on that last one. I pulled up my browser and searched for a walkthrough to An Ordinary Sonic ROM hack. The screenshots differed slightly from what I had personally seen, but they all pointed in the same direction.
I was supposed to break an item box to return to the normal world.
So did my breaking of the alarm clock instantly reset everything to the way it was, just like the game? Is that the reason why he looked depressed? And taken control of what? My life? I liked to say that I had control all the time, but I knew it wasn't true. I knew who really had control.
The next day felt like the second, where I was disturbed by the Sonic head but not threatened by everything in sight. I spent the majority of the day doing nothing and thinking about my wallpaper for that day. It faded between normal Sonic and our .exe friend. The text read, "This won't stop until you learn the lesson." What lesson? That Sonic.exe was God? I had far past established that that was not true. I thought about other life lessons I had learned. One in particular was "What kills you makes you stronger." Was that it? I noticed my Sonic wallpaper started to nod his head, both as Sonic and his .exe counterpart. I got the impression that despite everything, the worst was yet to come.
The day after was Monday and I had to go back to school. This was the day where I was in .exeland. After science class, I noticed C.C. talking with a whole bunch of girls I had hardly seen before. All I caught was, "There's something going on, but he won't budge." I butted in and insisted that I was fine in a rather snappy tone. As I walked on, I expected them to carry on as though they weren't talking about me. Instead, I heard one of them say, "Whoa. You're right." My background was Sonic.exe again, saying, "I AM GOD. I CAN RECREATE THE WORLD HOW I WANT." I actually understood this time. I learned the lesson.
The next day, some girl who I assume was the one that wanted to help me asked, "Hey Mike, are you feeling alright today?" I answered, "I'm doing better than I've been in a while. How are you?" We proceeded to strike up a lengthy and overall normal conversation. C.C. joined us while we were talking about our favorite shows, and she seemed relieved that I was finally back to my old self. What could I have figured out that changed me like that?
I learned that Sonic.exe really was God, but so was I.
Let me explain. God created everything, both the good and bad. He had full control over whether it would be used for good or for bad to make the good even better, because what kills you makes you stronger. Sonic.exe altered both the good Sonic universe and my own universe to make me a stronger person and learn my lesson. Sonic.exe wasn't the God that made us, but the one who determined the fate of the game, as well as me, for a little bit. I still am not sure who, or what, he is. Why am I God too? Well, not God, but rather a god, of myself. We all are. Granted, we aren't anywhere near as powerful as God, but because he made us, we inherited a small amount of his power; too little to create even a small mouse, but enough to make a difference in ours and others' lives. How? We decide whether we are good or bad. There will always be some people who disagree with one's decision of that. In our own lives, there are bad people out there who just want to spread their ways, like that girl that wanted to help me in Sonic.exe's evil universe. But there will always be many more who agree. There's no way to change that. That's why I couldn't kill the enemies in the game. They wanted to be where they were for whatever reason, and I couldn't help it. That is the true conflict of the human spirit, deciding whether or not it wants to stay how it is in the face of difference. It tries to change, but can only do so partially, whether it be a good mind changing in the faces of evil, or vice versa. Other games like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explore the same possibility, where as Jekyll, you can't harm anything with the cane because the doctor has accepted himself, solving the human conflict like I explained, and does not want to change his good nature by killing. In the words of James Rolfe, "Or, you could just say,
THE GAME FUCKING SUCKS."
Well, just when you thought the story wasn't bad enough, there exists an even worse ending. One that completely kills any suspense or remote creepiness. Why is it here? Because it exists. Why does it exist? I don't know. I was playing Sonic 3D Blast the same day, so I guess I just wanted to think about playing a good game for once. Keep going if you will, but it's about to get Trollpasta worthy. That's why it's here, you know.
After having that episode, my world became just the way I wanted it: the way I left it. Sure, there would be the occasional bad guy, but as I had learned, good will triumph over evil by numbers alone. Of course you could guess that I laid off the Genesis emulator a while. I was worried about finding something even worse than An ordinary Sonic ROM hack. I instead turned to Smash Bros. Brawl and honed my skills as a fighter, using this mod called Project M. I learned to wavedash right past anyone, do a DACUS followed by a up-B... Yeah, I still sucked just as hard as before. Ironically, the only character that I was best with was none other than... OK, do I even have to say who it was? I mean come on! This isn't even a remotely realistic situation! Why would sonic.exe follow anyone into their life after they've played a game that doesn't even have any connection to him? How would someone have a great epiphany from something that was made strictly to entertain? Why couldn't it have been while playing Bible Adventures on NES? It would still be weird, but it would make a lot more sense than this madness!
