Sonic the Hedgehog fan games. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of these out there. If you add mods for official and fan-made games into the mix, that number easily shoots into the ten-thousands range. And while I can only say that I’ve gotten the bottoms of my feet wet in this aspect of the series, I would like to give attention to one fangame in particular.

Sonic Boll

Developed back in 2010 in Gamemaker Studio, Sonic Boll (who’s name comes from an in-joke among the development team and doesn’t mean anything) at it’s core lets you play though the original Super Mario Bros. (or the Lost Levels) as a variety of characters. You’ve got Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Mario, Luigi, and even Stanley the Bug man from Donkey Kong 3 and Silver Sonic from Sonic 2.

For clarity’s sake, I’m basing this review off of the official 1.9.3 version of Sonic Boll. There is a mod called Sonic Boll 2.0, but I haven’t played that version. Also, not all features of 1.9.3 are implemented in 2.0 as of this writing.

Game Overview

Character Gameplay

I’ll refrain from going into detail about every character’s moveset, since that would spoil some of the fun. Just keep in mind that each character has their own distinct playstyle.

For example, Sonic can use his ‘insta-shield’ from Sonic 3 and do a spindash by crouching while moving forward. Tails flies, Knuckles can glide, and so on. Each character also gains additional abilities when they grab a Mushroom or Fire Flower. Sonic gets his charged spindash, a ‘Sonic Boom’ projectile attack and a flaming dash, Tails gets longer flight time and the ability to throw bombs, et cetera.

Mario and Luigi do have more distinctions than just jump height and traction. Mario can perform his spin jump from Super Mario World, and Luigi can ‘scuttle’ in midair to prolong his jump, and he can use his Super Jump Punch from Super Smash Bros. Brawl onward, being able to do damage to enemies on landing as well.

Secret characters

There’s also two secret characters, bringing the total amount of characters up to ten. I won’t spoil how to unlock them, but I’ll go over their playstyles. The first is based on something I’m not familiar with, but it basically turns every object in the game into an intant-kill, even coins. Good if you want a (stupidly hard) challenge, but not something that I’m into. Also, most skins of this character will cause an explosion of red pixels upon death, so viewer discretion is advised.

The second is basically the opposite of that. Based off of a glitch in Sonic 2 where you could cause Sonic’s colors to bug out, Ashura, as he’s called by fans, can perform a bounce attack and swim, can teleport after grabbing a mushroom, and automatically draws in coins after getting a Fire Flower. So you’ve got characters that break the game, try to break you, and many levels in between.

Stage Design

The game is almost entirely a 1-1 recreation of Super Mario Bros. Layouts, enemy placements, secret areas, and the like are One change to the level layout is the addition of goalposts. Besides acting as checkpoints, this is how you access this game’s special stages. Hitting them under most circumstances will create a ring of sparkles, which in turn spawns eight red coins. Collecting all of them will give you a power-up, or a 1-up if you’re at maximum strength.

However, hidden in the stages are invisible blocks that contain a gemstone. Hitting a goalpost after you’ve collected one of these will cause it to appear in the center of the aforementioned ring. This will allow you to access Sonic Boll’s special stages, which are based off of Super Monkey Ball, of all things. You’ll need to collect coins in order to remove barricades and use springs to jump over the walls. Make it to the end in the time limit to collect a Chaos Emerald.

Once you collect all Chaos Emeralds…nothing happens. Replaying a previously completed special stage will allow you to get a 3-up moon, but there’s no Super forms to unlock by gathering all 7 Emeralds…at least in the base game. I’ll discuss this more in a later section. Kind of disappointing, but the stages are still worth playing in and of themselves. They’re fun, if a bit on the easy side.

Visual and Audio

With the exception of the title theme, the music in Sonic Boll is pulled from Sonic 3D Blast. Since I’m talking about things relating to Sonic Boll itself, I won’t be elaborating on the music. At least not in and of itself.

