#it was so cool of SEGA to make the artwork in the Sonic Mania game case reversible

[bltngames]

SAGE 2020: Fan Games

I’d hoped to have this article out a little bit sooner, but I overestimated how long it would take to write about some of these games. Whoops! Like I said when I outlined the posting “schedule” on the first day, we’re playing it fast and loose, so this is just what you get.

Today is the day I talk about fan games! And even though SAGE has “Sonic” right there in the acronym, it’s always hosted fan games from all types, so today we’ve got Mega Man, Mario, Rayman, and even fan games of fan games, if you can believe it.

Sonic Pinball Panic!

Pinball is one of those things where I’ve always been obsessed with it, but never very good at it. And now, with access to digital pinball collections like Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX, I don’t actually find myself playing as much pinball as I thought I would when I was 14 years old. Still, I find myself fascinated by a good pinball table, and this honestly caught me off guard. This could very easily be an official DLC release for one of those aforementioned pinball collections and I wouldn’t even bat an eyelash (in fact, if you ask me, this is better than Pinball FX, which has always had weird ball physics). This looks, sounds, and functions exactly like a real pinball table should. My complaints are minor: for starters, the table feels kind of easy. I’ve never been a pinball wizard, but I was losing balls left and right here and it still took a good 15 minutes before I finally got a game over. Score accumulation is also pretty slow; most pinball tables will dump millions and millions of points on you, but here, it felt like a struggle just to reach the 379k I finished with. Both contribute to the fact that the table feels a little flat, like it’s missing a spark to really put it over the top. And, third, it would be nice if it had controller support. The keyboard works just fine, here (it’s just pinball, after all) but I find that the triggers on a controller feel really good with pinball flippers, and mapping the plunger to the right stick is great, too. This is a Unity game, so I wouldn’t think it’d be that hard to hook it up to the controller mapper. Still, I came away impressed.

Mega Man: Perfect Blue

There are two things out there that always give me pause: fan-made Doom level packs, and Mega Man fan games. Fan made gaming content generally has problems when it comes to difficulty balancing anyway, but these games have earned a certain reputation for their difficulty, which creates a problem when you have content made by fans, for fans. This insularity means these things are usually way too hard for what I would consider “normal” people (read: casual fans and outsiders). Add on to the fact that I’d even say that there are official Mega Man games with bad difficulty balancing, and you have a recipe for frustration. Sadly, this is how I’d characterize Perfect Blue: though this introductory level isn’t impossibly hard, it’s definitely pushing that edge where it’s not very accommodating to someone who hasn’t played and finished every Classic Mega Man game ever made. It almost immediately throws you into scenarios where you have jumps you can barely reach, insta-kill spikes, and enemies that not only actively dodge your shots, but invincible enemies that launch counter attack homing missiles. And then it starts making you juggle all of this stuff, together, at the same time. None of this is insurmountable as long as you’re paying attention, but as a very casual Mega Man fan, it’s an unfriendly first impression and makes me worried about what the rest of the game is going to be like as the challenge naturally ramps up. For those hardcore Mega Man fans among you, the rest of this is solid, at least. The presentation and controls are excellent, and the new sprites are beautiful. It’s a game I’d love to enjoy when it’s done… but I’m assuming I’ll be left out in the cold. A shame, really, because there’s so much promise here.

Sonic and the Mayhem Master

There’s a lot to like about this game, but there’s a part of me that really wonders if this should even be considered a Sonic fan game. Mayhem Master’s depictions of Sonic and Amy Rose are atypical to put it mildly. Here, Sonic seems to be a bookish nerd of sorts, a sidekick to Amy Rose, who has been turned into a burnt out, cigar-smoking detective. Most of the game plays out as half an adventure game, half an RPG, where you roam around the world talking to NPCs and gather clues while being assaulted by random battles. The battle system is super off-the-wall, too, perhaps taking inspirations from games like Mario & Luigi and Undertale. This means that battles aren’t passive -- you spend most of each fight dodging or nullifying incoming attacks with simplistic action-based commands. It’s weird, and different, and occasionally even a little bit overwhelming. That’s kind of the whole game, really. It’s the sort of thing that really doesn’t feel like a Sonic game at all, but it also doesn’t feel bad. The artwork is very charming, I’m interested in seeing the characters develop, and there’s plenty of worldbuilding and mystery. Would this still be as intriguing if you removed the Sonic connection, even if it’s so threadbare? That’s a hard question to answer. I know that some of my interest in this game is seeing how it spins more familiar Sonic elements into something that’s completely different. Worth checking out, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else.

