Video summary
The narrator begins their journey by searching for obscure Sonic ROM hacks released before 2010, eventually stumbling upon a suspicious file named "sonic.mmeg" linked from a bare-bones webpage dated January 1st, 1970. Upon loading the game in an emulator, it initially appears to be a standard compilation of the first three classic Sonic titles with mediocre editing quality, but quickly reveals its strange nature by removing save options and forcing the player to control only Sonic. The experience takes a bizarre turn when the boss at the end of Green Hill Zone is missing, leading the player into an endless void filled with blank monitors that emit static noise. As the player attempts to navigate this glitched landscape, the game crashes upon breaking a monitor, but reloading reveals a corrupted save file where Tails has replaced Sonic as the playable character.
The gameplay shifts dramatically when playing as Tails in Act Two of Green Hill Zone, which transforms into a tense hide-and-seek mechanic against an "evil" version of Sonic who relentlessly chases the player. In this segment, the level is stripped of enemies and filled with palm trees to provide cover, while Tails's flight mechanics are altered to tire out faster. If the evil Sonic catches Tails, the player loses all rings and takes damage, creating a high-stakes environment where survival depends on quick reflexes. After successfully escaping Act Three, the game crashes again, only to load a new save file featuring Knuckles in Chemical Plant Zone. Here, the difficulty is compounded by another chase sequence involving the evil Sonic, who can be temporarily stunned by punches but still manages to drain the player's rings and health, leading to a rigged boss battle where the true enemy becomes indistinguishable from his clones amidst static-filled visuals.
The final act of the hack introduces Dr. Eggman as the playable character in Launchbase Zone, subverting expectations with a slow-moving boss who cannot be hurt by Badniks but possesses unique speed boosts. The level design deteriorates into an infinite staircase that eventually collapses, leading to a climactic boss fight against Sonic where the player must use Eggman's speed bursts to deal damage. Despite the narrator's best efforts, the battle is heavily rigged in favor of Sonic, culminating in a dramatic death scene involving red curtains and screaming sound effects before the credits roll with garbage data and a final message stating "You didn't save them." The game concludes with a haunting ending screen featuring Tails staring blankly at the viewer against a black background, followed by a text sequence declaring that the evil Sonic is omnipresent and divine, before crashing permanently whenever the file is reopened.
Read the full video transcript
The formidable robot.
One day I was bored and wanted to find
some Sonic ROM hacks to play. I wanted
to find more obscure ROM hacks, so I
filtered a Google search to show results
from before 2010. When I did that, after
scrolling through the results and seeing
nothing that really caught my eye, I saw
a result for a page with no description
and a name consisting of just a keyboard
smash at the very bottom of the first
page of the search results. The date
said January 1st, 1970. I knew it was
obviously an incorrect bait because
that's the Unix epic, but it was
intriguing nonetheless. So, I clicked
the page title. The page was very bare
bones and only had a single piece of
text on it, that being download, which
was just a link to download the ROM
hack. I clicked it and a file named
sonic.mmeg started downloading. It
surprisingly took a relatively short
time to download. But while it was
downloading, I thought about how
undescript the file name was and how it
could basically have anything in it.
After it finished downloading, I opened
a Sega Genesis emulator and loaded the
Sonic MD file. After just enough seconds
of a black screen to make me think I had
just downloaded either a virus or a
non-functioning ROM, the Sega logo
appeared and then Sonic jumped towards
the screen exactly like the Sonic 3
title screen. However, when it actually
loaded into the title screen, it was
slightly different. The title screen now
said Sonic 1 to 3 and Knuckles with
mediocre editing quality. Almost
everything else about the title screen
was the same as the Sonic 3 and Knuckles
title screen. I was surprised that by
the looks of it, someone had tried to
mob the first three classic Sonic games
into a single game. I almost didn't see
that there was another piece of text
under copyright 1994 Sega, which is a
common thing ROM hacks do to credit the
person who made them. However, it just
said X, which was not very descriptive
and didn't tell me anything about the
creator. Anyways, I selected one player
to start the game, and it opened the
Sonic 3 data select menu. However, you
couldn't choose which character to play
as, and it was always Sonic alone.
