Sonic 2 Addendum - 2025 Demo
By Speems
Not one for resting on his laurels, Sonic takes to the sky in his trusty biplane, the 'Tornado', in search of adventure. Before long he makes a pitstop on a beautiful island full of green fields and hills. Known as West Side Island, it is where Sonic meets a young two tailed fox named Miles "Tails" Prower, who is inspired by Sonic's cool demeanor. Despite its unassuming appearance, West Side Island holds the key to Dr. Eggman's latest malevolent plans for world conquest. Legend speaks of seven mystical stones that sleep there, sealed by the gods after an ancient civilization abused their powers. Dr. Eggman believes the legend refers to the Chaos Emeralds, which he needs to power his ultimate weapon: The Death Egg! Tails barely has time to marvel at Sonic's biplane before Dr. Eggman makes his explosive entrance, tearing West Side Island up with an army of badniks in tow. It's going to take more than one hero to sort this mess out - are you really up 2 it?
The development for Sonic 2 is undoubtedly a well-documented piece of Sonic history, showcasing the process of how the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive classic came to be from its co-development between Sonic Team and Sega Technical Institute. A combination of scrapped content, additional quality-of-life tweaks and bonuses result in the Sonic 2 you know and love getting better than ever.
This demo build adds the following items compared to last year:
- Ocean Wind, Chemical Plant, Aquatic Ruin, Hill Top, Jovial Winter, and Oil Ocean
- Improved level layouts for Secret Woods and Sand Shower
- Multiple bugfixes
- Super Tails
- Tails has an ending slideshow
- Knuckles artwork overhauled
- Some zone palettes were improved (CPZ, ARZ, HTZ, MTZ)
- Death Egg art modified to resemble concept art
- Special Stage palettes updated to resemble their respective emeralds
- Badniks now have artwork edited to fully avoid Super palette conflicts
Keep in mind that Ocean Wind, Secret Woods, Sand Shower, and Jovial Winter do not have boss fights.
A bonus zone can be accessed if you know where to go in a certain stage...
- Project Lead, Additional Programming, Updated Sonic and Tails Sprites, Slot Machine Icons: Speems
- Score Rush Disassembly: Giovanni.gen
- Knuckles Artwork, Title Screen Sprites, Ending Sprites, Special Stage Character Sprites: CartoonsAnimate22
- Additional Tails Artwork: TheCrushedJoyconTSR, CartoonsAnimate22
- Cyber City Art: Hez, Tom Payne
- Sand Shower, Jovial Winter Assets: E-122-Psi
- New Flicky, Mania-esque Star Post Sprites, Updated Eggman: Dolphman
- Door Into Summer SMPS2ASM Port: MDTravis
- Drop Dash SFX: Cinossu
- Super Tails Code, Tails-Specific Slideshow Functions: heyjoeway
- Additional Code: Inferno
- Speed Shoes Icon: Mercury
File Type: rom/mega-drive
File Size: 1.59 MB
In all honestly, this doesn't really have all that much to set itself apart from other beta recreation hacks to keep me interested, but the changes where nice enough on thier own.
Good demo! The additions are simple but fun, and I like all the new character art (the Death Egg redesign looks so sick, love it). Level design could use some reworks though, I think.
Two small palette bugs I saw:
- In special stages, after the first checkpoint, the new ring palettes revert to the old ones
- Hidden Palace doesn't have an underwater Super palette
Other than that, a good way to replay Sonic 2. Looking forward to seeing how this develops!
Last modified by saneway @ 2025-10-04 23:41:36
oh boy does this have so many bugs that i reported on shc
in casino night if you go too fast one of the neon block things (i never knew the name lmao) can get glitched out
if you die on the lava in hill top you can get softlocked, not even time over can save you
Sonic 2 Definitive when