Sonic The Hedgehog: Character Pak (Sonic 1: Character Pak) is a romhack LuigiXHero created as a farewell to Sonic Hacking.

The game description below this paragraph has been copied and pasted over from the Sonic Retro page of this hack but it’s been cleaned up and changed from a first person description of the Sonic hack to a third person description of the Sonic hack without using any pronouns (not for woke reasons but to avoid assumptions) (he) could be a (she) for example and many spelling errors have been corrected from the original Sonic Retro post as it wasn’t proofread for typos.

Hey look something totally original that has never been done before!

So why does this exist?

LuigiXHero wanted to finish one hack before moving on from Sonic hacking and what better than a character pak made up of like 3 of LuigiXHero’s old character hacks. Only one was shown off publicly before which was Luigi but every character hack has been a thing one way or another for a while.

So what does this have exactly?

4 playable characters in Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) for the Sega Mega Drive Genesis Entertainment System. Being fan favourite Sonic characters: Classic Sonic, Modern Sonic, Link? and Luigi? Complete with stuff to make them stand out and with tweaks and changes to some levels to make use of it, though don’t expect too much from that.

Also there is super characters and while this is Sonic 1 therefore LuigiXHero used magic powers to replace the lampposts with starposts giving you a ton more chances at the special stages. Think it might even be possible to get all of them by Marble Zone.

Along with that this hack has some nice delicious full soundtracks to select from including:

The Original ”’Sonic The Hedgehog” Soundtrack but with different, deeper drums… people like that right? This is intended for Classic Sonic.

Alternate Sonic Soundtrack: Other Sonic songs throughout the series, this is intended for Modern Sonic. (Marble Zone in this is the best track in the game, make sure you hear it).

Legend of Zelda Soundtrack: Pretty self explanatory and you wouldn’t guess who this was for.

Super Mario Soundtrack: Music from that other red coloured video game company. This is for Green Mario.

Meme Soundtrack: Music that make you go haha. This was basically included since LuigiXHero likes to do songs out of boredom and had them all anyways.

CD Soundtrack Mode 1: If you plug a SEGA Mega CD/SEGA-CD into your Mega Drive/Genesis you can use it to play CD audio. There is a full replacement CD soundtrack of MP3 files you can download outside of this site by copying and pasting the link below into your PC browser which will take you to the MEGA download page which features all the music from the Sonic compilations ”Sonic Mega Collection/Sonic Gems Collection” which is a good way to recycle the music as some of it was really good and nostalgic and it will be included as a bonus option to make it a proper thing, but you can play whatever. Try popping in a random music CD!

https://mega.nz/folder/3iwBiCab#ncvSbUzeMkM4tdfMnNGhyw

Development

Sonic The Hedgehog: Character Pak started development a very long time ago as a bunch of different hacks that eventually merged into one.

• Luigi in Sonic 1 – First character hack LuigiXHero tried to make.
• Modern Sonic in Sonic 1 (Previously Sonic 4) – After starting work on a Sonic 4 Genesis remake eventually shifted over to making Generations Modern Sonic.
• Link in Sonic 1 – LuigiXHero was bored one day after playing through Zelda II: Adventures of Link and decided to make this.

Controls

Don’t worry about figuring out controls right away, there is an optional tutorial level for each character to help teach you. But still included here for completion sake.

Common

• Up + A,B,C = Turn Super/Normal
• Up + A = Enable/Disable Debug (Takes priority over super stuff)

Classic Sonic

• A, B, C = Jump
• Down + A, B, C = Spindash
• Up + A, B, C = Peelout

Modern Sonic

• C (Ground) = Jump
• B (Ground) = Boost
• A (Ground) = Nothing
• Down + A, B, C (Ground) = Spindash
• C (Midair) = Homing Attack
• B (Midair) = Jump Dash/Midair Boost
• A (Midair) = Stomp

Link

• A, B = Stab (Does different ones depending on standing or crouching)
• C = Jump
• Up, Down (Midair) = Upwards and downwards stabs

Luigi (3D style)

• A = Long Jump
• B, C = Jump
• Down (Midair) = Butt Slam/Hip Drop
• B, C (Water) = Swim

NOTES: 

This hack/patch works on real hardware, been confirmed by myself (Adrian) so you don’t have to worry about the game crashing or softlocking.

Copying and pasting that CD soundtrack url into your browser above will give you the ”Sonic Mega Collection/Sonic Gems Collection” soundtrack to the game which can be played through a burned CD-R running from an attached SEGA Mega-CD/SEGA-CD through mode 1. The music files are all there individually as well as the CUE file. If the CUE file should show up as ”empty” try making your own CUE file with the separate music files with IMGBurn. The music files must be played and cued in the proper numbered order: Title 1 to Title 20 etc. Doing so in the correct order will play the Bridge theme on the intro Rush Hill Zone.

That CD soundtrack was kept separate from the main Zip/IPS file because it contains raw MP3 files of music which I don’t think is allowed on this site for legal reasons and i’m not sure how to disguise them with IPS Lunar or something else.

You don’t have to use that CD soundtrack through the url I provided, you can pop anything in with the game or if you think you can compile a better playlist, then go for it! Whatever tickles your fancy.

Music is optimised for PAL 50Hz.

Just patch the patch to the (American/European) Sonic The Hedgehog ROM and all will be good.

Sonic hack is made by LuigiXHero who has complete authority on this product. I (Adrian Gauna) have nothing to do with this hack/patch and only serve as someone sharing it outside of Sonic Retro to help give it more exposure. Please don’t think I made this.

CONCLUSION: 

This is a very well made and thought out Sonic 1 hack and it took a lot of people to put this magnificent gem of a hack together. There are not many Sonic 1 hacks out there of this nature where you get the option of playing as different characters beyond the usual ones in the one hack and having so many music options to try which help give the game more replay value. Give it a go if you haven’t yet tried this, it may just amaze you!

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