Sonic Epoch Advance

released on Apr 12, 2000

Sonic Epoch features SatAM Sonic in a time travel adventure as he is blasted 10 years into the future; a dark future where Dr. Robotnik has essentially won, and the very few remaining Knothole Freedom Fighters are barely clinging to life. Sonic arrives to reinvigorate the world and perhaps still be able to fight back the evil Doctor and hopefully somehow get back to his own time. Epoch existed in two editions on two platforms; originally for DOS (later Windows) and Game Boy Advance (not as an official product of course!) The DOS/Windows one was "cancelled" after having a good deal of it completed. The GBA version was a revival which attempted to reuse as much as it could from its previous incarnation and finish the job. While the GBA version is "finished", it was a rush job, more for the sake of filling the gap of the previous version's incomplete status, and did not completely honor all aspects of the original story.


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This game blows my mind on so many levels. An ancient Sonic SATAM fan game, made for DOS before fan games were really even a thing, ported to the GBA. It's a game that's from a bygone era of the Sonic community, when there wasn't a clear distinction between the mainline and the tertiary media. An era of fansites and watching rips of the show on RealPlayer while people fought about Sally versus Amy.

It's an honest game, and while that might be a bit off-putting at times (it can be pretty edgy), it's done in an earnest way, clearly made by a late 90's teenager. As a slice of history and passion, it's great, as a game, it sucks, and that's okay. I'd much rather a game boldy pour its unrefined heart out to me and fail.

I miss this kind of thing, too much media these days feels the need to be self aware, too afraid to be genuine just in case it comes off as awkward. As if the creators need me to know "Don't worry, we know it's silly!", and fill their work with patronising or ironic jokes. I'm fucking tired of it, give me more games that have scenes where a character tries to kill themselves, the main guy responds with "That's mundo uncool", and it's not played for laughs.

unreal. must be seen to be believed.

I've never actually gotten very far into this but there is a scene near the beginning of this game that made me laugh so hard I actually started to feel sick.

Mondo Uncool!

Imagine being a clueless kid downloading a Sonic SATAM fan game for the GBA, thinking it would be some platformer based on the cartoon.
https://www.lp.zone/uploads/default/original/3X/8/8/8890a7b2e57882a9b82a26be018b542ca5f5e257.png

I kneel before whatever the fuck this was.

A fan project bursting out of the early days of the internet's fan wars like the Painkiller coming out of the skies to save mankind, Epoch is one of the weirdest passion keymashes I have ever encountered and, surprisingly, one of the most endearing.
Honestly, give the page a read, it has some really cool stuff about the early days of the fandom from a self proclaimed celebrity.

The story is actually pretty well told with some interesting stuff going on. Having Sonic be a fish out of water in an apocalyptic scenario felt actually funny, and Tails being a pretty good representation of THAT drawing was hilarious. The amount of plot twists and weird decisions to guide the story around have this amateurish aura to them that just makes it endearing. There are demons in there too, and I also certainly did NOT expect to come across Sonic edgy media that depicts prostitution and depression and actually take it somewhat serious.

The gameplay is atrocious, barely a platformer cobbled together by sheer will of the developers to make a vessel to tell the story. I definetely could not have completed it if it wasn't for save states.

Long story short, Me and my friends would’ve killed Tim Rogers with hammers I can tell you that much.

Thanks to GutterTrash for bringing attention to this, you're a real one.

This is that sonic fangame everyone was talking about, right?

Despite never really liking many of the games, the sonic franchise has always fascinated me. I've partaken in a lot of sonic related media, both official masterpieces from the likes of the many cartoon adaptations and the incredibly bizarre comics, to iconic fanworks like Tails Gets Trolled or the videos of tamers12345. Something about sonic really brings out the creativity of some of the most bizarre people to ever walk this earth, and I love almost all of it despite having little to no attachment to the original source material, so upon seeing screencaps of this game that showed an Emo Tails preventing Sally Acorn from blowing her brains out, I knew I had to play this.

To get the boring stuff out of the way, yes, this game does not play well. It's an incredibly jank platformer with poorly designed levels, bad enemies, weird clipping issues, and a game feel that reminded me most of that weird SNES Sonic bootleg that was a reskin of a speedy gonzales game. It's playable, and short (Probably only around an hour and a half of actual gameplay in this), so it's an easy hurdle to ignore.

Now, the story, oh god is it the kino I thought it would be. Weirdly captivating earnest Sonic SATAM melodrama combined with some of the weirdest shit I've seen in a game. The artistic decision to drop what is for all intents and purposes corny Jaleel White ass sonic into this gritty story is truly inspired, how else would we get such instantly iconic scenes as him giving Sally a Sonic Sez-tier lesson in how suicide is never the answer? The afformentioned Edgy Goth Tails is amazing in every scene he's in, there are incredibly bizarre detours involving Sally being possessed by a satanic robot (???) and weird prostitute OCs, Eggman's master plan is to freeze every single animal on Earth (which is apparently what Mobius was this entire time) to death so humans may repopulate, and Snively cures baldness. It's art. It's high art. It's the kind of art you can only get from a college student who thinks Sonic the Hedgehog is the coolest shit on the planet. And I love it.

Also, this is a GBA port of a DOS game, which is really weird to think. Didn't play the DOS version, because the creator said it's unfinished, and also it's a lot longer and jankier to play, but from what I have seen it also looks like a masterpiece. Its own separate uniquely weird brand of art.