Well, let me tell you: That's the name of the game.
Anyway, my favorite fighter became Mario. Yeah. Are you surprised? Sonic's number one rival, save for Dr. Robotnik? I would pit him against Sonic on the Perfect Chaos stage I had installed. Beating the heck out of him was better than ever. "Yeah, knock him out!" I would think to myself. "Who's better now, Sanic the Derphog?" I was beating Sonic inside the setting of his own game! But then I paused for a second. It just didn't seem right to bash the one who had given me a life-changing experience. Granted, it was a lesson learned the hard way, and it was, again, through a video game, but that would be like slapping your football coach or drill sergeant. I stopped the match and fought Samus instead. I needed cape practice anyways. As I fought, I kept thinking about fighting against Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime series. I found a suitable suit (like what I did there?), downloaded it, then extracted it. Unfortunately, right as I was about to put it in the game, I had to leave for marching band practice. Yeah, that's another thing I have to mention. I started getting more involved with after-school clubs and things like Boy Scouts. I could tell there would be too many opportunities out there to handle, and not all of them good ones, so I took as many as I felt I would like. Life was too short. Sure, I was a god, but not the immortal kind. Anyway, as soon as I got back, I set out to finish what I started. When I went into the folder I extracted, I noticed there was another folder without a title inside. Two files were present within. There was a readme and one named "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fun.gen", an obvious spin on the dolphins' last words before leaving Earth: "So long, and thanks for all the fish", which were misinterpreted as an attempt to double backflip through a hoop while whistling The Star-Spangled Banner. (I am such a compulsive liar.) I opened up the readme first. It said:
Dear Mikey,
I just want to say that I'm real damn proud of you. You learned way more than I expected you to while keeping your friends, life, and sanity intact. I have tried to do the same on others before, and some didn't take my teachings so great. Remember those "heavy metal suicides" of the 80s? Do you still think that Ozzy and Judas Priest had anything to do with those? They didn't. I think I did it on a cart of Ninja Gaiden for the NES. As you would imagine, the gameplay was slightly different. It's been a while, but I think there was a boss that you couldn't beat no matter what, who was nailed to the wall in the shape of a cross. My objective was to make it clear that I could come in any form at any time, but it didn't quite work, mainly due to graphical limitations. The subjects I tested found themselves unable to stop thinking about the music I put in there, so they figured listening to their favorite bands would help it. It didn't. Keep in mind, this was way before the invention of the creepypasta, and people weren't used to seeing or hearing anything scarier than Nightmare on Elm Street. This was on the third day, when their moods got especially bad and the hints of suicide in the songs only enhanced the mood. I suppose they figured, "If this doesn't work, what will?", and pulled the trigger. I had to flee the scene before anyone put 2 and 2 together and figured out that my game could have had a hand in it, and thus, people blamed Tomorrow's Dream. It's been about 30 years since then. Technology has improved, making video games more popular than ever. I tried it through a Sonic ROM on one other kid who was just like you, only not as bright. He couldn't decipher anything I was trying to teach, and decided to upload it to the Internet as a prank. I quickly gave up trying to get through to him, and wanted to possess his computer and take the game down, but I figured "What's the point?" My plan was to distribute the game anyway. Wow. This has gone over 2 kilobytes, so I'll leave you with this: You're a good person, Mike, everything I couldn't be. Load the .gen file into your Genesis emulator. I think you'll enjoy it more than my first game.
-God (but which one?)
I thought about that all. It made perfect sense, but I couldn't help but think that it was yet another prank by the programmer. Against my better judgement, I loaded up the file, expecting a display of absolute horror, and was again disappointed by what I got. Sonic appeared in his ring yet again, and the screen went to static like usual. It subsided, revealing exactly what I didn't expect. Sonic looked something like a combination of his werewolf appearance in Sonic Unleashed and Tempest from the Heroes of Olympus series of books. His entire body was covered in hair, all of it a mess, as though he was having a bad fur day. As for the color, it was just one shade lighter than black with a yellow streak down the middle of his head. It reminded me of something made using SonicParadox's guide to creating Sonic fan characters. That made me chuckle a bit. His eyes were marble white and completely blank. No blood here. He also faced the right instead of the left, sort of like Sonic's mirror image. He had his viciously sharp teeth showing and his hands raised as though he was about to attack something. He didn't move at all, not even to blink. He looked fearsome, but not sadistic and creepy like Sonic.exe. The background reminded me of the world behind the door from Super Mario Bros. 2. It was colored in with shades of blue and purple, as if it had suddenly turned to night, but more sinister-looking. The strangest of all was the title. Instead of saying "Sonic the Hedgehog", it now said, "ENJOY". So far, it looked like I would have to take the game up on that. I went into the game with high hopes. For the first time, it delivered what I wanted. To begin with, there was a character select screen, very much like...
