[Cooljerk]

I remember one of the first fan games to hit the scene. It might have been THE first. It was a recreation of Hidden Palace Zone. This is before Simon Wai 2's beta had been found, but after Oil Palace Zone had been found, so someone (maybe stealth?) went through and created a rough sonic engine in Click n Create and recreated the level using magazine scans, hand drawn art, and what little about the level layout we knew from Oil Palace Zone. It played wonky (being a CnC game after all) but it was so cool. What was surprising was that it was pretty accurate to the S2beta HPZ.

However, I've been driven for YEARS to match Stealth's original Metrix (sp?) engine. When that was released, it felt like the entire game changed. That was during the height of the CnC craze, and stealth dropped a for-the-time super advanced C++ engine on us. I tried for AGES to talk to Stealth about it, but everyone knows how protective he is. I'd still love to hear anything he has to say about it (big fan :D).

[saxman]

Cooljerk, on Feb 20 2009, 08:07 PM, said:

I remember one of the first fan games to hit the scene. It might have been THE first. It was a recreation of Hidden Palace Zone. This is before Simon Wai 2's beta had been found, but after Oil Palace Zone had been found, so someone (maybe stealth?) went through and created a rough sonic engine in Click n Create and recreated the level using magazine scans, hand drawn art, and what little about the level layout we knew from Oil Palace Zone. It played wonky (being a CnC game after all) but it was so cool. What was surprising was that it was pretty accurate to the S2beta HPZ.

However, I've been driven for YEARS to match Stealth's original Metrix (sp?) engine. When that was released, it felt like the entire game changed. That was during the height of the CnC craze, and stealth dropped a for-the-time super advanced C++ engine on us. I tried for AGES to talk to Stealth about it, but everyone knows how protective he is. I'd still love to hear anything he has to say about it (big fan :D).

You're talking about the game SSNTails created. It's far from being the first fan game, but he did an impressive job.

[Cooljerk]

saxman, on Feb 20 2009, 05:23 PM, said:

Cooljerk, on Feb 20 2009, 08:07 PM, said:

I remember one of the first fan games to hit the scene. It might have been THE first. It was a recreation of Hidden Palace Zone. This is before Simon Wai 2's beta had been found, but after Oil Palace Zone had been found, so someone (maybe stealth?) went through and created a rough sonic engine in Click n Create and recreated the level using magazine scans, hand drawn art, and what little about the level layout we knew from Oil Palace Zone. It played wonky (being a CnC game after all) but it was so cool. What was surprising was that it was pretty accurate to the S2beta HPZ.

However, I've been driven for YEARS to match Stealth's original Metrix (sp?) engine. When that was released, it felt like the entire game changed. That was during the height of the CnC craze, and stealth dropped a for-the-time super advanced C++ engine on us. I tried for AGES to talk to Stealth about it, but everyone knows how protective he is. I'd still love to hear anything he has to say about it (big fan :D).

You're talking about the game SSNTails created. It's far from being the first fan game, but he did an impressive job.

Thats right. It was the first that caught my attention, at least.

[LordOfSquad]

Wasn't Sonic Boom the first fangame?

I know these were the first fangames I ever found. I really wish someone would remake Sonic Robo Blast. >_>

For some reason I really liked this one, called ChaoS. The idea of revisiting classic levels in a different state appealed to me, I suppose.

Then there was this really cool beat-em-up, starring Amy, called One Girl Army. It blew me away at the time, but I remember it being really hard.

And I also enjoyed A Tale Of Two Sonics, just because I really enjoyed the comic at the time.

[saxman]

Sonic Boom was the first, followed by Tails' Quest for 100 Rings (the demo). SonKnuck and me got into making KNP and CNC games early on after those two games, and there were a few other people that slowly started to get into it with us. And by around 1998 or 1999, fan games were becoming a big deal. SFGHQ had a major hand in bringing attention to fan games that were emerging on the internet. It's hard to say the actual order that many games came about, but for sure I can tell you Sonic Boom and Tails' Quest... were the first two.

I feel like a Sonic community historian here =D

This post has been edited by saxman: 20 February 2009 - 09:52 PM

[Sik]

saxman, on Feb 20 2009, 11:23 PM, said:

You're talking about the game SSNTails created.