Sonic and the Dreamcatcher

This is a fairly brilliant little game with two unfortunate quirks. If you didn’t know, the special stages in the original Sonic the Hedgehog were inspired by an arcade game of the era called Cameltry, published by Taito in 1989. Now, Sonic’s special stages were different enough from Cameltry that it wasn’t a case of Sega outright stealing the gameplay, but there’s a clear lineage there, and it only becomes clearer when you compare the special stages in Sonic 4 Episode 1 to Cameltry (spoilers: in that game, they’re nearly identical). Dreamcatcher is also from this lineage, but is infinitely more charming than either Sonic 4 and maybe even Cameltry itself. The idea is that you must collect a specific number of blue spheres in order to reveal the Chaos Emerald, after which you have a limited amount of time to find and collect it. It’s very simple, but the presentation really sells the game’s charm. It’s just a game that looks good and sounds good, with an interesting premise executed very well. Also, you get a dedicated “& Knuckles” button to spawn infinite Knuckles to help you collect blue spheres and bash enemies. Being able to have unlimited numbers of these guys sounds like it would break the game, but once that countdown clock begins, the last thing you need is 20+ echidnas clogging up the route back to the emerald. The first quirk this game suffers from is that there’s only two levels. Parts of this have a very “game jam made in a weekend” vibe to it despite the rock-solid music, sound, and gameplay, and only having two levels contributes to that. Hopefully more are coming in the future. The other quirk? You can’t actually download this game -- it’s embedded in a webpage. I’m sure this is to make it easy to play on any platform with a web browser (phones, PCs, etc.) but I find myself greatly desiring a hard copy of this game that can live on my computer forever.

Sonic Galactic

Now here’s just a good old fashioned Sonic fan game. Though it clearly takes inspiration from Sonic Mania’s aesthetics in some places, it’s clearly doing its own thing, featuring not just the core cast of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, but also Fang the Sniper, and even a brand new character named Tunnel the Mole. Unlike a lot of Sonic fan games at SAGE, this appears to be using something besides Clickteam Fusion, Game Maker, or Unity. Here, it’s the “Hatch Game Engine,” whatever that is. Whatever the case may be, the game runs very well and is basically indistinguishable from just playing Sonic Mania. Visuals are sharp, music’s good, the two included boss fights are surprisingly fun to fight -- everything seems to be in order. As a result, there’s not really a lot to say. This is just a good, fun game. Anything else I’d say would come off sounding like nitpicks. For example, there’s no way to set graphics options yet, so the game is stuck in 2x Windowed mode. Fang and Tunnel are cute additions, but I wonder how much utility they have as characters. Unless I missed something, Fang’s pop gun is mainly for a weak double-jump ability, and Tunnel’s ability to dig and ricochet off floors, walls and ceilings is cool, but it doesn’t have quite the universal utility of Tails’ flight or Knuckles climbing and gliding. It’ll be interesting to see how or maybe even if their abilities have a chance to grow into something special. Anyway, like I said, those are nitpicks, so try to give this a shot if you can.

Sonic Robo-Blast!