Sonic.exe. Oh great. More of this. "Well, let's get it over with, even though I know exactly what's going to happen to every character," I thought. There were three to begin with; Sonic, Tails, and Robotnik. Naturally, I picked Sonic first. To my surprise, the gameplay was improved over the ordinary hack, but I almost think the game went above that and made itself better than the original Sonic. Green Hill Zone was completely redesigned to create a new challenge, but a fair one. Isn't that why this all started in the first place? Because I wanted a new Sonic game to play? Anyway, there were now bottomless pits to jump over, which was easier to do than it would have been in the original, because now Sonic was equipped with a double jump move! There was also a wider variety of enemies. One reminded me of a praying mantis. When it crouched, it was just short enough to jump over, but it hurt if you jumped on him. When it stood, you could pass underneath, but this would only happen once every ten seconds. Another more annoying one was a robotic spider. It crawled up the screen from the bottom, shooting webs and trapping you if you didn't jump. He was also impossible to get to since he was under the grass. After about 12 seconds, static came and you know what happened. The music definitely stuck out immediately. Instead of that lame piano tune, it was one of my favorite songs: Haunted by Disturbed, in all its 16-bit glory. If you have heard the song, you know that there is a semi-creepy intro to it, but surprisingly, the game went on to play the full song. It both enhanced the mood and sounded awesome with the Genesis sound chip. The graphics, as I said, were made to look something like Forever Forest from Paper Mario. Apart from that, there wasn't much changed in the dark world. The enemies still didn't die and my rings disappeared when I collected grey rings. But then the drowning music played and the new Sonic came in from screen right, in the same pose I found him in on the title, where he looked really angry and ready to show it. Let's call him Predator. I broke an item box and returned to the normal world no problem, but he was still following me! I also noticed I had no control over Sonic and that Predator was right behind me in 3 seconds! At first, I didn't understand. What did I do wrong? Did the rules change since the ordinary hack? Well, I found out when he touched me. The game cut to an FMV shot similar to the one in Sonic 3D Blast. It reminded me of Sonic the Fighters, especially after what followed. Predator kept coming, looking very thirsty, while Sonic just stood there. Then, Sonic revved up his spin attack and hit Predator with it, shooting him about 10 feet in the air. Sonic then did his smash attack from Brawl; he wound up his arm, then when Predator came back down, he released it and sent him flying off to the top-left until he disappeared into the sky. It was both comical to see him fly so far like that and epic to watch. Another difference was that the bosses alternated between Robotnik and Predator. Robotnik fought the same, but Predator was a whole different story. His main attack was a spin move, sort of like what Taz would do. He charges at Sonic with this attack, obviously damaging you if touched. He stops after about 9 seconds, and that's your window of attack. He switches tactics after taking 2 hits. Instead of going in a straight line, he bounces all over the place and shoots lightning.
I moved on to Tails after the first boss. Immediately I noticed that Tails ran significantly slower than Sonic. There weren't as many loops and hills, but more pitfalls and air enemies. Luckily, the game properly equips the player to deal with this, because he could now fly for about 5 seconds and drop Chu2 bombs. The flight mechanic didn't work like it did in Sonic 2, but rather Sonic Adventure, where you don't have much time, but you gain height faster. The bombs work like they did in Sonic Battle. If dropped in the air, they fall to the ground and home in on the nearest enemy, killing anything within 32 pixels on either side. They were actually pretty useless in the air unless the enemy was right in front of or below you. This wasn't a problem, because Tails also had the ability to swat down enemies with his tails, like the Tanooki suit in Mario 3. In a few stages, the whole level is in the air and you have to fly continuously by landing on enemies. What I really want to talk about is what happened when I went into the dark world and tried to get out. I hit an item, and Tails stopped all of a sudden, along with Predator. Unlike Sonic's transition, which was 3D, this one just stayed as it was and looked like I was still playing the game. Tails looked towards the camera and nodded, as if to say, "Yeah, I got this." That didn't seem like his normally timid manner. The Tails I knew would have ran like a wuss and pleaded for Sonic to save him. Tails started slowly walking towards Predator, while static built... I facepalmed, having read this 7,000 times. I understand that he's just a bunch of pixels on a screen, but didn't he ever learn not to approach creatures straight out of hell? Suddenly, he knocked out Predator with his tails and ran like the devil was chasing him, which, of course, it was. He then took off flying, while the song Believe in Myself from Sonic Adventure played, again done well in 16-bits. Seeing how Tails was my favorite character, it fit the mood of the song really well when he fought off an enemy like that on his own. It made you feel like Tails was getting stronger and growing up, just like the song says. He kept flying until the background faded to black and something appeared overhead. He just flew right through it. The normal world appeared, and Tails came bursting up through the ground, putting me right back where I was and creating a small hole. That's a definite A+ for entrance! Apart from that, there isn't much to say. The gameplay, aside from the new layouts, went similar to Sonic's.
