So if anyone might remember, some time ago I found and posted here that the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog 4 hack on SNES, was done by a Peruvian hacking group called Twin Eagles Group. If you saw their website, you might have also noticed that among lots of other hacks they have done in their past, they had a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 listed. I finally got into contact with Mr. Byte, the former leader of the group, and found out that he lost the ROM file for the game, which turned out to be a hack of Sparkster. But luckily, he still had the VRAM file from the original artist, so I've spent the past few hours and just finished hacking the sprites into a Sparkster ROM, so now we can all see what they originally had in mind :D ROM link here Apparently the game was also distributed on cartridge like Sonic 4, but I guess it must have been more sparse since it's clearly not getting re-pirated over and over like that one. I hope to come across it someday since Mr Byte himself can't even recall if there was anything else done like a new title screen or other sprite hacks. And going by their other work, there must have been a title screen at the least. Well, enjoy it, it's pretty amusing playing as Sonic with a rocket pack. Edit: Sorry if this shoulda gone in the rom hacking section, just thought given its history it might fit more in general discussion. Edit2: Also, there may be some palette issues and other problems. Can't say if I did a perfect job or not.
Put pics up. I was so tired of spending so long working on it I forgot the common ettiquite of putting up pics of things. On that note, I think I accidently put the palette in wrong. I'll try to fix it, but it's nothing too noticeable. Even with it corrected a lot of colors will still appear wrong with explosions and such.
That is really cool. For anyone who has downloaded the ROM, are there any other differences between this and Sparkster? Seeing Sonic fight Axel Gear would be so cool.
Yeah, there's nothing more than Sparksters sprites being replaced. And they never even finished replacing everything, like in the 6th level there's a Twinbee-type flying part where they didn't replace his sprites. Probably because those sprites don't appear uncompressed inside the ROM. I wish I could add more stuff like a titlescreen but my skills don't go beyond something like this :x
I think it's a good starting point for brainstorming, testing ideas for new Sonic moves on paper and in-game. The idea of a mid-air spindash seems perverse but worth investigating, as well as a dedicated spindash button (if the new videos of Sonic Generations gameplay are any indication) and testing the idea of 8-way spinattacking. Edit: maybe a mid-air spindash option would be some sparse justification for uncurling? I wish I had a non-pirate copy of MM2 didn't suck ass at fangame programming so I could test these ideas out in the 360 or Sonic Worlds engines.
I think I've played this or soemthing similar years ago on the PC of an old friend's older brother. Was kinda fun XD
Kinda interesting... they stuck Sonic into what looks like a ninja/samurai game. Playing it on my FC-16 Go via SNES Myth flash cart.
Interesting crossover. Sparkster always reminded me of Sonic for some reason. As a kid, I actually thought he was Sonic.