Okay, I love sonic games, and when my friend asked me to play Sonic 3 and Knuckles with him, I was excited. I went to his house and knocked on the door.
"Hey, whos there?" I hear a voice yell.
"Yeah, can I come in?" I ask.
"Sure, I'm in the living room, the game is already booted up."
I walk through the front door, which strangely is left unlocked, and sit on the couch with him. We boot up the game and the start screen appears. I grab the controller and press start, but then the game crashes.
"Stange..." I said.
We once again boot up the game, but this time the music is slightly slowed down. Nothing too noticable until we get to the character select screen. All 3 of the boxes were sonic. I usually play as knuckles, so this came as a shock to me.
"Hey, where did you get this?" I asked.
"I bought it on ebay for ten dollars, why?" He responded.
"I think the person who previously had it downloaded a rom hack onto it." I told him.
"That would explain why it was so cheap." He said.
I chose sonic, and the game started on green hill zone. Strangely, ther were no checkpoints or rings. But aside from that, it was all normal until we reached the end. Suddenly, a cutscene started to play as if there was a boss fight. But, instead of robotnick coming out, another sonic appered. When I moved right, it moved right. When I tried to spindash, it spindashed too. The fight was impossible.
"What?? How am I supposed to beat this?" I asked.
"Lemme try!" My friend said, grabbing the controller.
"Okay, maybe try a spindash again." I suggsted.
But right before he could, I grabbed the controller and jumped on the enemy, and one-hit them. Whats strange, is that the enemy was trying to spin dash, as if he could hear us speak.
"Okay, that was strange." My friend said.
I expected the normal end screen, but instead of that, it read "JASDJNMERKHDSALJFKJ has passed Zone 1".
"What? Is it glitching?" I questioned out loud.
Keep in mind this is when we still thought it was a rom hack.
Then the screen cut to black, and the game crashed again. Once again, we booted it back up. This time, there was knuckles and tails, but no sonic.
"Strange..." My friend remarked.
I chose knuckles, and I swear I saw tails crying on the last frame before it went to the level. It was angel island, act 1. Again, everything played out normally, except from there also being no enemys along with no rings or checkpoints. We made it to the end, and this time eggman came out from the right side of the screen, sweating. Text appeared just reading "Run." I was really confused, but decided to do what the game said. We progressed through the level, narrowly avoiding spikes and chasing eggman, as I assumed i was supposed to hit eggman. But, to my suprise, once we reached the end of the level, there was just a wall. Eggman looked worried, and then he pulled out a remote. His flying machine came onto the screen and he ran away. Just soon after, two sonics came onto the screen, and surrounded knuckles. He looked at the screen, before his head turned into sonic's. Though it looked off. The head looked like a parasite, attaching to knuckles. Then, the other 2 sonics looked at the screen and the game froze again.
"You know, this is quite stange for a rom hack, especially that part from before where it was like that faker sonic could hear us." I said.
"Wait, how do you know that was the faker?" My friend said.
"There were 3 sonics on the screen, and 2 were corrupted versions, and nothing happened until we beat the game."
"Wait, so does that mean we helped kill off the real sonic?" I asked him.
"I dunno, its just a rom hack.." He responded. "Dont get too attached in the story the guy made."
He booted up the game again.
"You know, this is getting quite repetitive." He pointed out.
This time, on the title screen, there was a sonic with a big, crooked smile on his face and knuckles, with the same face looking directly at us.
"Whoever made this hack must need some serious help" I pointed out.
There ws only one option left, which was Tails. He was crying, and when we selected him he looked scared, before he fell straight out of the selection box onto the green hill zone. I tried moving him, but it didn't work. Suddenly, the glitched sonic and knuckles came from both sides of the screen, just like they did previously. They slowly walked toward him, he was still crying on the grass. Suddenly, when they were inches away from him, eggman came flying down and picked him up. Then, it cut to what I assume to be eggman's base. Tails was still crying, and eggman was on his comuter. Suddenly, the chaos emralds appeared onto the screen, and tails stopped crying, and got up. He looked at them, and then eggman pointed to him, and then to the door, and then to the emeralds. Tails nodded, and walked out the door. The next few levels were all glitched out, and all of them ended with tails getting a chaos emrald and narrowly escaping one of the sonics. All but one, that is, where sonicc, for some reason left us alone. I then figured out why, on the next level. Everything was glitched out, and sonic was standing on a platform, facing the other way. As tails approached him, he pulled out a chaos emerald.
"Ha!" My friend said. "This will be easy! You need 7 chaos emeralds for them to work, dum-dum!"
Then, right on cue, 6 other emralds appeared around him. Tails pulled out his 6 emralds, but then they all shattered. They were fake, and now, a invincible sonic who was out for blood was chasing us, in a world of his own design, where he controlled everything. Multiple other super sonics like him appeared from all sides of the screen, aside from above. The only way to go now was up. The sonics attacked from all sides of the screen, and we knew perfectly well that if one touched us, we would die. Spikes, enemys, and ground were thrown at ius from all sides, and we had to even land on some of it if tials got tired. Then, a giant robot appeared, it was robotnick! But then, the head glitched out and turned into Sonic's, and it started firing a lazer at us. Luckily, we were nearly at the top, and at the top, there was a giant master emrald, resting on a floating platform. All the sonic's went immediently to guarding it.
"How are we supposed to get past that?" I asked. Luckily, my friend knew.
"Here, lemme have it! I haven't had a turn at all today!" He flew up onto the island, and stopped.
"What are you doing??" I asked wildy.
"Just trust me on this." He said.
Suddenly, all the sonics went for tails. I thought we were dead, but then the lazer from the robot fired at tails, and hit and killed all the sonics. Tails flew straight towards the master emrald and touched it, and then the game crashed.
Once we booted it back up, everything was normal. Honestly, that was pretty fun, but I am still confused on how the sonics were somehow perfectly timed with our speech, and I'm still a little frightened to this day.