Sonic ERaZor 8 (2025) – Now In Widescreen!

Rambling podcast-style over the biggest changes for the upcoming update!

Spoiler: Video script, in case you don't want to listen to some German's thick af accent for ten minutes

So, looks like that trailer had quite a bit more reach than I anticipated. Thank you! Because that video was a little short, this time I will be more in-depth about what you can expect from ERaZor 7.

First off, some backstory. Ahem. Stop me if you've heard this one before: "Final version of Sonic ERaZor."

Yeah, we're beating that dead horse once again, though this time it's at least been a while – 8 years since the last release, to be precise. Don't get me wrong, I really do mean I originally had no plans to work on it again. Hell, I even made the source code public. But then something happened to finally make me break my oath – that's right, redhotsonic happened. If you don’t know what I mean, watch my video explaining the bug about the unavoidable hard crash if the game ran without SRAM.

I was really hesitant though. After all, eight years since "finishing" something is quite a long time to pass. So I made a YouTube poll asking how people would feel about reviving a game this old, and to my surprise, the response was overwhelmingly positive in favor towards reviving it. So I got working.

But between almost a decade passing, me calling the last release "Fulfilled Edition", and not to mention said release being the THIRD time I released an update to ERaZor marketed as "the final one", I didn't want to release a new version only containing a single bug fix, especially one that most people wouldn't even experience because who the hell plays without save functionality. One thing led to another and suddenly this revival grew into its own beast.



So the biggest and most important question first, what the hell even IS this update? Because it's actually quite a unique situation compared to the previous six versions. Those were always small incremental changes and bugfixes, while keeping the overall core experience of the game unchanged.

This time, things were different, because I didn’t just randomly add stuff I thought was cool, I actively thought about what actually NEEDED to be changed. This mostly came from lessons learned through watching many, many people play the game over the last eight years, mostly through YouTube videos.

How was that accomplished? By doing A COMPLETE OVERHAUL. And by complete, I MEAN complete. Literally every single frame you will see from the moment you boot up the game to the last second of the credits screen has been looked at, reevaluated, and then in most cases been edited. Sometimes it was just adding some cool bells and whistles, but for the most part it was a major rethinking of the underlying game design itself. Unfortunately, this makes it pretty difficult to give a concise list of everything that’s changed, because the biggest change is much rather an adjustment to the philosophy of the game itself.

I will structure this video by first going through some of the general things that have changed, and then I will talk more in detail about what the philosophy change is about.

So, let’s get started with the highlights:

First of all because it inspired this whole update in the first place: Full compatibility with real hardware! Yes, even without SRAM.

There’s basically nothing left of the old Sonic 1 engine. It all got replaced by modern methods that made the game run insanely smooth and got rid of a lot of ERaZor’s infamous slowdowns. In a nutshell, ERaZor 7 has blast processing, ERaZor 6 doesn’t. I want to give a huge shout out to vladikcomper, who made all of this possible! He was also kind enough to implement his amazing MegaPCM 2 sound driver to replace the pretty outdated one ERaZor had before. Not only fixed this many audio quirks, at also gave the entire soundtrack a fresh vibe!

Added tons of cool new stuff. No new levels because that wasn’t the focus of this update, but still a lot of expansions to the existing ones. I can’t really say much without spoiling anything, but one sweet thing I already can show you is the new trophy gallery in Uberhub Place to add a bit of personality to the stages and the hub world, but also to remember how far you’ve already come!

Reworked every. Single. Level. Some more, some less, but all in some significant way. The least changed level is Night Hill Place, the most changed one I can’t even tell you because honestly, I don’t even know that myself anymore. It’s best you do a side-by-side comparison to ERaZor 6 or something. Either way, the specifics don’t matter, you can definitely feel the improvements just by playing through the game.

Completely rewrote the cinematic black bars from scratch to be a lot more flexible. Originally this was just meant to be a small visual touch-up, but this newfound flexibility even led to some new gameplay stuff being themed around them. One day I will give you the full story behind the process of rewriting these black bars, because man was it a ride…

Everything text-related received a major visual overhaul, but more importantly a total rewrite. The quote-on-quote “story” of ERaZor is an iconic part of the game, but oh my god did some of the texts age terribly. I still cringe whenever some YouTuber reads them out loud. Plus, there’s so much god damn text in the tutorial. Six pages to tell you how to double jump. This time I think I finally hit the perfect balance between informative and entertaining, while also not overstaying its welcome. But of course, that’s for you to decide. Speaking of you deciding how you feel about texts…

Added "Skip Story Texts" and "Skip Uberhub" options. The first one does exactly what you expect and the second one automatically leads you to the next level after beating one, rather than returning you to the hub world. This allows you to have that authentic playthrough-in-one-sitting-without-interruptions experience. I got this idea from a super old alternate release of ERaZor called “Straight Version”. Rather than making it a separate ROM again, this time it’s directly built into the game.

