I'm not going to go into this with long preamble, I'm just going to explain that this happened to me when I was recently playing Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and I think I've come across some sort of bizarre unused ending.
I decided to replay Sonic 3 and Knuckles specifically for nostalgic purposes, playing the Sonic campaign with a rom I had downloaded ages ago, and everything was going great, just as I remembered it. That is, until I got to Hidden Palace Zone.
Normally in Hidden Palace Zone, when playing as Sonic or Tails you fight Knuckles and then he finds Eggman stealing the Master Emerald and ushers you over to the warp point to follow him. Here, though, he just... wasn't there. I got to the part where you normally fight Knuckles, but he just simply wasn't in the area. I looked up with Sonic, and suddenly a flashing arrow appeared on screen, with text above it in the "STAGE CLEARED" font- "FOLLOW HIM!"
"Him?" I wondered. "Who is that in this situation? Knuckles? Eggman? Mecha Sonic?" I shrugged it off and began running forward. I know this should have seemed off to me at the time but Sonic 3 and Knuckles is a pretty big game, and people were and are still finding weird minuta in it. If Cybershell can make a 40 minute video about it, I was sure there was some sort of alternate ending nobody ever properly discovered.
I ran forward and I came up to the room where the emeralds are stored- all but one of them, since the last special stage has always gotten on my nerves- but the Master Emerald was already wrenched from the ground. No Knux or Eggman to be seen. I simply ran forward to another warp point placed oddly early on, and Sonic jumped on... to what I distinctly recognized as the KNUCKLES opening of Sky Sanctuary, with the rings and the flat ground, rather than the actual level I was used to playing as Sonic. I stepped forward and nearly dropped my controller once I saw what was only a few steps away from the warp pad- the body of Knuckles.
He was lying on the ground, his red fur a dull, mangy color, his limbs splayed out and skewed and his hair falling off to reveal patches of skin underneath. I ducked near him, halfway to see what would happen like with Knuckles in normal Sky Sanctuary, and half to pay some kind of respect to him. In response, he coughed, making a noise that, while bitcrushed, still sounded disgustingly wet, and attempted to lift his arm to point me forward, only to smack down onto the ground with a groan. I shuddered lightly, but shook it off quickly. Even though it was a surprisingly disgusting sight for the Sonic franchise, it was just a video game character. I steeled myself and headed to the right.
What awaited me was- predictably- Mecha Sonic, but he was crouched on the Master Emerald with lightning surrounding him like how he began his second phase, and a red stain of some sort had formed near the pedestal of the emerald, a large crack in the ground where, presumably, Mecha Sonic had slammed Knuckles into unconsciousness.
The sprite's head slowly tilted towards Sonic and it made a robotic scoffing noise- evidently, Mecha Sonic hadn't expected Sonic to be here. The usual fight music played and I was thrust into a Mecha Sonic fight with Sonic rather than Knuckles.
I beat him rather easily in his first phase, but rather than the second phase starting with Mecha Sonic becoming Super on the emerald, he landed on it, only for... nothing to happen. I took a second look at the emerald itself and noticed it was completely monochrome. Whatever Mecha Sonic was doing earlier, he completely drained the power from the emerald. Mecha Sonic glowed red and hopped off the emerald in anger, before beginning to slam his hands into the emerald, breaking it into shards, and stomping on those shards in turn, each punch and stomp making a glass cracking noise individually. After the Emerald had become completely drained of its power, he whipped his head around to see Sonic still standing there, now in his idle animation. Mecha Sonic's sprite began to shake, and he produced a large gun from his right hand before shooting its projectile- a huge jet of fire. After thoroughly coating the area in fire, causing Sonic to jump up with his "hurt" sprite, Mecha Sonic dashed away. The screen faded out, only to fade right back in with a new title card. No act, no zone name.
"RUN!"
The fire lapped at Sonic's feet with a constant crackle as the bass track of the Mecha Sonic phase 2 theme played at twice the speed and a constant noisy drum beat underneath. Within moments I spindashed away and began running. It seemed like by now I was running backwards through the Sonic version of Sky Sanctuary, with fire roaring where the bottomless pits usually were and the enemies frantically running and flying away in the background. As the fire lapped at Sonic's feet, the parts of him closest to the blaze noticeably became monochrome. I didn't dare let go of the left button for even a moment lest the fire get to me. There were some close calls but eventually I noticed the Tornado flying off to the far left of the stage, Tails piloting it. With one very close jump, I made it up to the wings of the plane and we took off.
A cutscene then began. Sonic was on the wings of the Tornado, flying above the wreckage, as a music track played that I recognized as the "bad end" theme from Sonic 2 on the Game Gear. Sonic peered down from a wing with a new animation, and it showed a brief shot of Angel Island seemingly engulfed in flames a second time. Badniks were rushing around in a panic, and most of the greenery was now thoroughly grey, as a husk of what was the flaming machine you fought at the end of the zone blazed, oil dripping from a crack in its side.
It cut back to Sonic, who was looking down, with a noticeable sad expression. It was here I noticed there was now a button prompt on the screen- a flashing blue "A" button. Thinking that maybe I was going to jump down to Angel Island and do one final zone or see the credits, I did so.
Tails let out a garbled, bitcrushed yelp as Sonic jumped down, notably not in a ball, his arms and legs spread, before the game froze up as it did when Sonic died, and a familiar sprite came up from the bottom of the screen- the infamous "black and white" unused death sprite.
What I saw after that, though, was far more distressing than that.
The final shot of the game was the same ruin of Angel Island, but with Sonic's corpse slumped onto the former flaming machine, arms spread as though he was embracing it. Red liquid oozed down the side of the machine where metal made contact with Sonic's face, and a small pack of the animals normally trapped inside badniks were nudging him around, desperately trying to wake him up, the scene silent but for the crackling of fire.
The screen faded with a faint, low droning noise, and text appeared on screen in the same font as was used earlier.
"SONIC RAN OUT OF TIME. HE WAS TOO LATE TO SAVE KNUCKLES."
"HE DECIDED IT WASN'T WORTH PROTECTING THIS PLACE..."
"NOW THAT EGGMAN SUCCEEDED IN RAZING IT."
"PLAY AGAIN, AND GO FASTER THIS TIME!"
"ANGEL ISLAND DEPENDS ON YOU."
"LET'S GIVE IT ONE MORE GO!"
Then, the game immediately booted me back to the title screen, causing me to jump out of my seat. I selected the new game option cautiously, only to see that the file I had played was completely wiped- like it was never there to begin with.
I did end up replaying the game, and presumably I satisfied its conditions to "go faster," because even though the whole time I was on the edge of my seat waiting for some sort of freakish twist, I fortunately played the game normally and finished it as you normally would, Death Egg and all.
There was one thing, though, that slightly disconcerted me before I actually began my new file.
When selecting Sonic on the player select screen, his fur was a bit more dull than it usually was, and his eyes dilated in panic when I confirmed my save selection.
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Author's Notes:
Happy Halloween!
I wrote this in a creepypasta competition with some friends and decided to up it here. There'll be a couple more from there soon, and one original Deltarune creepypasta same-day, so get ready!