I moved on to Robotnik, which was when the game got really interesting. His only attacks were jumping and punching, but there was a short-range laser cannon upgrade. The gameplay was completely whacked out. Remember how the boss fights switch between Predator or Robotnik? Well, Robotnik's stages begin where Sonic's stage ends with the boss fight against him. The objective is not to clear the level, but instead find the pieces of the machine that will be used to fight Sonic. Each stage has about five or six, all scattered throughout the level. You have to collect all of them and bring them back to the start of the level. When you enter the dark world, Predator steals a piece of your ship if you can't get an item in 20 seconds. Nothing special happens when you return, though. Disappointing, I know. But now for the boss. Each level it's Sonic, and you have to fight him with a different contraption. In the first level, it's the drill car, except it now moves just as fast as Robotnik runs and can jump. Both players have 3 hit points. Sonic, for the most part, just tries to jump on you, where you have to get away and ram him with the drill. Do that 2 more times, and you're done. When I cleared Coniferous Confusion, a forest-maze type of level, I received a notification that a new character had been unlocked. I rushed over to the character select screen, and... No. It couldn't be. I had gone crazy.
Simon Belmont stood at attention with whip in hand.
My mind was absolutely blown, but I hesitated. How would a side-scroller like Castlevania fit into a fast-paced, adrenaline-charged Sonic game? I decided to see for myself. And... wow. The game nailed it. The first thing I noticed was that his sprites were taken right out of Super Castlevania 4, so that was definitely a step in the right direction. The gameplay wasn't what I expected at all. I thought it would be a lazy re-skin of Sonic's game, but the game felt completely different. Instead of running all over, Simon walked and took his leisurely time. As such, the levels were modified to contain more side-scrolling elements, like bottomless pits with crumbling platforms, floating rings to hang on to, and even a little bit of puzzle solving, like in Marble Zone where you need to whip sections of a wall to make them turn blue and open a door. Luckily, none of the jumps were a problem, because the game also used Super Castlevania 4's smooth control. As you might have guessed, Simon can attack with his whip and also jump on the enemies, but who would do that? Aside from those, there are different weapons in item monitors, such as the boomerang cross and throwing dagger. The dark world (or night if you prefer, because Simon's Quest) was also pretty cool. The enemies were all bigger, better, faster, and stronger too. Each took about five hits to kill, so you would almost be better off jumping over. Simon himself lost ten rings each hit, and died when he had no rings left, just like in Shadow the Hedgehog. There were also two different types. There were the regular gold ones for health and the blue ones, which acted as ammo for the weapon being carried. Enemies have a chance of dropping either upon dying. Collecting grey rings takes one of both types away. When Predator came, I found out there was an advantage to killing enemies. They all still drop animals, which go off to the left. Predator will stop to eat them, buying you a second each. When I broke a box to return to the normal world, I found probably the most expected thing in the whole game. Simon pulled Predator in with his whip, then the game cut to an FMV in time to see Simon take out a crucifix and jam it through Predator's forehead. He recoiled, clawing at the air and dissolving into a glowing green powder... Yeah... I was stunned. I was definitely expecting something remotely scary, but it was the coolest thing I had seen all day, or better yet, ever! It was like combining a Hammer Horror film with not one, but two, games. Priceless. Why haven't there been any movies like that? Instead we get a bunch of superhero movies and half-baked love stories.