Added "Photosensitive Mode" to turn off all flashy lights and camera shakes. This is an option that most people won’t ever turn on and that’s fine, but I definitely wanted to have it here. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about the seriousness of epilepsy and I don’t want to be responsible for anything. And seeing how this update was all themed around accessibility, it made perfect sense to include it here.

And finally, added a new unlockable option, tons of new easter eggs, and in general just did a ton of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements I can’t even begin to all list



So that’s the summary of some of the bigger changes. Now let’s talk about the philosophy shift I mentioned earlier.

Like I said, I watched many playthroughs of the game throughout the years, and I realized the biggest issue with ERaZor isn’t anything like buggy coding, the biggest one was lackluster game design itself. I saw so many people getting frustrated at challenges someone with just the slightest bit more experience would’ve breezed through without even thinking twice.

So, the answer seems simple, right? Just make the game easier. There’s just one small problem with that: the difficulty is, like, the whole point of ERaZor. Some people call it a Kaizo hack, which it very much isn't at all, but it can be tough and that's very much by design. Well, make it harder then and screw the noobs? If that’s the mindset you want to adapt for your Sonic hack, go ahead. But that’s not what I was going for. Again, accessibility was always the main focus for this update.

What do we do then? It looks like no matter what we choose, it’s going to alienate someone.

Introducing: Casual and Frantic Mode! This is the single largest change ERaZor has received since... ever. Seriously, this basically doubled the game in content.

The tl;dr summary is that this is a difficulty selection screen. But that doesn’t really do it justice. It would be really easy to make a hard mode that just removes all rings and gives the bosses more health, but that's ultra lame.

Rather, the idea was to make both modes equally viable to play, even if you've already beaten the game a million times. Sometimes you want to get kicked in the butt by the game to try your best, sometimes you just wanna have a chill session. Likewise, because of the hurdle being a bit too much for quite a lot of new players, the split allows those to experience the full game without immediately getting brickwalled. Once they become more comfortable, they can still tackle Frantic Mode!

But what exactly are the differences? Like I said, both modes are equally viable to play, and this was achieved through the overarching theme of pressure. Or, in the case of Casual, the absence thereof. Let's look at both options to see what this means:

CASUAL: This is going to be the new baseline difficulty and is recommended for newcomers. The main focus is that you can largely make it through the game at your own pace, and most challenges that punish you for mistakes or standing still have had that hecticness disabled, such as the ring drain in Ruined Place. This allows for a much more relaxed experience and won't force you to restart if you fail too many times. But at the same time, the core game is still there and just as fun as ever!

FRANTIC: If Casual was the mode that reduced pressure, Frantic is the exact opposite. It has a lot of raw adjustments to make it harder, sure, but your biggest new challenge is more along the lines of "removing the idea of taking-it-easy itself". This is largely done through two major changes: Increased punishments and reduced downtime. In other words, this is not a regular hard mode, it's specifically about keeping you going at all times. Awareness and quick reflexes are a must if you want to make it through. But that’s not everything. One of my favorite things to do in ERaZor is throwing curve balls at players, and Frantic gave me a perfect opportunity to that a few times. You will see.



And that covers the general idea of casual and frantic mode, and also wraps up this video with everything I could tell you without spoiling anything. I really hope you’ll enjoy this remaster and leave the previous six versions collecting dust in the discount bin because that’s where they belong. I just really hope this truly will be the final version for real this time. If there’s ever going to be an ERaZor 8 I will probably go mental.

Thanks for watching. Bye bye!

 

Sonic ERaZor 7 (2024)
(or, Sonic ERaZor – Seventh Public Release, if you prefer it old-school)



This is a complete overhaul of the classic, chaotic, explosion-filled Sonic the Hedgehog (16-bit) ROM hack, and it marks the first new release since 2016! Work on this update began in October 2023, and it took a full ten months to see its completion. Besides adding new stuff and fixing bugs, improving a ton about the poorly aged game design was just as important: if something wasn't fun, it got mercilessly rethought and reworked, or just straight up rewritten from scratch – with a few deliberate exceptions for nostalgia's sake.
In a way, this update was like finishing a beta after almost a decade.

