SHC2024 SONIC SMD

Link: https://shc.zone/entries/contest2024/1127

This hack was confusing to me to its core. I know it’s trying to replicate the age old SONIC.EXE story for the MD, and what was done is rather technically impressive.

However, I question the lack of both direction and polish in this entry.

My main question when I played this was, “is this trying to take itself seriously or is it a parody?” It doesn’t outwardly seem like it’s making fun of EXE hacks, playing the tropes straight, but some of the animations are straight up goofy.

I mean… What the hell is this?

The stage ports are impressive enough, but then none of the characters seem even remotely consistent in their artwork. Tails has his flight switch to the S3K sprite when he’s tired, Sonic.EXE and Knuckles just randomly jump around between S3K style, S2 style, and some kind of weird really poorly drawn other style; there are miscolored badniks all over the place; things that need to be smash cuts to black just really slowly fade, the credits screen has a very obvious font error, etc. etc.

I just want to know at this point. What’s even… the goal here? What is the hack trying to do? Why are some things extremely polished and others so obviously broken? Why is Sonic.EXE depicted as horrifying and extremely laughably goofy at the same time? Why does nothing make sense?

If you want to make a slasher and show the world you can make an EXE game good, commit to it! If you want to make a parody of the creepypasta tropes, commit to that! Else your work is going to forever seem extremely confused.

At least the Scrap Brain → You Can’t Run transition was really, really cool. That was the best part of the hack.