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Sonic With A Gun alters Epic Megagames' 1994 DOS game Jazz Jackrabbit (in graphics, enemies, and level design), primarily in the style of SEGA's 1991 Genesis/Megadrive game Sonic the Hedgehog. Certain details are also lifted from various other games, such as Sonic 2 (G/MD), Sonic 1 (SMS/GG), Sonic 4 Episode 1, Sonic CD, Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Mars, and so on. SWAG encompasses six main planets/zones, each with graphics, level layouts, enemies, and other obstacles unlike anything before seen in Jazz 1 modding, in an elaborate celebration of the Jazz engine and the Sonic series.

All elements of this mod are to be seen as a remake: next to none of the original graphics or level design from Sonic 1 are present, and instead 99% of the graphics are edited from Jazz art and the level design is a hybrid between the styles of the two games. Enemies and other level objects are included as accurately as possible within the constraints of the Jazz 1 engine, with occasional new additions or modifications in the spirit of either the original or the mod.

Two prominent differences between the gameplays of Sonic and Jazz are that the former can run up walls, ceilings, etc., and the latter has a gun and disposes of enemies with it rather than by jumping on them. These differences remain in SWAG, which features the standard ammunition types from Jazz 1. Perhaps the best way to think about this mod is as Jazz visiting the equivalents of the Sonic zones but in the Jazz Jackrabbit universe.

Unless you're running a sufficiently old version of Windows, you will need the DOXBox emulator, which can be downloaded for numerous different operating systems. Playing under the open-source "OpenJazz" remake of Jazz 1 is not recommended; OpenJazz is far from perfect at emulating the native Jazz 1 levels, and SWAG takes the engine nearly as far as it will go in various directions, including various parts of the game that were never used in the native levels and are therefore not implemented in OpenJazz.

SWAG has been in development--very, very intermittently--since mid 2008. I'm excited to share it with the world at last, as part of SAGE 2014 and in honor of Jazz Jackrabbit's 20th anniversary.