Pressing up or down would just play an
error sound. I also noticed that the no
save option was missing for whatever
reason. I was slightly annoyed by this,
but still decided to start the game.
When the game started, I was in Green
Hill Zone Act One playing as Sonic. It
had everything you would expect to see
from a ROM hack that claimed to combine
Sonic 1 to 3 and Knuckles with the title
card being in Sonic 3 style and Sonic
having a spin dash and his new sprites
and abilities from Sonic 3. It was
basically like Sonic Classic Heroes, but
without Tails and Knuckles following you
and being controllable. I played through
the game as normal, but I noticed that
there were no big rings, which meant I
couldn't do the special stages. This was
again slightly annoying, but I wasn't
too annoyed because I didn't feel like
getting the Chaos Emeralds. However,
when I got to act three and went to
fight the boss at the end, there was no
boss. The boss music was playing, but
the egg wrecker never descended from the
top of the screen. Confused, I tried to
just leave the screen, and I was
surprised to see that I could in fact
just leave the boss arena. And the
forced camera on the boss arena left to
focus on Sonic again. When I left the
arena, the area where the animal capsule
would be didn't have anything, and the
music ended abruptly without any sort of
fade out. The camera didn't lock at the
end of the map. So, I kept walking to
the right, expecting to find something,
but only found nothing. The area beyond
the non-existent capsule was just an
endless flat stretch of grass with no
trees, no objects, nothing. After a
minute of walking, I got bored because
my efforts to find anything had not gone
anywhere. I tried to walk back to see if
I missed anything. And I saw a monitor
that I had not seen before, which only
had static and didn't have any icon on
it. This made me confused because I
definitely would have seen it when I was
walking earlier. I didn't want to break
it because I wasn't sure what would
happen if I broke it. So, I just kept
walking backwards past the monitor. But
then, more and more of the blank
monitors appeared. A faint static
overlay began to develop on the screen,
accompanied by white noise. I tried
walking back to the right, but there
were even more monitors. The more
monitors that appeared, the heavier the
static became. There were too many
monitors to just jump over them, and it
was hard to see because of the static.
So, faced with no other choices, I
unsuccessfully attempted to make Sonic
jump over to a gap on the ground that
was too far to reach without breaking
one of the monitors. He landed on a
monitor and then the game crashed as
soon as he broke it, showing a generic
illegal instruction error, but on a
completely black screen. I was confused
since I thought that was a really bad
way to end a ROM hack. However, I
figured that something might change if I
reopened it. I wasn't 100% sure about
this since I didn't know of any other
ROM hacks that worked like that, but my
hypothesis turned out to be correct.
When I loaded the ROM again, Sonic was
absent from the title screen, but
everything else was normal. I opened the
menu and this time the first save slot
was corrupted. It said it was on zone
zero and the portrait was just static.
Instead of Sonic, the only character I
could select was Tails. When I selected
him, the game loaded into Green Hill
Zone exactly like it did the first time.
Since I was playing as Tails, I tried to
just fly over the entire level, but
walls that weren't there the first time
stopped me from doing so. Otherwise, it
was still the same as my first
playthrough until the second act. After
I got to the second act, the word green
in the title was missing, so it just
said Hillzone act 2. At first, I figured
it was just a graphical glitch. But with
how weird the hack had been, especially
with the inescapable static monitors, I
figured it was probably intentional,
even though I still wasn't sure why the
creator of the hack would do that. The
act was also completely devoid of bad
mix for whatever reason. At the end of
the act, the signpost was missing, and
there was again a long stretch of bland
grass with no trees. I thought I would
have to deal with the static monitors
again. But then there was a change of
scenery and it switched back to having
trees. After walking some more, I saw
some sprites of flickies on the ground.
They weren't moving and their eyes were
closed and there were more of them when
I walked further to the right. Then
suddenly the terrain returned to just
bland flat grass with no trees or
flickies and Tails started slowing down
by himself and then moved to a complete
stop. In a cutscene of some sort, the
camera panned slowly to the right to
reveal a single tree in the center of
the screen and Sonic at the far right
edge facing away from the camera. Tails
started walking in from the left edge of
the screen and the static overlay from
earlier with the monitors faded in and
intensified as he got closer to Sonic.
