Quite Possibly The Greatest Version Of Sonic 1 And Why Nobody's Talking About It?
14Here is just a simple video I show. The video I show is a very special and unique Sonic 1 hack made possible by a very skilled and talented editor by the name of vladikcomper. This hack might not seem like much to the ordinary Sonic viewers that might be quickly willing to write this off as ''nothing special to see here'' but for someone like me who is a proud PAL 50Hz gamer that never uses NTSC 60Hz or PAL-M 60Hz this is really a step above all the other hacks that have come and go.
Do you own a PAL Mega-Drive, that's only capable of running games in 50Hz instead of glorious 60Hz? Are you tired of your Sonic 1 running almost 17% slower? Are you dreaming of playing it in full speed, like NTSC users?
Well, this hack has got you covered, as it overhauls the game and its physics engine to effectively run at the same speed regardless of your region! It's actually better than the NTSC 60Hz Sonic 1 version as this version has a lot of fixes and added things to it such as Sonic now has his spin dash from Sonic 2 onwards, scoring 50'000 each time grants you a 1UP, this hack runs in higher resolution: 320x240 instead of 320x224, so you can see even more on the screen than both default PAL 50Hz with large borders and NTSC 60Hz. It's about time 50Hz mode got the upper hand!
The timing in the Special Stages seems a bit off as when I was in the Special Stage the speed still felt like the floaty 50Hz i'm so used to but vladikcomper said that he forgot to alter rotation matrix calculations in the Special Stages to accommodate for the larger screen, so it's layout appears slightly off-centre. It even looks like it overdraws sprites as if the game was running in widescreen, because this very source code is also the base for his next hack, ''Sonic 1: Widescreen Edition''.
This was played on a real, authentic PAL SEGA Mega Drive VA5 console running at PAL 50Hz with no toggle switches or modification done to it. I used a Mega EverDrive X7 flash cart to play the game on it. The sound was captured from the front headphone jack and out through my recording equipment. The video was captured via the composite yellow cable producing only 480p. The jerky frame rate is my capturing equipment and not the fault of the game itself.
If this hack is booted in NTSC 60Hz, a warning message is prompted saying that this hack cannot take advantage of the extra horse power in NTSC, either play it in PAL 50Hz or continue playing it but with without the added features by pressing A & start together. Personally I would prefer it if the hack had a regional lock out added to force gamers to play it in PAL 50Hz as opposed to only warning them.
FINAL CONCLUSION: As much as I adore this version of Sonic 1 that PAL regions should have got 33 years ago, I still find myself playing the slower PAL 50Hz original from 1991 as i'm so used to playing Sonic in that speed. I have played this hack from start to finish if anyone's wondering and despite how great it is it rarely gets talked about these days and I believe it's because it's overshadowed by the original running in NTSC 60Hz from the get-go. People just don't care enough for PAL mode these days as lots of PAL console owners seem to to be racing to modify their Mega Drive consoles for 60Hz and those very people are the one's that would view this as ''too little, too late''.
This hack has been showcased before on other channels like Razor & Zenon, AmyRosePlaythroughs and others but they all used emulation and at least with me you know exactly how it runs on real hardware in PAL 50Hz.
The last part showing the default unoptimised PAL 50Hz version was to show you that i'm using authentic 50Hz hardware. Not faking anything.
ROM DOWNLOAD: https://mega.nz/file/2jQj2QLZ#C-8C0qdKM-8LC3dBcGN3qwveC5AXhOs6yrW_ppqHwzU
This was uploaded just for fun.
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