Anyway, I then went back and tried to complete the game as Sonic to see what other surprises awaited. I was about 30 seconds in when something appeared right behind me (in real life, that is). It shouted, nearly making me fly out of my seat and drop the controller. I turned and saw who else but my brother. "Why are you looking at me like that?", he asked. "No reason," I responded and turned back to the game, only to see Sonic go running off a cliff. "Oh, nice one! You made me die," I said. He paused for a moment and said, "Been a while since I played Sonic. Mind if I give it a shot?" I said yes and gave it to him. I explained the control, but not the dark world thing, and he was as confused as I was when I first played the Ordinary game. I told him to hit a box right before he died and saved him at the last second, but he still got killed a few times. Luckily, the annoying death message was gone and Sonic died normally upon impact. Eventually he lost all lives and got a game over. Fortunately, the game came with a nifty save feature that tracks each character's progress, so my place wasn't lost. My brother yelled, "What the hell is that?!" I saw it too, but took it lighter. It was the picture of Sonic.exe holding hands with Sally from Sonic.exe Round 2, this time without a sound to accompany it. As one would expect, at the top, it had a message: "I CAN BE KIND WHEN I WANT TO." Unlike the "I AM GOD" thing, I understood right away. The first hack was created to annoy me, but this one did the opposite and delivered something I had fun playing. I tried to look shocked, but I realized something.
Sonic.exe could have used his otherworldly imagination to create a game to showcase something so inhumanely cruel and disgusting that even the remote thought of it would drive the most innocent and harmless people to go on a ruthless killing spree to ensure that nobody else could ever think of such a horror. Instead, he used the same thing to create something that far surpassed my expectations for a video game. That's because no matter how evil or benevolent any given thing is, it can be used any way. All the time, I see generally nice people used for all the wrong things, but I also see the opposite happen. For instance, there was this one kid in my social studies class who always got caught spraying graffiti on walls. After his 6th suspension or so, he was caught near the theater, where the drama club just so happened to be doing a play parodying life in the city. Something was missing from one of their set pieces, so they took him in, and in a few weeks, what had once been a destructive habit was now benefitting the school. Another thing I grasped: I said earlier that bad people never turn entirely good and vice versa, but I was wrong. As Anne Frank said it, "I believe that all people truly are good at heart."
OK, now it's about to get corny. Grab some popcorn if you want to make it even cornier, because that's seriously the only way it could get worse. I'm warning you.
Our "hero" then went on to live a good life. (I put that in quotes, because, really, he only saved his own arse.) He grew up to become a band director at *NAME AND ADDRESS WITHHELD*, but he did occasionally write novels, and was noted for his outlandish way of looking at everything ("'Am I inside the house, or outside of the world?'", says a character in one of these books) and ability to joke about almost anything ("'What, are you trying to interpret art?'" was the response.) When asked where he draws inspiration, he always answered, "Well, I do play video games a lot, if that answers anything." Most of the time, it didn't, but he always remembered, and so did I. His friend C.C. had to move because her parents got jobs on the east coast, so he ended up marrying whom we'll call Blinky because she had this uncanny ability to twitch her eyelids. They had 2 kids, a son and a daughter, who seemed to be the opposites of their parents. They shared the same good nature, but that's about it. Blinky liked modern pop music and reading, while the daughter listened to bands such as Godsmack or Mötley Crüe and liked movies. The son had no idea what he was doing with a computer, but that was right up Mike's alley. There were more differences, but you get the idea. But wait. Who's writing this right now? Have I been stalking Mike? Well, yes, to a certain extent. But who am I? The answer is quite simple, really.
16-BIT I AM GOD PICTURE HERE*
Looking back on it, it's really quite amazing what a video game can do to a person. Would his life have gone differently if I never interfered? I don't know. One thing is for sure, though; Mike definitely changed. I was going along my regular possession route when I somehow ended up at his computer. There was a file named Mostly Harmless.txt, which is what you're reading right now. I figured, "Why upload the experiment when I can upload the results?" After I did, I stuck around for a bit. I did some observation and wrote the monologue above. Eventually, Mike noticed something was up with his computer, and did a scan. I was being careless that day, and even the most broken security software could have noticed that sonic.exe was making changes to files. To avoid being erased, I hurried out, accidentally corrupting his copy of An Ordinary Sonic ROM Hack on the way. I panicked and took it with me. But then I tripped over 7-zip and landed in his disc drive, dropping the file in the inserted CD. When he wasn't looking, I brought the CD with me too. After flying through the window and catching my breath, I realized that if I stuck around, someone would eventually find the CD and figure out what I was doing, so I created a portal at complete random and threw it in. After a few days, I realized that wasn't a smart idea, so I went to the same spot and went through the portal. I ended up in some small town, and later found out I was in the year 2010. I looked all over, but didn't see the CD anywhere. I've heard reports of people actually playing what's on the disc, but I haven't found anything. Can anyone help me find it? I think the file on it might have gotten renamed to Sonic.exe.
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Category:Sonic