If you aren't familiar with ERaZor yet, I suggest you take a brief look at the wiki page first.

Download
You need a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive emulator to play (or real hardware)!

Spoiler: Backstory (blame redhotsonic)

Stop me if you've heard this one before: "Final version of Sonic ERaZor." Yeah, we're beating that dead horse once again, though this time it's at least been a while – 8 years since the last release, to be precise. Don't get me wrong, I really do mean I originally had no plans to work on it again. Hell, I even made the source code public. But then something happened – that's right, redhotsonic happened. While I did spot the odd bug or design quirk here and there over the past few years already, it was his video – specifically the showcase of a massive, unavoidable hard crash if the game ran without SRAM – that finally made me break my oath. So, uh, thanks?

But after almost a decade of silence, I didn't want to release a new version only containing a single bugfix. One thing led to another, and suddenly this revival grew into its own beast. A lovely beast, though; I haven't been this excited about anything tech-related in actual ages. It is genuinely a great feeling to look at the clock and see it's already 3 a.m. because I got so lost in the zone while working on something I'm passionate about. I missed that feeling. If there's anything you might want to take away from this sappy ramble, it's this: don't worry about dusting off the ol' reliable. If working on it makes you happy, that's all that matters.

Ahem. Now that we're done with the lore recap, I'm delighted to talk about the update itself.

Highlights
Originally, I wanted to post the full changelog here. But, uh... it's easier to list the things that haven't been changed. So, for the sake of brevity, here is just the basic overview of some of the highlights in ERaZor 7:

• Introduced Casual/Frantic Mode (see below for more info, it's a big one)
• Reworked. Every. Single. Level. Some more and some less, but all in some significant way. For the most part it was to reduce awkwardness, but there's also a ton of new cool content. I won't spoil anything though~
• Massive engine overhauls courtesy of vladikcomper, including the implementation of his amazing MegaPCM 2 sound driver (along with a fancy Sound Test screen)!
• Added fancy new and improved cinematic Black Bars! So fancy, in fact, that they are so fancy they behave differently between emulators and real hardware, so it also comes with a custom configuration screen.
• Speaking of real hardware... full compatibility with real hardware! Yes, even without SRAM
• Rewrote every single custom screen mode from scratch (most notably, the story text screen – boy, that code was a mess).
• Oh yeah, regarding stories: everything text-related received a total rewrite. English hard.
• Completely overhauled Uberhub Place to hopefully feel more engaging now. But if it still isn't your thing...
• Added "Skip Uberhub Place" and "Skip Story Screens" options, for that authentic playthrough-in-one-sitting-without-interruptions experience (inspired by "Straight Version", for those who remember).
• Added "Photosensitive Mode" option to turn off all flashy lights and camera shakes. Furthermore, the intensity of flashy lights has been reduced a lot in general – no more epilepsy warning necessary, dear YouTubers.
• Added two new unlockable options and greatly overhauled the existing one, all in an effort to loosely connect them to the ERZ letters from the game's name.
• Added/reworked tons of easter eggs! Which means I can't tell you anything about them...
• And in general, just a plethora of bug fixes and general quality-of-life improvements!

Casual/Frantic Mode



In a nutshell, this is a difficulty selection screen, though quite a bit more involved than just the traditional "easy/hard". In fact, it might just be the single largest feature addition to ERaZor since... ever. It made the game much more accessible while also kinda giving it New Game+ on top. To understand what it's for, you need to understand why it was introduced in the first place.

See, my attempts at balancing ERaZor have always been a never-ending tug-of-war – too hard scared off the casual players, too easy bored the seasoned ones. But one day I realized something: the main culprit for many people seems to be pressure. A challenge doesn't even need to be hard, something like the ring counter starting to tick down on its own was already enough for many players to feel overwhelmed.

The solution came in the form of what started as a simple experiment: I did some research by watching a ton of YouTube playthroughs, identified the pain points causing the players the most trouble due to pressure, and made those optional. Originally, I had low expectations for this to make any difference at all, but it didn't take long before it became apparent that this fixed everything and then some! No longer did I have to worry about a one-size-fits-all approach to game balance, I could simply make both modes equally fun in their own right. Let's take a closer look:

• Casual:
  The main focus is the absence of pressure, allowing you to get comfortable with the game at your own pace.
  As a result, playing ERaZor becomes a much more relaxed experience and won't patronize you if you fail too many times (well, within reason).
  Plus, some of the tougher challenges are toned down a little.
  