When Tails was about halfway between the
tree and Sonic, he stopped suddenly as
Sonic slowly turned around to face
Tails. Tails did his victory pose from
when he finishes a level in Sonic 3,
probably because he was happy to find
Sonic and the Tails has passed act two
screen appeared. But then Sonic's eyes
turned to static like the monitors from
earlier. And when they came back, they
were black with red pupils. Sonic
laughed and the score changed to,
"Hello, do you want to play with me?"
before just disappearing. The laugh
logically caused Tails to notice him. He
showed his scaring sprite to convey that
he was scared and ran off to the right
of the screen, jumping over Sonic. Sonic
chased after him and then the screen
faded to black before fading in again.
The word hill was missing from the title
this time, so it was just act three with
no other words. It was followed by
another title at the top of the screen
saying hide behind the trees or he will
seek which persisted throughout the
entire level. That was what you would
have to do in this new iteration of
GHZ3.
The stage was the same as the original
GHZ3, but entirely devoid of enemies.
And the visuals were similar to Angel
Island Zone Act 2. The evil Sonic, I
don't know his name, was roaming around
the level looking for Tails and trying
to catch him, and you had to hide behind
the palm trees by flying up to them.
Tails's sprites had been altered to make
him look stressed, and his flight was
changed to move up faster, but get tired
about a second earlier. I thought this
hide and seek gimmick was sort of cool,
but it took a while to get used to. It
made me rethink how I played GHZ3 since
taking the bottom route, which is what I
usually do, didn't give you any trees to
hide under, and the evil Sonic would
catch you. Whenever he noticed Tails,
the drowning music started playing.
Except it started pretty fast because
you only had about 2 seconds to react.
If he caught Tails, you got knocked back
and he took away all of your rings and
they disappeared and couldn't be picked
back up. If you have no rings left, you
would have to press jump right before he
catches you, or else you just die.
Either way, after catching you, he gets
stunned for about two and a half seconds
before starting to chase you again,
which I didn't think was very forgiving.
He could also float, but he only really
used it to stay on the same while level
with Tails and not very strategically. I
managed to make it to the end of the
level with only one life remaining, and
I felt grateful that I had gotten some
extra lives before. Unlike Sonic's
version, there actually was an end to
this level. It was a signpost though,
not an animal capsule, and Tails just
ran off the screen as soon as he touched
it. The score telly said, "Tails escaped
Sonic in act three, and it gave me a
lives left bonus of 100." As soon as the
game faded to black, I was half
expecting to go to Marble Zone, but it
just crashed instead, which I wasn't
really that surprised about considering
what happened when Sonic's part ended.
When I loaded the ROM yet again, the one
on the title screen was grayscale, as
well as the background prop of Tails in
the Tornado. I opened the menu to see
the corrupted first save and a second
save with Tails that said clear like it
would when you completed the game in
Sonic 3, but Tails was grayscale like on
the title screen and was just staring
towards the screen and not doing his
victory pose. I couldn't select it, so I
could only start another new save file.
And the only character selectable was
Knuckles. I selected Knuckles because
the game obviously wouldn't let me do
anything else. The game loaded into
Chemical Plant Zone, the second zone
from Sonic 2. I thought this was weird
and that it should have loaded into
Emerald Hill Zone since that's the first
zone from Sonic 2. But I didn't care and
was kind of invested in the hack at this
point. And it wasn't out of place for
the hack from what I had seen so far.
The first act was basically the same as
it was in the original game. However,
when I completed it, there was a
cutscene similar to one where the fire
breaths light angel island zone on fire.
This hack seems to really like things
getting set on fire. After that, act two
had the same level made out, but the
background and music were directly
ripped from the bad ending of Knuckles
jouick, and there was a C button tool
tip on the screen. When I pressed C,
Knuckles would either punch or do an
insta shield-like move depending on
whether he was on the ground or not.
Every once in a while, the evil Sonic
would start chasing after you, and you
would have to punch him to ward him off.