The spritework, on the other hand, is mostly original, and it’s pretty good. Animations are smooth, and the sprites themselves are crisp and well-drawn. But the graphics and music are just one side of the coin. Sonic Boll offers many customization options for alternate character skins, level music, and even the visual design of the world.

Alt. options: Visual and Audio

Each character comes with at least one alternate skin. . Heck, you can even play as a badly drawn, poorly animated Shaggy, complete with the original Scooby-Doo opening playing on the character select screen.

But the customizability doesn’t end there. You also have the option to reskin the entire world; objects, enemies and all. So if you want to play through the game in the style of the original Super Mario Bros., Mario 3 or Mario World, the option’s there, and its nice.

And now we come to the reason why I picked Sonic Boll, of all Sonic fangames, to do a spotlight on: the music. Most of which I’m not familiar with, to be honest. You’ve got tracks from Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (a reference to how he contributed to the music in Sonic 3), Klonoa, and Guile’s theme from Street Fighter 2, complete with accompanying sound effects. But my favorite, and the reason that I decided to do a mini-review on Sonic Boll, is…

That’s right, my fellow Super Robot Wars enthusiasts. I don’t know who it was, but someone put in a music option where the only music track is Trombe! from the GBA Original Generation. Okay, to be fair, it isn’t the only track. The music for the special stages and Super Star will play over it, so it’s not a pure override. But the fact that this was added by a member of the development team, not by a Mod after the fact, is just extremely cool.

Speaking of Mods…

Mods

Sonic Boll’s main menu contains a link directly to a website called Gamebanana. There you’ll find a plethora of Mods to vary up your gameplay experience even further. Now to be fair, a lot of the mods are just skins, over 1,000 of them. There’s around 60+ custom levels, and a handful of Misc. mods, most of which I have yet to try out.

The mods for music and skins are pretty easy to set up, and you could feasibly even make your own mods for those categories. Granted, you’ll need enough knowledge of computer code to copy the setup in the various text documents of the already created mods, and you’ll also need to be able to work with sprites when it comes to skins, but if you can do it, Sonic Boll is your oyster.

However, there is one mod that I want to point out in particular…

Mod Highlight: Power Stones

Remember how I said that Super forms weren’t included in Sonic Boll? Well, the Power Stone mod from Gamebanana fixes that, allowing you to play as Super Sonic, Super Tails, Super Knuckles, Super Amy and Super Ashura. Sadly, the ability to use super forms of Mario and Luigi was removed for some reason well before I even knew about Sonic Boll.

After setting it up you’ll be able to start the game from a modified launcher. Collect all seven Chaos Emeralds as one of the aforementioned characters, grab a Mushroom if you don’t have one already, then jump and hit C to transform. And, as expected, going Super makes the game a breeze. Besides invincibility, Sonic gets a double jump and can fly, Tails has infinite flight, and Ashura can teleport without needing to cool down in between warps.

However, there’s one more aspect to this mod. While playing as Sonic, go back into the special stage and when you complete it, you’ll find a black Emerald. After collecting it, any time you jump and press Z, X, C, and all four arrow keys at once, you get to play as Power Sonic. He retains his power of flight, but also can do the Sonic Boom attack, plus his double jump is replaced with Ashura’s teleport.

One important note: For some reason when playing as Silver Sonic or any of his skins, the sprites for his attacks won’t appear. So if you want to play as him, launch the game from the original app. He doesn’t have a super form to begin with, so nothing is really lost. And the game carries stats between versions, so don’t worry about that.

Conclusion

Sonic Boll may be just a drop in the ocean of fan-created content for Sonic the Hedgehog/Super Mario Bros., but it’s a game well worth playing. It may not do anything revolutionary, but the freshness it brings to the oft-used Super Mario Bros. gameplay style is extremely well-made, and just plain fun.

If I’ve piqued your interest in the game, you can check it out yourself here: https://sonicminusworld.wordpress.com