I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my Sega Genesis when I decided to see if there were any earlier versions of it. I managed to find a copy of Sonic 2 Beta 4 on eBay.
A look at the cartridge and I thought it was really banged up…well, anyway, “Let’s play the game, right? Nothing wrong could happen, now?” I thought. I put the cartridge in the hardware I had installed on my laptop, the Genesis cartridge slot. The title screen came up, same as normal, but a few things were different.
It was a lot different than the title screen of the normal Sonic 2, but I paid no attention to it and decided to enter the level select option, Up Down Down Down Down Up A at the title screen.
One look at the level select screen and I noticed two things were different: One, it was the Sonic 1 level select; and there were four added levels: Wood Zone, Hidden Palace Zone, Dust Hill Zone, and Genocide City Zone…weird. I selected Green Hill Zone Act 1. Green Hill Zone loaded, exactly like it was from Sonic 1. The only thing different was that it was really glitchy. My explanation of this could only be that the physics for Sonic 2 were really off when Sega was creating it, and eventually stuck to Sonic 1, although it was a new code altogether. It was a garbled mess, and it took me around sixteen tries just getting through Act 1. I eventually got to the boss though, which was even more of a garbled mess and when I thought I hit it, it was just an illusion. When I beat the boss, I thought to myself, “Ok, Emerald Hill Zone is bound to be next, right?” Wrong. The next Zone to appear was Wood Zone. When I started the Zone, one thing struck me. Why the heck was the game playing the Metropolis Zone theme? From what I remember, the Wood Zone was supposed to play the 2P Emerald Hill Zone theme. Anyway, I spin dashed up the hill and glitched through the wall, and I fell to my death. Crap; what was the code for debug mode again? I reset the game and played through it again, collecting six of the seven chaos emeralds. The next zone was Dust Hill Zone.
I collected fifty rings and decided to try my luck at the special stage; Success. Although when the results screen came up, there was no “Now Sonic can be Super Sonic!” message. All that came up was “Sonic Got them All!” So there was no Super Sonic in this game? I was bummed. Instead of Dust Hill returning, I warped to Hidden Palace Zone. Strange, considering Hidden Palace was two Zones back. I rushed through Hidden Palace Zone Act 1, but when I got to the end of Hidden Palace Zone Act 2, this is where I got scared. I saw Tails tied to the Master Emerald. Sonic ran and rescued Tails right before Robotnik shot Tails. It said “Sonic Rescued Tails!” and Dust Hill Zone Stage 1 resumed. I still had my fifty rings, so I jumped and sure enough, NOW I turn into Super Sonic. I played through the rest of the game like normal, but Genocide City didn’t appear. I wonder…when I returned to the title screen, the same was normal, but Sonic’s thumbs up stance was lower and his smile was faltering, like I did something wrong. I played through the game without collecting the chaos emeralds, and when I went to Hidden Palace Zone act 2, I saw Tails tied to the Master Emerald, but a completely different scene happened: Sonic walked to Tails and tried to save him, but Robotnik blasted them, and Sonic got blasted back. I heard a deafening high pitched scream, and I guess that was a voice sampling for Tails. Robotnik shattered the Master Emerald and Tails was no longer in sight. Sonic looked uncomfortable, even when the end of the act tally appeared. In black text, “You couldn’t save him,” appeared. The screen faded out. Surprise, surprise, Genocide City was next. It was a completely black Zone, like it was in previous builds, and Sonic falls to his death. I had 13 lives, so this repeats twelve times. When I had one life left, the level finally loaded.
It looked like a cross between Metropolis Zone act 2 and Chemical Plant Zone act 1 from Sonic 2 Final Version. There were no monitors except for the Robotnik monitor, the teleport monitor and the ? monitor, and they were placed in really easy to grab places, making this level excruciatingly difficult, and there was lava and spikes everywhere. The Robotnik monitor makes you lose all your rings, or lose a life, the teleport monitor warps you back to the beginning of the level, and the ? monitor can be either, considering the monitor gives you any item at all, at random. There were also and monitors as well, but they could only be placed using debug mode, and when I tried to hit them, an earsplitting buzzer noise played, like I was pressing a menu option I wasn’t allowed to. There wasn’t a Ring in sight, so I had to be extremely careful. I waited until a platform rose out of the lava and jumped on it, and then I waited for another one, etcetera until I hit the other side of the lava pit. I then saw a Ring, but it was bright red and glowing, and so I thought to myself “It may be explosive.” and jumped over it. I had no rings whatsoever, so I had to be extremely careful. It wasn’t TOO hard, as it was just a flat stretch of land that went for about five minutes. There were no enemies, and in their places, were the animals Sonic freed, but they were just lying there. Pretty soon, the animals increased in number, piling on the ground in front of my horrified eyes. On top of that, banjo music was playing in reverse in the background. I couldn’t place what the song was, but it didn’t matter. A message came up: “We can’t make this TOO easy for you, can we?” and all of a sudden, the game threw in spikes at the most random times. I had to time my jumps almost perfectly. I made it to the end of the Zone, and there was a floor gap. I jumped over the gap, thinking that when the signpost stopped Sonic would run to the right, but that didn’t happen. I lost control of Sonic, but he looked at the floor gap, and then jumped into it. The screen faded to black and the words “You can’t bring back the dead” appeared. The normal game over screen appeared. I remembered I had some continues, but when I pressed start, that earsplitting buzzer noise happened again. No matter how many times I pressed start, A, or B, that earsplitting buzzer noise happened. I returned to the title screen, and everything was normal…until I took a break to use the bathroom. When I came back, I got the biggest shock of my life. The demo screen was playing and when I returned to the title screen...the following happened:
Tails wasn’t there. And Sonic didn’t seem to notice. It freaked me out. I deleted my progress and reinstalled the cart. Tails still wasn’t on the title screen. I entered the level select code again, but then the game crashed and a single note played infinitely, and it was earsplitting loud.
