Project 06: Redeeming the Failures of the Past
Sonic the Hedgehog for the PS3 and Xbox 360, commonly referred to as Sonic 06, is often noted as one of the most notorious video games to ever release. From the messy controls, poor performance, and abundance of loading screens, just to say a few, it’s not hard to see why people don’t like this game. I, however, have never had many issues with it. Sure, I agree that a lot of the criticism is deserved, but I think it’s overhated and overdone at this point. To give a short version of it, Sonic 06 had a very rough development cycle. From the team working with an unfamiliar engine on unfamiliar hardware, to being split in half along with Yuji Naka leaving and taking people with him, to SEGA ultimately refusing to expand the development team and imposing a harsh deadline on the skeleton crew that still remained working on the game, it’s easy to see why the game ended up the way it did. But it’s not like Sonic Team wanted the game to be bad, you can clearly see there was ambition for this project and they wanted it to succeed; they just didn’t have time to fully develop their ideas into a complete state. However, one individual by the name of ChaosX saw the true potential of 06 and decided to give it a second chance, despite never having the chance to actually play the game himself until an out of town trip in December 2021.
A bit of development and release history: Development started sometime around April 2017, not too long after ChaosX started developing a now scrapped Unity remake of 2008’s Sonic Unleashed. He started with the few bits of code from the original game that were accessible, mostly focusing on remaking the stages while ignoring or hiding the problems that are present in the game. Most of the game is developed entirely from scratch, which is certainly an impressive feat given the fact that he had never played the original game. He’s not the only person who has worked on the game, of course; he was assisted by Beatz, Gotta Play Fast, and many other contributors that you can see in the game’s credits. Fast forward 2 years after development started and ChaosX has released the very first demo of the game, housing two stages from Sonic’s Campaign; those being Wave Ocean and Kingdom Valley. He would go on to release one more demo before the release of Sonic’s entire campaign, minus bosses, on July 14th, 2020, with a small patch coming just under a month later on August 4th. This started the episodic release schedule for Project 06, with the next installment coming on September 6th, 2021, which brought all of Shadow’s stages to the game and improvements to Sonic’s stages, with two small patches coming on September 28th and October 1st. As of this being written, we are currently on the first iteration of the Silver release, which was released on April 19th, 2023, with a patch to come in the near future.
With the development and release history out of the way, let's move on to the actual gameplay of the project vs its retail counterpart, starting with Silver’s campaign since he’s the most recent release. This campaign has undergone the biggest facelift from its retail counterpart. Just look at any gameplay side by side and you'll see an immediate change. Thanks to the more competent engine, the flow has completely changed in Project 06. It’s a lot faster paced than the original and I think it works to improve the game substantially without requiring too many mechanical changes. Not to mention the amigo characters are some of the worst in retail and simultaneously the most fun in Project 06, it’s such a drastic change between the two games it’s honestly incredible. Blaze was probably the highlight for many people in the original game, since she handled pretty similarly to Sonic. Of course, this being the game that it is, she has her own jank that makes her weird to control at times, and it’s certainly weird going from controlling Silver to Blaze because of how abysmally slow Silver is. In Project 06, not much has fundamentally changed here outside of the obvious. The controls are a lot more refined, her moves are mapped to individual buttons instead of being on the same button, and she even has an unused move restored. Amy, on the other hand, is an absolute transformation. Abysmal speed, a terrible double jump that stops Amy in place and a small hammer with the most accurate model-to-hitbox ratio I’ve ever seen in my life, it’s absurd. Project 06 takes most of its inspiration from Sonic Adventure 1’s incarnation of Amy, and that’s for the better. Her hammer flip has been restored, her double jump isn’t complete garbage now and she even has the hammer spin back. She has gone from a dreadful part of the original game to probably my favorite amigo character in Project 06, and it’s a shame there’s only one stage with her in the game. Silver is a character we’ve had in our hands since demo 1’s release back in 2019, and I don’t think much has really changed with him since then, but now we have all his stages to play around with. Him having a ranged attack helps a lot and fills in the only inherent weakness in his moveset, the slam move drops you alot faster and his teleport dash initially behaves like it’s retail counterpart, but is still an improvement. His stages haven’t been touched up too much, with the exception