Remasters seem to be a bit of a theme this SAGE, between Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit, Sonic 2 SMS, Sonic 1 Revisited, but this is perhaps the most surprising of them all: a loving remaster of the original Sonic Robo-Blast. SRB1 was perhaps one of the first true “landmark” fan games, given that it was basically a whole entire game that people could play. It's not a stretch to say that SRB1 probably helped kickstart the fan gaming community that still survives to this day -- I certainly owe my involvement in the community to seeing SRB1 for the first time. The problem is, as historically significant as the game might be, it’s nearly impossible to go back to nowadays -- it’s much, much too dated to be any fun. This remaster completely re-envisions SRB1 as a regular Sonic game, while also pulling in gameplay elements from Sonic Robo-Blast 2. It’s a bit of a time paradox mindwarp, but it helps give it a bit more personality than just making a bog-standard 2D Sonic. It works, aided by the fact the sprites, music and overall presentation are fantastic. The only downside is the Act 2 boss, which commits the cardinal sin of taking away player agency and making you wait around far too much. Here’s hoping this gets finished, because it’s definitely on my radar now.

Super Mario Flashback

This has been floating around for a few years now and I’m glad to see it’s finally starting to get some more substantial content as it moves towards becoming an actual game. That being said, this is also one of those games that’s kind of hard to talk about because it’s just… really polished. The art is incredible, it controls exactly like a Mario game, and there’s already a decent mixture of ideas at play in the demo. Anything else I’d say would sound like nitpicking -- like, for example, the backseat game designer in me wonders if maybe the game is prioritizing aesthetics a little too much. This is a wonderfully animated game, absolutely gorgeous, but some actions, like the butt-stomp and the wall kick, feel a bit sluggish, and I think it’s because they show off fancy animations. Even if it’s a split second, waiting for Mario to attach to a wall to kick off of it feels slow. Really, though, that’s an insignificant complaint. This demo is still well worth checking out.

Sonic Advance 4 Advanced

This game seems like a greatest-hits of Dimps best ideas, spanning the first Sonic Advance all the way to Sonic Rush. There’s just one problem: the game seems broken. Now, my desktop PC is starting to show its age. I built it four and a half years ago, and though it can handle game like Gears of War 5 on high settings at 60fps, slowly, newer games seem to be leaving it behind. That being said, I don’t think a game like Sonic Advance 4 here should be running at what appears to be half its intended speed. It also originally launched in a teeny-tiny window (we’re talking, like, smaller than a postage stamp) and even though the options menu has a toggle for full screen mode, it doesn’t want to work. Something about this game under the hood seems to be struggling very, very, VERY hard. It’s a shame, because if this actually played at the proper speed, it seems like it might actually be an alright game, if a bit complex and busy.

Sonic 2 SMS Remake

Here’s a game I was all buckled in expecting to enjoy. Like it says on the tin, this is a remake of Sonic 2 for the Master System (and Game Gear), but with wide screen visuals and huge expansions to the mechanics, roster of playable characters, and levels. On the outside it seems really impressive, and to a certain degree it is, but something about the controls feel a little off. Sonic’s heavier here than he is on the Master System, perhaps to simulate “real” Sonic physics a little more accurately, but you can also pretty much stop on a dime, and the combination of the two feels awkward. The camera also needs a lot of work, as it’s basic at best and does a poor job of letting you see what’s below (to the dev if you’re reading this: there’s actually video tutorials out there on how 2D scrolling cameras work, it might be worth looking a couple of them up). It also leans into some of the tech limitations of the Master System, like how you aren’t given any rings for boss fights (and even hiding the HUD, a move done to save on resources for the large enemy sprites). I could be picky on a bunch of other little stuff, too, like how the flight mechanics feel, but there are other games to play at SAGE and I’ve got at least two more articles to write. Needless to say, this is a solid (impressive, even) foundation but it’s missing a lot of late-stage polish to clean up the tiny little rough edges.

