Sonic 1 Lunacy

EDIT: IF YOUR ROM IS NOT LISTED AS REV03, PLEASE RE-DOWNLOAD. THERE WAS AN ERROR WITH SCREEN RESIZING, THIS IS NOW FIXED.


Because your pain is our love~


Posting this here as I am unable to post it in the Showroom.


I'd spent a long time thinking about how I was going to write this topic out. After all, the presentation can be important to the hack. Three and a half years of work has been put into this, the first public demo release of Sonic 1 Lunacy, so the topic should be something to consider. This is about the best I can do.


****USELESS HISTORIC SPEECH AHEAD****


It was the thirteenth of August, 2008 that I began working on this project. Initially, it was just designed to be the average joe's hack. Changes here, changes there, nothing truly ground-breaking. But then I made an account on Sonic Retro, and began frequenting the IRC, and I started to meet people. Malevolence, SAEGA, MarkeyJester, and the Masochistic Maniacs, each of them teaching me and in time spurring me on, all building up into what we have before us.


'The Masochistic Maniacs?' I hear you say. 'Who is this bizarre, unknown group of which Destructiox speaks?'


The Masochistic Maniacs is the group that has come together to create Sonic 1 Lunacy. For the first part of the project's history, about a year and a few months, it was indeed, a solo project. But then MarkeyJester joked with me about creating a team, and I actually took up on his suggestion. Many people have worked on this hack, but the core members of the Masochistic Maniacs are, alongside myself: MarkeyJester, SonicVaan, CarrascoZX0, Spanner, and Selbi. Not a large list, no, but there have been people coming and going in the group. Credit goes to UtopiaUK, SAEGA (pretty much the entirety of this awesome group have provided some insight or code or knowledge that has been put towards this hack. You guys are awesome. <3) to Cinossu, and to the Sonic Community for keeping places like this up and for allowing me to be a member of the community, which in turn is the base for this entire project. There are many more people that have contributed in different ways, and I am truly thankful for the support and the effort each individual has given me.


More info in the history of the hack/team can be found on their respective wiki pages:


Sonic 1 Lunacy


Masochistic Maniacs


****END OF USELESS HISTORIC SPEECH****


Regarding the demo itself:


It's rather bare-bones. A lot of things have been removed because they obviously aren't ready yet. The content provided in the demo is subject to change, and is being shown so you guys have something to enjoy (or despise) while we re-work a few things which results in adding several more months to the development time. Alongside that, owing to this being an (incomplete) demo, some levels are not fully fleshed out, and there are some prevalent bugs in the game which were unable to be fixed within the time limit. Known bugs that I can remember off the top of my head are:


Not collecting a special stage ring when one is on screen will result in crabmeats and buzzbombers giving out glitchy graphics. (SO YOU'D BETTER GET YOUR ASS IN THERE )


Entering a special stage will (most of the time) reset the timer, and will always reset the ring count.


BONU and CONTINUE on the special stage result screen still uses the original HUD graphics.


Using the teleport monitor in GHZ2 Lunatic can result in the background being messed up.


There are far too many 0's in the HUD. I just fukken love 0's too much.


Hard Mode's scroll lock after the boss is defeated is not working as desired. It is recommended to take your time and savestate after beating the boss to avoid major annoyance. (Yes, recommending a save-state.)


Lunatic's boss is unable to swing his ball. His hit points are too heavy.


That said, Sonic 1 Lunacy Demo 1


Please remember, I liked to be cooked medium-rare.


Screenshots:

 

NORMAL MODE:


Nice, simple introductory to the game. Plays like a basic hack with scattered enimies here and there and some minor traps that are simple enough to get over. Only suggest that you don't spin dash as you may end up falling into a pit at some points but that's the fault of the player, not the game itself.


HARD MODE:


Brings more of a challange as is intended, where even more enemies are placed relativly close together as to sort of ambush you as well as more pits (not too many though) and timing jumps to make it across to the next platform, like that one after you beat the boss.....crafty for annoyance, but once you know when to jump it comes naturally. Also you can't look up or down to see what's going on so blind leaps of faith are the only way to move on.


LUNATIC MODE:


Pressing the jump button twice causes instant death.





Honestly though I did enjoy the experience that this hack has on offer and it does indeed make me want to see if I can further advance on in Lunatic Mode (sucker for pain) and makes me ponder just what you and the team have in mind for furture zone layouts. Good job guys.

 

Ooh, this is just something little, to give you some taste of what's to come in the future. Actually we're releasing the demo, because we're scrapping Green Hill Zone (Lunatic), because it will be very different in the future... that's all I can tell you.


So have fun! Video walkthroughs will follow soon...

 

REV02 is now live!


Bugfixes:


Fixed some oddities with object placement


Removed SRAM (Not necessary for demo)


Done some more pointless-yet-cool screen resizing.


Fixed the dodgy 'X' on the Continue Screen


please re-download and enjoy :v

 

Tried running the hack on actual hardware (Model 2-US via EverdriveMD), and kept getting address errors, though usually, I can get through those by pressing the C button.

 

My brain melted. Seriously. This is one of the hardest things I've ever played. Gives S1HL and Erazor a run for their money!

 

Hey hey, Lunacy, S1HL and ERaZor are all on completely different levels.


S1HL is "reasonable challenges". ERaZor is "OMGWTF". Lunacy is "OMGWTF" with "BBQ". :V

 

You're right. S1HL is difficult but sane, ERaZor is on crack, and Lunacy is completely psycho. This is way too difficult for me, sorry.

 

This hack really put S1HL's original/hard mode on the ground. Hahah, very challeging exactly like I love to see in hacks.

This hack is truely HARD. Much Harder than the levels in s1hl. S1HL aims the make to be harder but whitout the need of being insanely hard. Lunacy does what its name points. It's fantastic. I'm loving this one!

You'll see your brain really melting when you play S1HL in the Expert Mode. 3 lives, no continues, no extra lives and etc. (Well, no more spoiler)
Hahah, I'm seeing the most big challenge for the Genocide City Trophy on the next hacking contest. Let's see who will have more power of the difficulty in the contest.


Keep up the great work you're doing, Destructiox!


EDIT: I didn't passed the act 1 on Lunatic Mode. Buzzbombers are assassins in this mode.