Fan Works

New Sonic Fan Project Shows Promise

Forum member pelikan13 surprised the Retro forums earlier today with his as-of-yet unnamed Sonic fan project. Sporting wonderful 3D graphics and running on the Unity3D engine, the project shows immense amounts of promise, even being instantly praised as how the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 4 “should have been done.”

Here’s a screenshot:

More screenshots and even a video are available in the relevant forum topic.

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20 Comments

  • Reply

    It seems to me that fans can make a better sonic game than sonic team themselves, probably because they don’t have a deadline.

    • Reply

      thats true.

  • Reply

    Watch this turn into vaporware or take close to 5 years to complete. Every fangame that shows promise with one or two people working on it always takes that long.

    (yay first news comment for me)

  • Reply

    Looks nice, Ye I agree. Sonic Megamix imo. best sonic game I ever played. Sonic team should stole that idea 😛

  • Reply

    Came up with a possible solution to the “busyness”.

    ORIGINAL:
    http://i40.tinypic.com/az8l6e.jpg

    Then, take out the grass that sits on the platforms. It makes the platforms easier to see.

    GRASS TAKEN OUT:
    http://i40.tinypic.com/143qoh4.jpg

    And finally, add in some atmospheric scattering (some call it fog but this is not the correct term) which takes into account distance. I noticed someone on the Sonic Retro forums applied “fog” uniformly across the background, this is not proper. The furthest objects are lighter and the closer objects get the less desaturated they are.

    I also applied some DOF…again, further objects are blurrier and closer ones are clearer.

    GRASS TAKEN OUT + ATMOSPHERIC SCATTERING + DOF:
    http://i43.tinypic.com/97qhl3.jpg

    I did a poor photoshop job, but these features should be pretty easy to implement and tweak (maybe I have too much “fog”) in Unity 3D. I’ve registered for Sonic Retro Forums and hope to share this with pelikan13, once they’ve approved my account.

  • Reply

    Are you kidding me? The way it “should have been done”? No one has even played Sonic 4 yet! How can you judge it?

    Ugh. I really hope fans aren’t jumping to that conclusion just because of the character model…

    • Reply

      They are. Granted Sonic 4 probably won’t be great, people are still coming up with some really insane reasons to hate it. I guess the latest is “oh my god, Sonic 4 isn’t anything like ____’s fan game!”

    • Reply

      They mean from a strictly-visual standpoint. And for the most part I agree: barring some excess visual noise (and I think the high grass needs a trim), the aesthetic of this game is much more pleasing to the eye.

  • Reply

    His character model looks like a redesign of Sonic Advance

  • Reply

    Look out SAGE 2010!

  • Reply

    Why don’t you pitch a demo to Sega, so they can start making things right again?

  • Reply

    Am I the only one that thinks this looks absolutely horrible? Sorry no offence, but the colours are extremely peturbing and annoying!

  • Reply

    Wow… I didn’t read the title at 1st.. I thought that game WAS Sonic 4… Nice, way to burst my bubble, I though Sonic 4 had just gotten 10 times better.

  • Reply

    It looks awesome, but it’s a little too noisy. I think a few small tweaks would make it more or less perfect.

  • Reply

    Nice, but it would look much better if it was the original Sonic, not that spiky haired Tokio Hotel Sonic.

  • Reply

    Lol, I thought this was Sonic 4 the first time I saw it. It’s so beautiful ;D

  • Reply

    Where’s the video? Can’t find..

  • Reply

    He’s remaking levels from the old games which is cool for a fan game but I’d be pissed if they released this as official and called it Sonic 4 others would too. I think your comments atop are wrong tweaker.

  • Reply

    It DOES seem promising. But if it was made by Sega, fans would complain about random stuff anyway.

  • Reply

    Gorgeous! This is undeniably bad-ass, but it’s also just Sonic 2 with fancy graphics. At the very least Sega’s making new levels which is a plus. All they need to do is use those great looking graphics to dress a well programmed engine and we’ll have winner(s)!

    I also realized recently that Sonic is one of the most famous free-to-use gaming stencils, considering that fans can come up with projects similar and/or superior to Sega’s official merch. While it should be the opposite (like Nintendo’s super-elitism for Mario, show me one fan-made project of his that’s just as good/better than what Nintendo did with him) Sonic’s cheapness does attract fans with weird ideas everywhere. Because Sega never made clear what’s his true purpose in pop-culture Sonic can be whatever you want him to be. He isn’t a character, he’s a gap waiting for you to fill it. Interesting…

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