I was a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan. I had owned every game in the series, excluding games like Sonic SchoolHouse and SegaSonic the Hedgehog. I had a lot of Sonic merchandise too, like plushes, posters, promotional cutouts, and more. My favorite game out of the entire series though had to be Sonic Heroes. I had grown up with Sonic Heroes and loved it more than any Sonic game or any game at all for that matter. So one day I was searching around YouTube when I found a video titled "Sonic Heroes Prototype (10.8 Beta)". I watched the video and I noticed that there were many differences present from this beta to the final game. So I decided to Google search to see if I could find this prototype to try it out for myself. After about 5 or so hours and about 20 or more pages through Google results, I found a ISO of it on a gaming website. The website looked a bit shady to me because it had a disorganized layout and a lot of ads. It looked like a site that you would get a Trojan from, but I still hit the download link because I wanted to play this beta more than anything else currently at the moment. After the file had downloaded, I booted up Dolphin 4.0 on my computer and ran the ISO.
The beginning of the game stated out normally, or at least it stated out the same as the video of it I had seen on YouTube. I pressed the start button on my Xbox 360 controller, (which is what I used to play any kind of game or emulation on my computer). The game went to the team selection screen like normal and I selected my favorite team from the whole game, Team Sonic. I really loved Team Sonic because it consisted of my 3 favorite Sonic characters, Sonic, Tails, and my most favorite Sonic character of all, Knuckles. I selected the team and the game booted up to the first cutscene of the game with Sonic running in what looked like a valley, with Knuckles and Tails running behind and a letter from Dr. Eggman which said that he was going to take over the world or something of the like. After the cutscene ended, the text "Seaside Hill" came up like normal. The stage loaded for a few seconds and then threw me into the stage that I remembered. This stage brought back many memories from my childhood. I then remembered the first time I had played through the stage. It was the Christmas of 2005, I was 11 years old, and my parents got me 2 things I would remember and still have to this day. Those things were a Nintendo GameCube along with Sonic Heroes. My parents knew that I really liked Sonic and after I opened the gift, I thanked my parents and then went to playing the game. Even though this wasn't the same as the stage that I had played Christmas 2005, I still felt nostalga for this game. The stage, the music, the setting, the character models, the textures, the sound effects, everything. Everything reminded me of Christmas 2005, until weird things started happening.
When I finally picked up my controller after staring at the screen for about 10 minutes thinking about my childhood and all the memories I had with this game. I started running forward and there was a really large gap where there was a straightaway in the final game. I knew this would be there though because in the video that I saw on YouTube there was. There were a few parts of this, going through the full game and ending at the credits. I had watched every single video of this, and remembered the player who made the video had used some Action Replay codes to get over the gap. I then went to Google to find some Action Replay codes so I could moon jump to get over the gap. Once I got over the gap, strange things started happening.
After I passed over the gap by using the moon jump code that I found on GameCheats, I passed over the gap with ease. I decided to switch to Knuckles, as he is my favorite character, even though the gate said to use Sonic. I saw an Egg Pawn, so I pressed the B button to punch it. As Knuckles picked up Sonic and Tails to launch them, he started to grip them with his fists. He started to crush Tails and Tails screamed in pain and Tails' blood started to get on the ground. Sonic tried to get away from Knuckles so he would not have the same fate as his two-tailed friend. But alas, he could not. Knuckles crushed Sonic with his muscular hand and said the words "That's what you get for trying to mess with the Master Emerald fucker. This is my game now." I was confused as to why my favorite fighting freak Knuckles who unlike Sonic doesn't chuckles and would rather flex his knuckles would swear and kill my favorite blue blur Sonic the Hedgehog and my favorite two-tailed fox Miles "Tails" Prower. And I also wondered why he said it was his game now, because there were still teams Dark, Chaotix, and Rose in the game. I decided to reset the game to see if I was finally going crazy or if what I saw was actually real.
I reset the game and instead of the title screen coming up and the song "Sonic Heroes" by Crush 40 playing, instead came up a red screen. Nothing was on this red screen, but after about 4.57 seconds, the words "PRESS START" came up. I thought that maybe I was just seeing things, so I pressed the start button faster than I ran from my dad when he was about to beat me. The game went to the select screen, but there was no menu music playing. The background to the menu was also really really really vivid red. It almost hurt my eyes. I could hardly see anything except for outlines of the other teams heads, which looked decapitated, and Knuckles gloves and eyes. I pressed A because I had no idea what else to do because there was literally no text on the screen whatsoever. Once I pressed A, a cutscene containing Knuckles and all the other teams in the game started playing. Sonic and Tails were not present, and I remembered that Knuckles had killed his friends for literally no reason at all other than the Master Emerald. Knuckles started talking, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. Then I saw Knuckles walk over towards the other teams and he pulled out a machine gun and started shooting like there was no tomorrow. After he shot all of the other teams, he started beating them with his huge fists. There was what seemed like a lake of blood on the ground, but that wasn't all that happened. Knuckles got a cup and started filling it with the blood. He drank the blood like it was soda. I wasn't even scared of this, I was more or less just amazed that somebody had the time to hack one of the numerous betas of Sonic Heroes and post it on some game website and say it was the real thing. After that I shut my computer and to my surprise, Knuckles was standing behind me, covered in blood (which was hard to tell since he is red after all), with a cup of blood and a machine gun. He started beating me with his massively large fists and then started to shoot my leg. I still thought nothing was wrong because I thoguht it was just a dream. It honestly kind of felt good. I thought maybe if I pinched myself that I would wake up from this, but nothing happened. Knuckles cut off my legs with a kitchen knife. I saw him eat my leg like a chicken wing which was one of the most interesting things that I had seen in a while. Knuckles had about killed me, but he said something to me before my death, and that was, "Thanks for playing the Sonic Heroes beta! We hope that you enjoyed this beta and that you hope on purchasing this game very soon! - From SEGA of America." I secretly enjoyed being killed by my idol though, Knuckles the Echidna.