The Original Sonic the Hedgehog 4

via 1up


Now that Sega has finally announced the real Sonic the Hedgehog 4, I thought it would be nice to talk about the fake one that has been floating around for over a decade now.

As you can see in the photo to the right, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 was made for the Super Nintendo. Blasphemous, I know! As you might imagine, this was in no way an official product, and was sold mostly in black markets and in regions where piracy wasn't really an issue.

The game itself is a rather extensive hack of Sunsoft's Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos, a game that already shares more than a passing resemblance to Sonic (as any Speedy Gonzales game should, really). The hack was done in 1996 by a Peruvian outfit calling themselves Twin Eagle Group, which did quite a few similar hacks for the system. Its softography shows, among others, Flubber, Street Fighter 2 Vs. X-Men, Men in Black and The Man in the Iron Mask.

The hack is ultimately kind of sloppy, with quite a few weird mistakes and a strange soundtrack, but it's passable for what it is. I've certainly seen worse. Gameplay is below, do try and enjoy. Note that Sonic is rescuing little Marios stuck in cages, I always liked that touch.

The sad thing is, I remember playing this before when I was younger. Maybe 10 or so years old. I saw something about it online and thought I'd try it out on an emulator. I didn't like it all that much, but I did like saving the Marios. It was kind of funny.

That game always had this cheap feel to it that kinda creeped me out. I guess it's the empty/red backgrounds and the caged Mario's. :P

I think if that kept the ring sound effects it would have been ok. Does seem odd. Was it a Genesis ROM?

i remember it as a SNES rom, funny as sonic games were always on the sega consoles!

Yes it is for SNES and I really like the game, have played it a lot on emulators. To go even further there was a Super Mario Brothers game released for Sega Genesis. I liked it too although you couldn't jump on the baddies to kill them so I got killed a lot trying to play it like Super Mario! Other notable hack I liked were the Prince of Persia 4D which was the original Prince of Persia on PC with changed levels, and the Donkey Kong Country made for NES, which was a hack of Donkey Kong Country 2 on SNES. Lastly who could forget Afro Mario!!!!

I've never really bothered to play any hacked roms, although the one that sounded interesting was Zelda: Parallel Worlds for the SNES. Has anyone had any experience with it?

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Originally Posted by Veskgar

I've never really bothered to play any hacked roms, although the one that sounded interesting was Zelda: Parallel Worlds for the SNES. Has anyone had any experience with it?

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Yes, and it's honestly not that great.