“Sonic 4”, not the one that Sega revealed a few days ago, but the one that’s been around for well over ten years now! As noted by Frank Cifaldi, it’s obviously not an official game, but a rom hack of an old SNES Speedy Gonzales game. It’s been getting a decent amount of attention since Frank put a spotlight on it, though a few simple observations have yet to be made:

• Since the SNES can’t handle Sonic’s normal running speed (you know, because Genesis does what Nintendon’t), the programmers decided to add puffs of smoke wherever he went. Either that or it originally belonged to Speedy.

• Sonic’s sprite is from Sonic 2, with one sole exception: when he slides down a line via handlebars, that’s actually from Sonic 3!

• But for whatever reason, Sonic’s “curling up into a ball” animation is completely absent. Instead, he jumps with his body completely stretched out, utilizing the sprite normally displayed when he’s jumping off a spring.

• And because he doesn’t use his backside in an offensive manner, i.e. as a spiky ball, he can’t jump on top of enemies. Instead he simply kicks his opponents by walking/running into them. Which begs the question of whether or not foes can do harm at all. The boss battle in particular is anticlimactic.

• For whatever reason, Mario is in the game, and trapped in a cage. Which Sonic can free him from by, once again, just running into him It’s funny how, whenever Sonic is in a rom hack, his company’s primary competitor is not too far behind…

You know, stuff like this is precisely why I miss the 8/16 bit era. Granted, not all bootlegs are this interesting, but most have some degree of charm, plus the more ambitious ones are actually quite fine games in their own rights. Now, if you go to YouTube, you’re going to find a mountain of Sonic rom hacks, but here are my personal favorites:

[Note: I originally forgot to attribute this to guest poster Matt Hawkins. Sorry about the error! -jc]