Yeah, I was gonna say that. I had played that one, gesee =P

Now, the scary thing. That one was made before Simon Wai's beta. The page said that it turned out to be scarily similar to the beta when it was found. I honestly didn't believe it was that similar, just bearing somewhat resemblance. Then I played the game... Fuck the level was literally identical O_O It only became different in the part where the level in the beta ends (at the emerald part). So yes, I can imagine that was scary...

[Dark Sonic]

Might as well throw Sonic Robo Blast 2 in there. Seeing as how the game has had about a 10 year development, it was a good amount of time ago since I first played one of the game's demos.

[saxman]

Sik, on Feb 20 2009, 10:32 PM, said:

saxman, on Feb 20 2009, 11:23 PM, said:

You're talking about the game SSNTails created.

Yeah, I was gonna say that. I had played that one, gesee =P

Now, the scary thing. That one was made before Simon Wai's beta. The page said that it turned out to be scarily similar to the beta when it was found. I honestly didn't believe it was that similar, just bearing somewhat resemblance. Then I played the game... Fuck the level was literally identical O_O It only became different in the part where the level in the beta ends (at the emerald part). So yes, I can imagine that was scary...

According to what A.J. told me, he was able to construct the level based on the Megacosm screenshots that were posted on the internet, and analyzed the ring layout in HPZ to make guesses where those areas were in the Megacosm screenshots. Apparently there were enough screenshots that he was able to pinpoint nearly all the areas laid out in the commercial version of Sonic 2.

[Rainer]

EDIT: THE SEARCH FUNCTION IS VERY GOOD.

This post has been edited by Rainer: 21 February 2009 - 03:38 PM

[Sik]

We did already.

[Wetflame]

Fangaming used to be fun even though the games were kind of shit. It was still cool to check out other people's ideas and stories.

[PC2]

Time Attacked was pretty cool. It was one of the less-sucky Sonic fangames that was actually finished. Aytaç's games were also pretty awesome. The Sonic Chaos Revolution series, Chaomega, and Sonic Unity are all very memorable to me. It's such a shame the latter two were never finished. If only they could all be ported to a better physics engine... If anyone's interested, you can still download his stuff at the old site. Which now reminds me, perhaps some of those games should have their own wiki articles?

If I recall, Chaomega and Sonic Unity both had some really cool concepts behind them as well, probably hinted at in the readme or something. Also, Jamie Bailey's Burrito Island or whatever was pretty fun. I wish he made a full game out of it.

EDIT: Nevermind, I lied. The old site is still up, but I get 404's whenever I try to download the games! D: Oh well, Google is your friend whatever.

This post has been edited by PC2: 21 February 2009 - 12:28 AM

[unAWARE]

Man, there was that guy who went under the Alias of TGF Team, he had some great stuff. It's too bad he never finished his remake of his first game. Sonic 2099 was the one I used to play a lot.

[Pelord]

Great, now you just put Sonic's Mega Quest into my mind... :P


Well, putting THAT game aside, I did make one contribution to the Fan Game scene back then... Knuckles Episode 1 Racer. It wasn't that great of a game, and it kept crashing... but it was claimed to be the first Sonic Fan Game (that wasn't a tech demo or engine test) to give Knuckles the ability to climb walls, as primitive as it was.

It's sequel, Knuckles Trippin', was never finished, mostly for the fact of how broken the game was, in every since of the word.

[BlazeHedgehog]

unAWARE, on Feb 21 2009, 01:41 AM, said:

Man, there was that guy who went under the Alias of TGF Team, he had some great stuff. It's too bad he never finished his remake of his first game. Sonic 2099 was the one I used to play a lot.

I remember that guy. He was sort of okay. I remember early on I thought he stole one of my original sprites (and I swear he did, though eventually I stopped caring).

I remember he hyped and hyped and hyped this fangame (was it Sonic 2099?) and then left. Two or three years later he came back, finished it, and released it. Except that was during the time where Sonic fangames were rapidly improving and by the time he released his game it was way below current SFGHQ standards.

Plus the graphics were like, just normal Genesis tiles with photoshop filters on them, like spotlights and stuff. I remember it looked kind of dumb.