Back then, my only real dive into Sonic fangames were little Flash games on whatever sites I could find them on. But after a while, I wanted to do a deeper dive into the world of 3D SONIC FANGAMES, and through my searching I found an interesting fangame called Sonic World Release 9.
(Pictured: Sonic World Release 10.)
It instantly became young me's favorite. It had so many playable characters! Like this... weird purple kangaroo thing with a gun (Fang), a female Knuckles wearing armor (Shade), and... what is this thing? (Heavy & Bomb). Point being, this game was my introduction to many Sonic characters since back then I didn't know a
thing about Sonic even though I liked it so much.
In short, Sonic World is the ultimate version of a series of BlitzSonic fangames using the Blitz3D engine by multiple creators ever since 2001. Sonic World itself as a game is very rough around the edges but it makes up for it in the crazy amount of content in has, from characters that you can set as a duo or Heroes-style teams, to stages and missions, boss and rival battles, special stages and super forms, Chao Garden, menu themes from other Sonic games. And most important of all... MOD SUPPORT!!!
(Pictured: the unrestrained power of fan content.)
As I've said, it has its flaws. Common complaint is that characters often have too many moves that makes it hard for them to truly feel distinct from each other, although some characters still have unique gimmicks of their own. But overall Sonic World works best when seen as what it truly is, a Sonic toybox.
Tikal & Chaos in Lost World? Sure! Team Hooligan in Wave Ocean? Fo' sho! Tiara Boobowski from the unreleased Sonic X-treme and Honey the Cat as playable characters? YES!!!
(Pictured: Sonic World DX.)
But that's the ORIGINAL Sonic World. Recently, there has been a project to sort of "remaster" Sonic World, Sonic World DX. It doesn't nearly has much content as the original Sonic World releases but the gameplay is much more refined, and I failed to mention Sonic World's kind of shoddy character animations that DX
completely knocks it out of the park with. This game is seriously one spit and shine away from feeling like an actual official Sonic game.
With all that said, I really do highly reccomend either Sonic World if you're looking for an overload of Sonic content, or Sonic World DX for less content but tighter gameplay. Both of which can be found in the
Sonic World website.
I could seriously write about this game for days, and I actually really want to once I learn to code my own site, I have a
lot to talk about this game. But for now, if you're interested in learning more about the history of this whole BlitzSonic thing and how we got to Sonic World DX, along with some behind-the-scenes, one of the team members of Sonic World DX made a 2-hour documentary on all the history you'll need to know.
Fangames are a beautiful thing. Just saying.