of Dusty Desert. The billiard puzzles have been made so much easier thanks to the better physics and these walls at the end of the stage, not to mention Amy actually being fun to control and it makes for a really enjoyable stage. Some other minor changes include: Blaze’s adventure through Wave Ocean has been extended slightly and she’s been added to the beginning of Flame Core, Radical Train’s scales have been replaced with normal scales, which is only for the better and Sonic’s portion in Kingdom Valley has been ever so slightly extended. Silver has 3 total upgrades, 2 hidden ones and one for getting every s-rank in his campaign. The Lotus of Resilience, hidden away in Dusty Desert, allows Silver to badnik bounce and rebuffs his teleport dash to use his entire meter instead of being a short dash. The Flame of Control, hidden away in Aquatic Base, gives Silver a Sonic Generations-esque psychic knife, and it’s incredible. The reward for getting all s-ranks, the Sigil of Awakening, gives Silver a boost to his esp powers, which upon use, does a massive AoE attack around you, discounts his meter usage and allows him to use his abilities much more, as well as automatically reflecting all projectiles and stunning enemies he comes into contact with. The difference with how this form operates is it doesn’t consume rings or your action gauge, it consumes the maturity meter, that little bar below your action gauge. I definitely like it more than just giving him a super form, it’s unique and drains one of your 3 resources, the other two being your action gauge and rings. This campaign has become my favorite one in the game, due to a whole host of improvements.
Shadow the Hedgehog’s gameplay in the retail game could only be described as a negative for most; it was mostly combat focused and, coupled with the homing attack delay and a slow attack combo, it wasn’t really enjoyable. He did have a longer homing attack, which never really gave any combat benefit and was only really used to clip through geometry. He didn’t have the spindash, which was a real shame, even though the spindash sucked in retail. He had a spear attack that nobody really used for its intended purpose, and he had a spin kick combo when standing completely still that rarely was used unless you really needed somebody off of you. The amigo characters needed help too, because in one instance I got stuck on a wall for 40 seconds in Kingdom Valley before giving up. This is Rouge’s primary issue, sticking to walls for prolonged periods of time and not wanting to let go. Omega is certainly an interesting case. He’s the fastest character, excluding mach speed sonic, and has the weakest combat in the game. A terrible shotgun blast, slow air gun blasts and a pea shooter. Project 06 takes both of these characters and sprinkles them with love. Rouge now has her kick reinstated, giving her some actual combat ability, with the addition of being able to glide into enemies. She never gets stuck on walls and her bombs are so much faster to use. Omega has had a rightful speed nerf, his hover doesn’t last forever now, his peashooter is much better, he has a first person turret mode, and his heroes melee attack has come back with a vengeance. These changes make these characters so much better to control, although in Omega’s case some of the level design still doesn’t suit him well. Shadow’s gameplay has also undergone numerous changes that makes him a treat to control. His homing attack has been shortened to match Sonic’s, chaos snap doesn’t prematurely cut your homing attack off if you hold the button like it did in retail, chaos lance can actually do damage and even has this cool little hop that happens after you fire it off, his chaos boost actually levels properly, utilizing this little bar below your action gauge that shows when you can level up, chaos blast is actually usable now and his combo attack is significantly faster with new animations to boot. Much like Silver, there’s not too many changes to Shadow’s stages, but the ones that have been changed are Tropical Jungle, where Rouge now collects keys, and Wave Ocean, where Shadow goes through a few more islands before hopping on the hover car. Shadow, much like Silver and Sonic, has a reward for achieving all s-ranks in his campaign, that being the Memory Shard (Light), hidden away in Dusty Desert. This powerup allows Shadow to go uninhibited. In his uninhibited state, he defeats every enemy in one shot but it rapidly drains your gauge, making the management of it much more important because if you run out you are stopped in place and stunned for roughly 8 seconds while shadow recovers. Something I wanna talk about here is the new style point system, because I think it applies to Shadow’s campaign more than the other two. The point system in the original game was practically non-existent. You got points for defeating enemies and a combo for defeating a leader, but that was the extent of it. Project 06 has an actual combo system that grades you based on how many enemies you defeat before touching the ground, and it’s a pure dopamine hit seeing a ludicrous number pop up after a long combo of defeating enemies. Trying to optimize the stages for score attack has been some of the most fun I’ve had playing this game and I’m thankful for this combo system’s inclusion.