  
• Frantic:
  If Casual is the mode that reduces pressure, Frantic is its antithesis. It can be summarized as "removing the concept of taking-it-easy itself".
  For example, rings barely matter in Casual – in Frantic they often are uniquely tied to challenges as your literal life insurance.
  Furthermore, Frantic is ruthless, as it's specifically designed to be like a very strict but fair teacher to make you truly master the game.
  And while death might feel like an ever-present threat, there are some interesting twists exclusive to this mode to keep you going~

Casual is the new baseline difficulty and is recommended for new players, but this is explicitely not a requirement: do you want to take your time or do you want to be constantly pushed forward? The choice is no longer mine, it's yours!

Credits
I want to give my most sincere appreciation to everyone in the ERaZor 7 squad and everyone else who helped along the way! Without you guys, this update would've been impossible to complete:

• vladikcomper: The master of blast processing! He helped me out when I hit a severe technical roadblock that almost put the whole project into jeopardy (the black bars... long story). Furhermore, he optimized a tooon about the engine and implemented MegaPCM 2!
• Chaotic SoFa: Doing a tooon of hardware testing and providing great feedback for almost any wild idea I had. In fact, he was my sanity check for whenever I went a bit too crazy.
• fuzzy: A long-time fan-turned-friend who joined with the unique skillset of a programmer while also being very familiar with the base game. She made ERaZor even more ERaZor-y!
• ajcox: Doing extensive video playtesting, uncovering the most bizarre bugs by doing stuff I would've never thought of. Also super helpful with ideas and feedback!
• MarkeyJester: He's been helping with ERaZor for as long as it has existed, and he continued to be an amazing support for this update as well.
• neonsynth aka. SonicVaan: The guy who made the original six versions playable returned to beta test this update as well.
• Peanut Noceda: Helped during the early stages of the update project.
• Give, Craze, and DeltaW: Additional one-time playtesting to get input from fresh perspectives.

And a special bonus shout-out to amphobius aka. DalekSam! While we lost contact years ago, his amazing music ports are the DNA of ERaZor to this day. It wouldn't be the same game without him!

Screenshots
Do note that these deliberately avoid spoilers, so don't be fooled by thinking they tell you the full story. You have to play the game yourself!

 

History repeats itself after 12 years! Following that train of thought, ERaZor will win the Hacking Contest in 2036 as well.

All jokes aside, a huge thanks to everyone who believed in me for this update, helped me along the way, or just left a few encouraging words! It's not easy to revisit your wrongdoings from over a decade ago, and I'm not exaggerating when I say the biggest work went into simply undoing past stupidity. Sometimes I contemplated just starting over from a completely fresh engine, just to spare myself from dumb design decisions from a time when I still couldn't grow hair on my face.

We aren't quite done yet, though, as no game is ever bug-free (an event that almost resulted in my disqualification ). Furthermore, a loooooooot of fan requests have poured in over the past month (I had no idea about the rolljump-lock being such a point of contention, but here we are, and it will get fixed). Therefore, a 7.1 release will come sometime in the next few months, with the current target being somewhere around Christmas.

With all that said, I'll leave you with one quick teaser, for something my good buddy @vladikcomper has tinkered with for a while now. Expect it all for 7.1!

 

Black Bars. Two words that instill agonizing terror in every soul. A podcast-style video about the development history of it throughout the making of Sonic ERaZor 7.

Once again a massive thank you to @vladikcomper!

 

Sonic ERaZor 8 (2025)
(or, Sonic ERaZor – Eighth Public Release, if you still prefer it old-school)



Download (Regular)
Download (Widescreen)
You need a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive emulator or real hardware to play—
the widescreen version ONLY works for RetroArch with the Genesis Plus GX Wide core!​

On January 17, 2010, the first public release of Sonic ERaZor hit the light of day. Today, fifteen years later, I am glad to go full circle with Sonic ERaZor 8, the ultimate bonus polish update of ERaZor 7!

"But hang on," you might say. "If it's just a 'bonus polish update', why isn't it called ERaZor 7.1? Also, didn't ERaZor 7 only come out, like, four months ago?"