I reset the game. Tails still wasn’t on the title screen, but what good can I do to him now? I started the game. Genocide City again, but this time there was a few rings and less lava pits. I managed to scrape together fifty rings and try to get a chaos emerald. There were no Rings, but wave after wave after wave of bombs came after me. It started with about three at a time, so those were easy to dodge, but then four at a time, seven at a time, twelve at a time…eventually, there were twenty at a time and I couldn’t dodge them. I tripped and hit a bomb and static played for twenty seconds. The results screen played with that familiar text, but this time “You can’t reverse your mistakes.” I rushed through the level, frantically trying to grab fifty more rings, but the next special stage was exactly like it and this time when I hit a bomb, it said “You can’t fix what you’ve done.” The level faded out again and Genocide city played. I had fifty rings, so I jumped. A message box came up. “You cannot become Super Sonic.” I jumped again. “Tails is dead.”
“You will avenge him”
“You cannot fix what you have done”
No matter how many times I tried to jump, messages like that came up. I just gave up and went to the end of the level. I jumped over the gap and passed the sign post, and this time I did the trick that let you control Sonic (run so Sonic isn’t onscreen and then jump a couple of times) and sure enough, this time Sonic didn’t jump into the pit. Then the words “That won’t bring him back.” I tried downloading the game on a separate computer, and this time, lines and lines and lines of Japanese text appeared onscreen:
“黙って、まだであること あなたが彼を殺した ただ静かに あなたは、あなたが何をやったかを知っている 泣いてはいけない 彼はあなたが彼を救うことができなかった知っている カレブは、右？ あなたはテイルスを救うことができなかった」ことを、ソニックと夢中だ。 テイルスは今あなたを嫌っている'.”
I don’t understand Japanese, so I went to my trusty translator, and this came up in the results screen:
“In silence', that it is still You killed him Just quietly You know what you've done
Do not cry He knows it was you that could not save him, not Sonic Right, Caleb??
You were so crazy about Sonic, that you were not able to save Tails Tails hates you now.”
My heart almost stopped. How could the game have known my name? I started the game. Japanese text appeared:
ジェノサイド·シティtranslated to “Genocide City Zone.” Great. I pondered over why this version had Japanese text. Then I thought: “Crud, I must have downloaded a Japanese rom.” I enabled デバッグモー'ド', which as you all know is Debug Mode. I cycled through the objects, and this time my heart did stop when I saw the Tails Doll object. I had to check this out. I placed the Tails Doll object. He was exactly the way Tails looks, except that he had his eyes gouged out and his fur was dark grey, and he was oblivious to all that surrounded him until I exited Debug Mode. Tails and Sonic notice each other. I lost control of Sonic and he ran across the level by himself, and I’m guessing that “Tails” is chasing him. Sonic sees the gap and jumps into it. The screen fades out to black. More Japanese text:
私は神です。もう一度あなたの小さな青の友人とプレイすることになることはありません。It translates into “I am God.” Then, the screen cut to black and something like the following picture faded on screen.
This screen really freaked me out. I didn’t even KNOW Tails Doll would be in my game. I texted a picture of it to Brenden and he said “Tails Doll hacked your game.” I pondered that for a moment, that it might not be the only hacked version of the game, but then I realized that this game wasn’t hacked…it was much more than hacked. It was haunted. I looked the glitch up online when the following error message appeared:
It took forever to get my computer to turn on. When I got it back on finally, my computer blue screened, then a picture of Tails Doll appeared again at a three second interval, three times
Only thing was, it was really far away when it first appeared, then it appeared again even closer, and then it was so close I could hardly bear it. My computer blacked out, and one final error message appeared:
All I could do was press yes, and my computer broke.
This is a true story.