Of all the countless Sonic 1 mods and hacks, this one has got to be the greatest of all!

Sonic The Hedgehog – Anniversary Edition is another extremely ambitious project by Sophiedude which began way back in 2013. It was originally released in the 2021 Sonic Hacking Contest in a complete finished state to coincide with Sonic’s 30th anniversary and it’s also being archived here incase many Sonic fans missed it from it’s original release from back in the day.

This ROM hack/patch is jam-packed with many customisable options and has more features than a day out in the city! We’re talking major options here.

Happy 30th Anniversary Sonic!

To celebrate 30 years of Sonic, here’s an enhanced version of the very first game.

I (Adrian, the dude who is sharing it on here) cleaned up this next part and removed the many overly used and unnecessary capital letters and spelling typos from Sophiedude’s original Sonic Hacking Contest page, changed the post from a first person draft to a third person draft and then copied and pasted here.

”GET A LOAD OF THIS!”

• Enchanced graphics
• Remixed music, With the original soundtrack also available as an option.
• Tails and Knuckles are playable. Tails can fly and Knuckles can climb and glide.
• Brand new easy and hard modes that remix the levels and make them easier or harder.
• Tons of bugfixes, too many to list.
• The spindash has been added.
• Sonic is now a more bluer shade of blue.
• Act 2 and 3 of each zone have been given a new look and their own song.
• New routes for Tails and Knuckles have been added, based on the mobile version, with one new one in Spring Yard Zone Act 3 for Knuckles.
• Eggman has full set of voice clips and you can even have Mike Pollock or as Chikao Otsuka based on whether you’re playing on a USA/European Genesis/Mega Drive or a Japanese Mega Drive.
• Brand new Goggle powerup this is exclusive to easy mode, the Goggles allow Sonic to breath underwater but he loses them if he loses rings, By the way the Goggles are not very common.
• Eggman monitors now work and are exclusive to hard mode.
• The Japanese credit and sound test ending cheats are now accessible on any Genesis/Mega Drive not just the Japanese Mega Drive.
• A new cheat has also been added that swaps the region of the console your playing on, on the title screen press Up, Down, Down, Down, Up.
• The Green Hill Zone and Spring Yard Zone bosses are the only bosses affected by hard mode at the moment.
• The Sonic 3 object manager has been added in, Which will reduce slowdown.
• The Removed badnik splats have been re-added, you can find him in Marble Zone’s easy and hard mode.
• The Removed Green Hill Zone rolling ball has been re-added, you can find it in debug mode in Green Hill Zone, As Sophiedude couldn’t find a good use for it.
• All names in the credits have been changed to everyone’s real name, expect for ”Papa” as Sophiedude couldn’t find who that is?
• The Special Stages rotate a lot smoother (optional).
  • The Special Stage is also unaffected by easy or hard mode.
• There is now an actual jump height in the Special Stage, Sonic will now jump higher or lower depending on how long you press the button.
• A new sound effect has been added for the down block and the R block in the Special Stages, so they don’t share the same sound as the Up block.
• There is a brand new options menu which includes:
  • Character – Change which character you are playing.
  • Difficulty – Change which difficulty you want to play.
  • Spindash – Set whether you want the spindash on or off for pure Sonic 1. Side note: easy and hard mode have been designed without the spindash in mind.
  • Ground Speed Cap – The original Sonic 1 limited your speed on the ground, if you want that back you can turn it on here.
  • Air Speed Cap – The original Sonic 1 also limited your speed in the air too, if you want that back too here you go.
  • Spike Bug – if you seem to think the spike bug is a feature, then here.
  • Soundtrack – Set whether you want the remixed soundtrack or the original soundtrack.
  • Special Stage Rotation – if you don’t like how smooth the Special Stage rotates you can set it to the choppy rotation of the original here.
  • Special Stage jumpheight – If you don’t want a jump height in the Special Stage and want it like the original then here you go.
  • Vocal Eggman – ”Tonight on the Tonight Show, Eggman singing why he is the Eggman”, no actual this just makes Eggman not talk, if you want to save the DAC channel for drums.
• Works on real hardware 100% via an EverDrive flash cart.
• Checksum is fixed.

NOTES:

1. It is highly recommended that you play on a really good CRT filter or on an actual CRT, as Sophiedude has designed the art around this.

2. Not sure what exact sound driver was used for this one? Wasn’t really made clear, Clownacy, Sophiedude or whoever, what has been discovered is that it’s written in 68k assembly and plays the audio and music in it’s original PAL 50Hz tempos at 50Hz much like the original which indicates that it’s either the original type 1B modified SMPS 68k driver or another copy driver. Clownacy’s drivers usually optimise audio for 50Hz so most likely had nothing to do with him this time round.

3. Can save state on a Mega EverDrive X7 or Pro without any issues.

4. This hack makes a lot of other Sonic 1 hacks redundant to play seeing as this one has a lot of special combined features such as the ability to make Tails fly and Knuckles climb and glide eliminating the need to search for a working ”Tails In Sonic 1” or a ”Knuckles In Sonic 1” ROM hack.

5. Sophiedude has stated they are working on a ”Sonic 3 – Anniversary Edition” but it may take several years to complete.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Inside the ZIP file you’ll find the IPS patch, it is in Lunar IPS format and simply needs to be patched to the USA/European Sonic 1 ROM. (The one without the scrolling Green Hill clouds and water rippling effects).

”Where ever you go, take a little Sonic with you.”

ROM hack is owned by Sophiedude.

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