Rayman Redemption

I tell this story every so often, but it was about three quarters of the way through Rayman 2 on the Sega Dreamcast when it struck me, suddenly: I love this game. I was being chased by a pirate ship through some rickety bridges and even though I was dying over and over and over again, I realized I had been enjoying Rayman 2 enough that I might put it in my top ten Dreamcast games. But that was 2002, and the years haven’t been so kind to ol’ Rayman. From the strangely celebrity-infused Rayman 3, to the tragedy of Rayman 4 (eventually becoming Raving Rabbids) to the endless, careless ports of Rayman 2 to every platform under the sun, one gets the impression Ubisoft maybe didn’t know what to do with Rayman. Especially now, when most of Ubisoft’s games are some form of online live service or cookie cutter open world experience (or increasingly both). But the fans know what they want. Rayman Redemption takes the original 1995 Rayman game and lovingly gives it a fresh coat of paint. The results are akin to what Taxman and Stealth did for Sonic CD in 2011, with wide screen visuals, improved controls, touched up level design, but gameplay that still feels faithful and accurate to the original experience. Except that Sega charged money for that, and here, fans have released this for free. Ubisoft’s loss, I guess. I didn’t play Rayman 1 until well after I’d finished Rayman 2, and I’ll admit, I kind of bounced off of it back then. It felt slow, and awkward, and when the difficulty ramped up, it got very hard, very quickly. Now, admittedly, I’ve only put about 30 minutes into Redemption here, but just the addition of a run button is incredibly welcome, and the retooled level design and powerup mechanics helps the game feel way less obtuse overall. It’s just a cleaner, tighter, more accessible and more polished version of Rayman.

Stay tuned for the next article: Indie games.

[sonic-mania-hack-nf]

Мастерская Steam::Sonic Mania Sprite Hack

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 When one talks about the best Sonic games, it's only a matter of time before the name Sonic Mania comes into the picture. After picking a bunch of talented modders and ROM hackers who had studied the ins-and-outs of the Sonic franchise, Sega released an excellent addition to the Sonic series that was universally beloved by most Sonic fans — a rarity at this point — and served as a great entry point for people who wanted to get into the Sonic series. Given the nature of Sonic Mania's origin and the background of its developers, it was only a given that several people would release mods of their own for this brilliant title. Here are some of the best mods for Sonic Mania that fans should definitely try out. Out of all the mods of this list, this particular mod features a ton of work and love. Integrating a new character into Sonic Mania is hard enough as is, but the sheer amount of love and effort put into Blaze's character is so immense that it's worth commending in its own right. The fact that this mod took a whopping three and a half years to perfect is indicative of the sheer level of dedication it took to develop Blaze as a playable character. With all new moves and animations, the end result of this hard work is quite amazing to witness indeed. The female characters in the Sonic franchise don't get enough love in Mania. However, with mods, they can potentially get their time in the spotlight This mod replaces the duo of Sonic and Tails with that of Amy and Cream instead. The modder even changed the in-game cutscenes to feature these two characters instead for the highest level of immersion possible. Labyrinth Zone is a legendary — albeit somewhat infamous — level from the original Sonic game. So, it's rather sad to see that this level wasn't remixed for Sonic Mania. Thankfully, mods are here to correct this injustice. Faithful fans have recreated the level for Sonic Mania , and players need only download the mod from this page to enjoy its brilliance firsthand. While Sonic Mania is a perfectly serviceable game in its own right, one can't deny the fact that the game can feel awfully cheery at times. The settings, characters, and story don't really help in this regard either. Along with this, the soundtrack of the game is also changed as well, which is quite welcome indeed. Sonic Mania uses sprites that are mostly inspired by the first Sonic the Hedgehog title. While this is definitely serviceable enough in its own right, there are a fair share of fans who preferred the sprite work of the other two titles in the series. Well, these fans don't need to settle anymore. This mod allows for players to play Sonic Mania with the sprites featured in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which is a great and refreshing change for fans who wanted something different yet familiar from Mania in terms of its artwork. The sprites of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 aren't the only ones that fans adore. If anything, it's the third game in the series that nails the edgy and cool look that Sonic games try to nail. So, fans of the sprite work in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 can enjoy the same in Sonic Mania with this mod. It's a great addition to a title that allows players to cut no corners while playing the greatest Sonic game to have released in quite some time. Sonic Mania Plus introduced an Encore Mode that allowed players to revisit old levels with new twists However, while this level is great in its own right, there are some fans who just wanted a bit more to enjoy. For these players, this mod is the perfect remedy. It extends Act 1 to make it even more reminiscent of the original zone featured in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and also features hidden stages that were missing from the vanilla version as well. One of the more minor changes that players can make to the graphics of Sonic Mania are the animal sprites. Most of them are average at best and don't feel on par with the high standards set by Mania in other departments. One modder decided to take it upon themselves to make this minor change. The mod they made improves the sprite work of the animals in Sonic Mania to make them feel more in line with the overall graphical tone of Sonic Mania. Most people consider Sonic Mania Plus to be absolutely amazing and the definitive version to enjoy this experience. However, no game is truly perfect, and there are enough things to nitpick in Sonic Mania Plus to reaffirm this notion. So, players who don't want to settle at all when it comes to enjoying Sonia Mania at its most perfect can opt for this mod instead. The fixes it makes are minor enough but have a disproportionally greater effect on the gameplay and feel of this title. Sonic Generations is a game beloved by many in the Sonic fanbase. In fact, most people would go so far as to label it as the greatest 3D Sonic title of all time. So players who want elements of Sonic Generations to reflect in the latest Sonic title can opt for the Hedgehogs of Time mod. Related: The Best Sonic Adventure 2 Songs Ranked by Spotify Listens Given the nature of Sonic Mania's origin and the background of its developers, it was only a given that several people would release mods of their own for this brilliant title.