Like Tails is part of the game, whenever
he caught you, you would get knocked
back and lose all of your rings
irreversibly. However, he was also
stunned for a fairly long time after
getting punched, which was pretty nice
in my opinion because I would not want
to deal with punching Sonic every 2.5
seconds while trying to complete a
level. This mechanic really tripped me
up during the rising chemical section
with the moving blocks. As if that
section wasn't already torturous,
Sonic's movement speed wasn't nerfed one
bit when in water, and Knuckles took a
bit longer to punch when in water.
Nonetheless, I managed to get past that
section and the rest of the level, but
with only one life remaining. When I got
to the end of the level, there was
neither the water Eggman boss nor any
boss music, and I was only expecting to
be able to leave the boss area because
of what happened when I played as Sonic
and Tails. I actually could leave the
boss arena and the animal capsule was
there. However, as soon as I got close
to the capsule, the screen went black
and displayed the title card for the
stage again. but it looked like the
letters were made haphazardly out of
different parts of text from all of the
classic Sonic games. It said found you
as the zone name and instead of act two,
it said you can't run from me. When it
returned to the game, I was back inside
the boss arena and the final boss music
from Sonic 3 started playing. I was
caught off guard by this, enabling the
evil Sonic to rush towards Knuckles and
get him, taking all of his rings
instantly. The game was kind enough to
remove the falling floors that were
usually there, but the difficulty of the
boss battle was still absurdly hard. You
had to avoid his attacks by jumping at
the right time, and then he would taunt
you, and you would have to punch the
real version of him to deplete his
health while there were fake clones of
him, indicated by the monitor static on
the eyes from earlier on the other side
of the arena. The static on the clone's
eyes got less opaque as his health
drained. And eventually it got to a
point where I couldn't figure out which
one was the real Sonic. At which point
the evil Sonic rushed towards Knuckles.
Probably because I took too long to
punch and attacked him. Because I had
zero rings and one life, I died. But
instead of Knuckles doing his death
animation and the game over screen
appearing, the music abruptly stopped
and a cut scene played. Knuckles was in
his tired pose from Sky Sanctuary Zone.
The evil Sonic appeared behind him and
Knuckles barely had time to turn his
head to react before the screen went
black and a spike sound effect was heard
followed by a screaming sound effect. I
say screaming in quotes because it
didn't really sound that much like an
actual scream. And after that, the game
crashed like it had done when Sonic and
Tales's segments of the hack ended. I
wasn't sure if I was actually supposed
to beat this fight. After loading the
ROM hack another time, this was starting
to get repetitive. The two on the title
screen and Angel Island in the
background were erased. When I say
erased, I mean that they were literally
just deleted, and you could see the sky
behind where they used to be. I opened
the menu to see that Knuckles's save
didn't have any images of him on it at
all and was corrupted like Sonic's save
with the portrait being just static and
the zone saying zone zero. There was no
character to select and trying to create
a save would just play an error noise.
So, I wasn't sure what to do. When I
tried to play in Sonic or Tales's saves,
it just played an error noise. When I
tried to play in Knuckles's save, it
just showed a black screen and some
titles that looked like the bonus stage
title, but altered to say so many souls
to play with. So little time, wouldn't
you agree? And then after that last one,
the game would just crash. Starting to
get extremely confused about what the
game wanted me to do, I scrolled to the
far right of the menu and selected the
dull option. I tried to delete
Knuckles's save file. But as soon as the
pointer touched the file, the music
became silent and the words, "You can't
undo the consequences of your actions,"
appeared on the screen for an
uncomfortably long time before the
pointer was moved back to the far right
of the menu. Trying to delete Knuckles's
save file or any others since they were
all behind his save again just played an
error noise and moved the pointer back
again. Out of boredom, I tried to delete
an empty save file, but instead of the
pointer moving back to the delete icon,
the game became completely silent and
unresponsive for about 5 seconds before
a laughing sound effect played again. It
didn't actually sound much like a laugh,
and the game cut to black only for me to
load into a launchbased zone while
playing as Eggman. This completely
subverted all of my expectations. It
kind of made sense because the delete
icon depicts that man holding a sign
that says dull and it happened when I
tried deleting a file, but still that
man is supposed to be the villain of the
series, not a playable character in the
classic Sonic games. He played like
Sonic, but had no insta shield or spin
dash and moved considerably slower.
