I have to get something off my chest.

About two weeks ago, my friend died of an epileptic seizure. The news hit like a thunderbolt sense I had known him since I was in third grade.

We would often hang out together, playing a bunch of games, he’s the whole reason I got into Sonic in the first place.

My family was poor, my dad died when I was only three, so my mother had to work two jobs, though my friends parents were kind enough to help us out.

Every time I went to my friend’s house, we would always play games on his Game Cube and Playstation, often playing Sonic Heroes or Sonic Colors.

Though there was one thing that was really special, a blue flash drive, he’d often download various Sonic fangames, and it was really special, then his younger brothers broke it, with the excuse of “it needed a wash”.

After the Funeral, his brother came up to me and told me he was planning to give me a blue flash drive with a bunch of Sonic fangames.

His brother handed me the blue usb, “crazy how a simple flash drive could bring people together” he said.

I took the usb, but ended up forgetting about it.

A few hours later, near nighttime, I suddenly remembered about the flash drive, I instantly took it out of my pocket and hesitantly put it in my computer.

A file that contained at least 19 fangames, but one caught my attention the most, “sonic_hdgehog”, that’s what the game was called, I clicked on the file only for an error message to appear.

“The following file does not exist” the message said, I decided to rename the file to sonic_hedgehog, reading the missing “e”, and suddenly, the game began working.

Suddenly, the game loaded up, and the title revealed to be the first Sonic game, everything looked normal except for one thing, the SEGA was replaced by a weird language, which I assumed to be where the person came from, and possibly his name.

After pressing start, the screen instantly changed to black, with text at the bottom corner reading “Loading…”, the three dots appeared over and over again, “IT’S A DAMN GAME!!” I screamed in my mind.

The text disappeared and the screen faded to reveal I was in Green Hill Zone, the game appeared to be a ground-up recreation of the original game.

I ran through the zone with glee, but then, I accidentally ran straight into an enemy, causing me to lose all of my rings.

But instead of Rings, a bunch of Black squares came out, I assumed it was a bug and kept on going, though another weird thing happened, where the music didn’t loop, it just stopped.

Still, I kept going and reached the end.

The next level was odd, the title card displayed a weird garbled up text, and the level itself was even weirder.

The ground looked more like a distorted version of the one from Green Hill, and the background was black with red clouds, and the level was just… flat.

I tried to press esc to exit the game, but it wouldn’t let me, I was basically forced to continue, and so I kept moving, but then, when came near a leafless palmtree next to a cliff, he froze, and I don’t mean slowed down, he instantly stopped.

Suddenly, colors of Red and White began flashing on my screen, with a distorted buzzing sound, making me paralyzed. When it stopped, Sonic was dead, laying on the ground, with his eyes looking like they had just popped.

The GAME OVER text appeared and the song started playing, it sounded distorted, like someone tried to recreate that on a Phone Dial or something.

Then, Sonic appeared, wagging his finger, with a number 10 at the bottom, the 10 then changed to 9, then 8, then 7, I was scared out of my mind!!!

6, 5, 4, Sonic’s eyes started bleeding, then turning red.

3, 2, with all my strength, I was able to move and duck just as the timer hit zero

I don’t know what was on the computer, but the sound it made sounded like a woman screaming. I covered my ears and slowly moved my way upwards and slammed the PC shut, I instantly took out the flash drive and slammed my foot on it, breaking it for good.

A few moments later, my mom came in, worried about me.

After she left, I reopened my computer, only to realize the moment of the screaming had burned the hardware.

My mom would get me a new computer and throw the old one away, which is even how I’m even writing this.

I decided to search up about this game, but there were nearly none outside of one post saying do not play this game, apparently, it’s a troll game. A FUCKING TROLL GAME!?!??! You're telling me that someone made a troll game to KILL PEOPLE!?!??!

Yeah no, I’m just at a loss of words.

(not proud of this retake but oh well...)