[blazehedgehog]

I was interviewed to be part of this article over at Cultured Vultures! It talks about the history of Sonic fan games in the wake of Sonic Mania. Give it a read! I’m actually genuinely impressed the author (Ryan Atkinson) managed to track down Aytaç Aksu. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a very, very long time. That alone makes the article worth checking out, if you ask me.

I also checked in with Atkinson and he’s okay with me posting our full interview. I’m hiding it behind the “Read More” tag because as always I tend to be pretty longwinded (as usual; but that’s the entire reason I asked if it was okay for me to post)

Atkinson: How did you first get into fan games? Sometime in middle school, I started to wonder just how video games were made. My friends and I wrote up some very barebones documentation for a game we called "Sonic: In Your Face" and mailed them to the address Sega printed on the back of their game cases. Unsurprisingly, we received a rejection letter shortly after. But the idea of making your own games stuck with me; I started learning QBASIC on my home PC (an old hand-me-down 33mhz desktop running Windows 3.1). Starting high school, we all had to buy TI-8x calculators for Algebra, which came with TIBASIC. Using what I knew about QBASIC, I taught myself TIBASIC by reverse-engineering games other friends would send me. I started out by making simple text adventures (which I called "Moviegames," usually involving whatever my favorite movie was at the time -- Jurassic Park, Men in Black, etc.) and eventually started learning how to do ASCII graphics. The only problem was, if your batteries died, all software you had written would be erased. So it was a challenge to make anything substantial.

High school meant better access to internet-connected PCs, and eventually I stumbled upon something called "Sonic 2000." It was a Sonic game running in DOS, created by a fan. Or it was going to be, at any rate; I don't think it got very far. Either way, it piqued my interest, because there hadn't been any real Sonic games for a few years. It linked to a website called "Sonic Fangames HQ." Here was a whole community of fans making their own games, most primarily using a piece of software called The Games Factory (which was also available under a different name, "Corel Click & Create" -- same software, different brand). The talk of the town when I got there was the final release of the original "Sonic Robo-Blast," made in an earlier version of The Games Factory called "Klik 'n' Play." I wasn't impressed. The graphics were incredibly simple, the game didn't even have scrolling, and it was plagued by a bug called "Killing Death." It meant that sometimes, when Sonic would bop an enemy, it'd also kill him at the same time, even if you had rings. It was bad. I knew I could do better.  So, after acquiring my own copy of Click & Create, I set about learning. The rest is history.

Atkinson: How has the fan game community changed over the years? The advancements in tech are probably the biggest change. A lot of 2D Sonic fan games still use the great grandson of The Games Factory -- now called "Clickteam Fusion." That's because there's now a pretty robust open source code base called "Sonic Worlds Delta" that closely mimics how the Genesis games worked. Sonic fan games today can look, sound, and feel almost like the real thing, and Sonic Worlds Delta has gone on to power games like Freedom Planet. Back when I originally joined SFGHQ, we were all using The Games Factory's built-in "Platform" movement setting, which not only does not play like anything even close to Sonic, but is also just really buggy and terrible in general. It's amazing how much mileage everyone's gotten out of Clickteam's software. That tends to happen with these [easy] game creation tools; I've heard people doing crazy things with RPG Maker, too. The complexity of today's fan games versus what everyone was capable of 18 or 19 years ago is insane.

