♦ Livestream of 4 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:26) "Sonic 1" by Avery Morrow (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/sonic1/]
• (17:37) "Sonic #2" by Avery Morrow [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/soniczzt1/]
• (35:36) "Sonic" by Chris Schasse (2001) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/sonic_cs_10/]
• (1:31:08) "Sonic (Test World)" by Graham Peet (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/gpsonic/]
9/8/24 is almost 9/9/99 right? It's gonna have to be, as I meant to stream these games in 2023, missed the week, and hid them away for another full year.
Sonic games in ZZT are always fun to see as even back when these were released you had a number of possibilities for what to expect from Sonic fan games. The 2D Genesis games. Archie Sonic. Fleetway Sonic. Three different cartoons. Sonic Adventure 1/2. Heck ZZT has a game named after the Sonic Blast games even. There are so many options available.
Starting with Sonic 1 which goes for Archie comics as inspiration. Luckily, I was a reader back then and can look at a tangled mess of green line walls that leads downward and go "Ah. The entrance to Knothole village." This one is nicely unhinged with Sonic spending most of his time in the workout room while Tails smashes an old computer. A number of minimalist boards follow with Sally being killed in an explosion that none of us realized was an explosion, leading to Sonic grabbing his gun and shooting a few Swat-Bots before taking down Robotnik in a rectangular looking robot or ship.
Don't worry Sally fans. She's fine in the ending. (Is this the loosest approximation of the Endgame arc?) Tails, Antoine and Rotor are there too. Notably no Bunnie!
The second game is by the same author, is built on top of STK itself, and isn't all that different than the first game. Robotnik activates a volcano. A scroll excitedly points out the Super ZZT style lava, (shots fired at "Campaign Against SZZT"). There's a "labyrinth" consisting of a vertical shaft with connections to identical boards that the author seems to have little confidence in, really stressing that you can go in exits you just came out of and sometimes end up somewhere else. After beating Robotnik there's a big party and Sally and Sonic's parents are there.
Then the fun sadly stops. Game #3 is simply "Sonic" (the already available later revision, with a newly uploaded earlier release). It's a platformer engine game that's very slow, has plenty of precise jumps, and the zones take up most of the screen which makes even walking in a straight line take forever, though a dash button mitigates this somewhat. The gameplay doesn't have much appeal, with the entertainment mostly coming from some impressive invisible-wall powered animations of Robotnik flying in to fight Sonic and the banter between them. (Some of that banter had to be edited before streaming, be forewarned.)
The revised release adds a new menu with a password system to quickly jump between zones (which have no names! Such a missed opportunity). There's also a fencing mini game unrelated to Sonic included as a preview of an upcoming "Track and Field" game that has a swordfight during a kaiju attack.
Lastly, is a test bed for a number of projects, including some Sonic ones by Graham Peet, the unofficial star of the Wildcard series whose games have always been some of the best seen. Sadly, it's all incomplete so there isn't really a game here, but there are some impressive looking Sonic loops that the player can be pushed through, one with the mechanisms visible, and the other obscured for a clean sweep. It also includes some "Morons" related games, featuring Lemmings and Lemming-inspired engines, a number of Sonic-inspired songs, and a slot machine engine!
Plus some gorgeous art in the form of a large castle and some purple mountains inspired by childhood hiking trips to the Sierra Nevada mounains as mentioned in the accompanying text file. It's very pretty and the sentimentality attached makes it feel like more than just a nice ZZT drawing.
Slow platforming aside, a lot of fun was had!
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/sonic1/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/soniczzt1/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/sonic_cs_10/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/gpsonic/
♦ Originally streamed on September 8th, 2024 ♦