Instead of a spin dash, he would get a
shorts burst of speed whenever you tried
to spin dash, which was better than
nothing. And he could also do it in the
air as well, which was kind of useful.
He also couldn't be hurt by bad mix and
wouldn't trigger the alarms that make
the bird bad mix appear. It was a bit
tricky to finish the level because of
his slow move set combined with
launchbased zone being the last and
hardest level of Sonic 3. However, as
usual, the later half of the zone had
something wrong with it. At the end of
the first act, the boss was already
destroyed. The score tally popped up
saying Eggman has passed act one, but he
didn't do a victory pose. Probably
because he didn't have many sprites to
work with, and it just moved on to the
second act. I figured they could have at
least just used a sprite of him
laughing, but whatever. The second act's
title card had no text, not even the
Sonic 3 and Knuckles text on the red
banner, and there was no music either. I
was kind of expecting the evil Sonic to
chase me like in Knuckles's playthrough,
but he didn't appear. It was just
uncomfortably silent and suspenseful.
When I got to the end of the act where
the ball launching boss normally would
be, static appeared on the screen for
about 2 seconds before the level design
changed entirely. It was like the inside
segments of the original launch base.
But like what happened in Green Hill
Zone during my first playthrough of the
heck, it was just a straight floor that
went on infinitely. At least that was
what I thought. After about half a
minute of walking, the straight floor
collapsed from under Eggman and landed
in a formation like stairs and a slow
and somber tune began playing. After
about 30 steps down these stairs, the
screen would get slightly darker and it
would return to a straight floor for a
short while before I would have to go
down another flight of stairs. By the
fifth loop of the stairs, I noticed that
Eggman's sprites had changed to the ones
where he is frowning. After a few more
loops, I wasn't able to see anything. I
kept holding right until the lights
turned on and it was revealed that
Sonic, I still don't know what his real
name is, was in front of Eggman. Text
appeared. Let's make this fair, won't
we? It's no fun if I strike instantly.
After that, I was thrown into another
boss fight with Sonic, like what
happened at the end of Knuckles's
segment. The boss fight played in almost
the same way, but instead of punching,
you had to use Eggman's speed boost
ability to hit Sonic. And Sonic also had
a vertical attack and some other attacks
that he would use when you began
draining his health. Eventually, I could
no longer tell which one was the real
Sonic. And I died again with one life. I
thought that Sonic's speech at the
beginning of the boss fight was
hypocritical because the battle was very
obviously rigged in his favor and was
extremely hard, if even possible, to get
past. There was another special death
cut scene where Eggman was lying on the
floor, which they had noticeably put
more effort into than his non-existent
victory pose. Sonic appeared behind
them. Red curtains closed in front of
the screen and then a spike and
screaming sound effect played exactly
like Knuckles's death scene. The credits
began playing, but all of the names in
the credits just looked like garbage
data, except for the last message in the
credits, which simply said X. After the
credits, the ending screen appeared, and
it had unsurprisingly also been changed.
Tails was staring towards the screen in
the center of a pure black background.
And there was text at the bottom saying,
"You didn't save them." It wouldn't take
two seconds to figure out that Knuckles
and Eggman would have been there if this
ROM hack wasn't unbelievably rigged.
After that, the game crashed. I tried to
load the ROM again. It loaded into the
title screen, and the three and knuckles
on the title screen had been erased.
However, there were no options on the
menu anymore, so I couldn't do anything.
After the title screen music was over,
it loaded into a black screen with the
evil Sonic in the center of the screen,
just staring at the screen. Scrolling
text appeared. You can never get rid of
me. You will always be with me. I will
always be with you because I am
everything. I am everywhere.
I am God.
And after the I am God text appeared, it
just stayed in the center of the screen.
And after a solid minute of nothing
happening, the game crashed for the last
time. Whenever I try to reopen it, it
just immediately crashes again. It was
kind of a cool ROM hack with cool custom
mechanics, but it was lame that I didn't
actually get to experience Sonic 1 to 3
and Knuckles combined. I was also
disappointed that the boss fights were
rigged and I couldn't get the good
hinting that I presumably could have got
it had I won against Sonic as Knuckles
and Eggman and not died.