There's also the simple fact that the community changes naturally. There seems to be kind of a cutoff point for Sonic fan games -- usually you get experienced enough that you try your hand at entering the game industry proper (for instance, the founder of SFGHQ, Ryan Langley, worked at Halfbrick on mobile games like Jetpack Joyride, and now he works at Pikpok games on games like Doomsday Clicker) or you realize game development just isn't for you and you move on. SFGHQ seems to be a very "generational" place that you don't really stick around forever, though you do occasionally end up with people like me that never seem to want to leave.

Atkinson: How does it compare to other fan game communities? I think it's just in general more advanced. To my knowledge, SFGHQ was the first website specifically dedicated to fan games. It opened in either 1997 or 1998. It took a really long time for any other fan gaming communities to crop up, and they've struggled to gain traction for various reasons. SFGHQ was already a pretty busy place by the time I got there in 1999, and it only kept growing.

SFGHQ gradually slowed down when Rlan (Langley) left in the mid 2000's, primarily because it was difficult to find someone who wanted the herculean task of maintaining the database of games and resources. In the interim, other fan gaming communities have gained power in its wake, most notably the Mario Fan Games Galaxy (MFGG), which is far closer in spirit now to what SFGHQ was back in its heyday. But SFGHQ is currently trying to stage a comeback; the forums recently relaunched with the ability to publish games to the database yourself with an almost wiki-like functionality, eliminating the bottlenecks that were strangling the community in years past. Hopefully it bounces back.

Atkinson: When you first got involved with Sonic fan games were there many games available and were they easy to find? One of the benefits in those early days was how easy it was to make a game. Making games isn't easy by any stretch, but especially nowadays, there's a lot of work involved in making a good fan game. Standards are very high. Back then, the bar was considerably lower -- you could throw together just about anything in a few days and that would be good enough. I don't remember exactly how many games were available when I got there, but I know I was never short on new things to try out from my new friends.

Atkinson: Why did you start SAGE? I loved all the games my friends and I were making, but trying to talk to anyone outside of our community about them always resulted in funny looks at best. Many wanted to stay away from our games because they viewed them as an extension of piracy. They thought we were making illegal bootleg games, like that "7 Grand Dad" NES game or whatever. Technically, we kind of were, but I always hated that terminology. By that definition, fan art is "illegal bootleg artwork" and fan fiction is an "illegal bootleg book." It's all about your point of view. So, I figured I would change that point of view. The original goal of SAGE was to create enough of a focal point on our community to generate press coverage and destigmatize fan games. I wanted to show the world all the cool stuff we were making and get people to realize these games were actually okay to play. That was a struggle, but SAGE ended up serving a good secondary purpose in that it gave the community a milestone to revolve around. Suddenly the "when it's done" deadline became "get something ready for SAGE." I think that's the actual driving reason why it's still going today.

Atkinson: Please could you describe some of the 2017 SAGE games. Well, the big one would be Sonic 2 HD, a game that went through some turmoil a few years ago due to trouble with an unscrupulous coder. They're back now, having changed out a number of team members, and the end result is a gorgeous 2D game that I think puts even some professional efforts to shame. If you ever looked at Sonic's box art and wished they'd make a game that actually looked like that, well, that's basically what Sonic 2 HD is. It's still got some rough edges, but for what it is, it looks and plays incredible. If Sega ever wants to take another fan project under their wing, it should be that one.

Sonic World (not to be confused with Sonic Worlds Delta mentioned earlier) is one of a growing number of 3D Sonic fan games. It's been in development positively for ages, and has a big focus on community feedback. The game in its current format is almost too big; we're talking dozens of playable characters and something like fifty levels, many of which were made by the community. It's very impressive, but has sometimes had issues with accessibility. It's very easy to be overwhelmed by how much stuff is in that game, but that's the way that community prefers it. Watching this game in the hands of a good speedrunner like DarkspinesSonic is a sight to behold.