How right you are, observant reader! But you see, after the overwhelmingly positive reception of ERaZor 7, I had so much motivation that what was originally just meant to be a "small bonus polish update" quickly got out of hand, and calling it 7.1 would've been grossly undercutting the amount of changes made. After much consideration, I've decided on the 8 and doubled down on the remaining work. But you got no idea how much can be achieved in only four months if you got the right amount of feedback, creativity, and of course dedicated people who help me put this little hack on a whole new level of polish!

If you aren't familiar with ERaZor yet, I suggest you take a brief look at the wiki page first.


Custom 16:9 Widescreen ROM



The big one, and I take no credit for it: vladikcomper once again performed sorcery, managing not only to make ERaZor even faster, but also adding full, unencumbered 16:9 widescreen support! And it's not just a simple engine improvement, it's actually a fully separate ROM build. This allowed us to not only have more control over which parts needed to be adjusted, it also provided an excellent opportunity to fine-tune things like the menu screens, the HUD positioning, and the level boundaries just for widescreen!

At this moment, this ROM only works properly in one emulator: RetroArch with the Genesis Plus GX Wide core!

For the best experience we also STRONGLY suggest to disable sprite limits! Otherwise you may encounter significant horizontal sprite overflow, as the increased screen width allows more situations where over 20 sprites can appear per scanline.


Highlights
Just like last time, I can't give you an exhaustive list of changes—it's just too many.

General:

• Full 16:9 widescreen support for RetroArch with the Genesis Plus GX Wide core (custom ROM)
• Save Select screen with three save slots and one no-save option
• A bunch of new options to customize your playthrough: Arcade Mode, Alternate HUD options, finer control of Flashy Lights and Camera Shaking, Audio mute settings, refined ERZ unlockables
• Brand-new Remastered Palettes across the entire game; don't worry, the old-school ones are still there as an option
• Remastered HUD and title cards graphics
• Insane performance improvements to the point where levels load near instantly now
• The usual uncountable amount of bugfixes and polish touch-ups across the whole game

Gameplay:

• Double jump flag is now reset when hitting almost any object (a lot of new content is designed around this gimmick, but no spoilers :P)
• All existing bosses have been rebalanced or partially redesigned (less RNG bs, hooray!)
• Extended Green Hill Place; people rightfully called the stage too short
• Added a new boss to the end of Ruined Place... in the broadest definition of the word "boss"
• Added a new ending to Ruined Place which will definitely not be relevant later in the game
• Streamlined Labyrinthy Place further to avoid unfair deaths
• Star Agony Place is now an actual buzz wire game!
• Added motivational messages to the final boss when you die and added a checkpoint before the escape
• Probably more stuff that I can't remember at the moment
  
• Refined all levels to tackle design quirks I saw in ERaZor 7 playthroughs (so this definitely wasn't a case of releasing the hack too early, because I straight up couldn't have known certain things before)
• ...such as the roll-jump lock still being a controversial feature, which is why it's also removed now. In fact, this was the very first change I did as part of ERaZor 8, so thanks to Snoogleflorp for giving me that idea!

Credits
Most of the ERaZor 7 squad remained for the work of 8, but it would be a disservice to not mention them here:

• Selbi: Project lead
• vladikcomper: 16:9 Widescreen support, Save Select Screen and overhauled SRAM system, lots and lots of other technical magic
  (this guy deserves AT LEAST half the credits for this update, show him some love!)
• Chaotic SoFa: Design advice and beta testing
• ajcox: Video playtesting and beta testing
• DeltaW: Video playtesting and beta testing
• Javesike: Remastered palettes and title cards
• zakku: Remastered HUD and other misc art help

But I can't wrap up the credits without thanking the many people who helped me along the way as well! I'm sorry if I missed anyone, it's been 15 years. In alphabetical order:
amphobius aka. DalekSam, CarrascoZX0, cloudiar, Craze, EduardoKnuckles, fuzzy, FraGag, Give, Irixion, iojnekns, Jorge, MainMemory, MarkeyJester, neonsynth aka. SonicVaan, redhotsonic, Spanner, Tongara

Screenshots
These images deliberately avoid spoilers. All screenshots are taken from the widescreen version!

 

Well, that does indeed look like a bug, so thanks for the report. I'm not sure if I can be motivated to do yet another bugfix release though; gotta move on from ERaZor for health reasons, or at least take a very healthy break.

So unless we got another total game breaker like the no-SRAM crash, I think anything odd that happens through the unlockable features just has to be lived with. I'm sorry.