Crash N. Tense Adventure is an example of how, even early on, SAGE was never entirely about Sonic. I don't know if there's a hugely robust Crash Bandicoot fan gaming scene, but even back when I personally ran and organized SAGE by myself in the early 2000's, I made sure that this was more a community event than just a Sonic event. If somebody was working on a Mario fan game, or even a totally original IP, that kind of stuff was always welcome at SAGE. N. Tense Adventure is fantastic; I love the animation. All of the characters have so much personality that you can't help but laugh at them, and it helps that it plays exactly like the PS1 Crash Bandicoot games. Honestly, this beats the heck out of anything involving Crash Bandicoot since 2001.

Clash Force 2 is an interesting beast in that the original Clash Force game just went up for sale on Steam. This developer actually seems to be using SAGE as a way to promote the upcoming sequel, which is something I don't think has ever happened before. Sure, we've had games like Freedom Planet show at SAGE, but that's because Freedom Planet started out as a Sonic fan game. This is the first time a published indie developer has shown a game at SAGE, though that kind of praise probably depends on how much you value Steam's publishing system these days. It's a fun game though, blending Sonic and Contra with character designs that feel like distant cousins to something like the Battle Beasts figures released in the 80's.

Forces of Mobius is a game I feel like I should have spent more time with. It's one of the rare few non-platformer games at SAGE, being a role playing game starring Princess Sally from the Archie Comics series. I'm a little in the dark, but it sounds like there's a growing sub-community of people making Sonic RPGs in RPG Maker, as the author mentions other games not only in his series, but games made by his peers, as well. These sorts of games don't show up very often at SAGE, but maybe they should.

And I just can't avoid mentioning SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, a remake of the notoriously bad Sonic 2006 Xbox 360 game. I think there will always be at least one modder out there who is obsessed with "fixing" a broken game, often by creating an unofficial patch. Here, the solution is apparently to just strip the game down to its spare parts and completely rebuild it in Unity. It's an interesting proposition, though I'll admit I'm more befuddled than anything else, especially given how close it's sticking to the source material. I'll still try the finished product, though, if it ever gets that far.

Atkinson: What does you believe the future looks like for Sonic fan games? I think as things continue, 3D games will grow in numbers. Sonic fan games are dominated by 2D games because those are the easiest to make. But with the availability of programs like Unity, and the existence of open source code bases like SonicGDK (Unreal Engine 3) and HedgePhysics (Unity), more and more people are trying their hand at building 3D Sonic games, and the tools are only going to keep getting easier to use from here. Perhaps some day, we'll get a 3D equivalent to Sonic Mania -- a game built by the fans, for the fans, with the blessing, support, and budget of an official Sega title. That'd be nice.

Atkinson: Is there anything you would like to add? I'm not kidding around when I say I really want to help fan games grow. It makes me sad and angry every time yet another news story comes around about a notable fan gaming project getting hit with a "Cease & Desist" shutdown notice. These stigmas are still alive and well, when the people making these games are honestly some of the biggest, most passionate fans out there. Making a fan game is not something to be taken lightly these days; it takes months, more often even years of dedication to finish. AM2R was in development for something like 11 years, and one of the oldest Sonic fan games still in active development, Sonic Robo-Blast 2, is probably over 15 years old at this point. That kind of dedication doesn't come easy. It takes these corporations minutes, maybe even seconds to invalidate a decade or more of work. There is no bigger sign that they don't really care about their fans -- they just want their money. A "Cease & Desist" is like watching your hero rip up your love letter to them. It's awful, and it needs to stop.

A few years ago Sega actually gave their blessing to Sonic fan games, so I think the community will only continue to grow. Hopefully, maybe, my original goal for SAGE will come to pass, and the sheer volume of Sonic fan games will make it a little easier for all fan game creators to make whatever they please without restrictions. If Nintendo can have a whole wall of fan art in their offices, why can't they celebrate fan games too, right? Maybe they're still just lacking the right point of view.