Sonic the Hedgehog’s campaign is the one I have the least to say about because his campaign in the original game wasn’t too terrible. Aside from the weird mach speed sections, the predictably weird amigos and every action being bound to the same button, there wasn’t too much wrong with him. In Project 06, his campaign is the one we’ve had the longest amount of time, so there has been plenty of time to improve and perfect his campaign, and I think ChaosX has done a fantastic job doing so. Tails had his flight cap removed and the action gauge now shows you how long you have left to fly, his tail spin attack is back and the dummy ring bombs feel better to use. Knuckles, like Rouge, no longer gets stuck on walls and can fly into enemies, as well as being able to cancel his ground slam attack into a glide and vice versa. Sonic stays largely the same. His gems are hidden around every stage minus the princess stages, his bounce attack is still really busted, the spindash is spammable and doesn’t suck, his action gauge is properly programmed this time so it actually drains and his gems even have levels, similar to Shadow’s chaos boost. The most notable change to him is in his mach speed sections. He can finally move in mid air now, he can do a bounce attack and slide kick to slow down and his top speed has been vastly increased. Snowboard Sonic also has a new move which allows him to pick up speed, which is a nice touch. His stages haven’t had too much of a touch up either. Aquatic Base has had the Knuckles section extended, making Sonic run on the ball after Knuckles deactivates the laser gates, which is a really nice touch. Sonic’s reward for s-ranking every stage is the rainbow gem, found in Kingdom Valley, which allows Sonic to go super. This was unused in the original game with only the animation for it still remaining. It works how you think it would; get 50 rings, use the rainbow gem, and now you’re Super Sonic. I’m not entirely sure what changes when you go super since I don’t go super very often in my own gameplay, but it’s more than likely the usual speed increase, invincibility and defeating things in one hit.
Project 06 isn’t complete however, there’s still some notable content absent from the current build of the game. The 15 boss fights and the entire last story still aren’t here, but I believe they are coming with the next major update. I don’t think there’s too many updates ChaosX would need to make to the boss fights because I think some of them are pretty solid on their own, they just need to get little touch ups like the current campaigns have. The fights I’m concerned over are the character fights, because they are heavily rigged in Silver’s favor. I think adding invincibility frames to the hedgehogs when they get hit would go a long way in helping balance these fights, but I honestly don’t have too many ideas. Last story is largely in the same boat, I don’t think it’ll need much work put into it simply because the characters play so much better than their retail counterparts, just needing some minor touch ups here and there. Solaris is a fight that’s a nice balancing act of watching your ring counter and attacking him. I do wish there was a better indicator in his first phase for what character you need to attack him with though, because it can leave inexperienced players confused on why they aren’t doing any damage to him, so adding some sort of indicator could help. Second phase is pretty alright as it is, it’s just a bit hard to see the lasers once he starts having multiple up at a time. Some miscellaneous content I would like to see added are the silver medals to spice up the 100% experience, hard mode variants of the stages, and the hub worlds purely for exploration reasons. I don’t expect any or all of this to be added, but it would be a nice addition to an already fantastic package.
Project 06 is a very successful fan recreation of the blue blur’s most infamous game, and it has done an excellent job so far. This project has given me something I haven’t had in a long time, joy. I have nothing but high hopes for this project, and the day it’s completed will go down in history for me. This project has brought one of my favorite games back into the spotlight for some people, giving it a second chance, and I couldn’t be more grateful. If you want to download it and try it for yourself, I’ll leave a link down below that takes you to the silver release trailer. I implore you to watch the sick trailer that was made, and then go to the description of the video where you will find the download links.
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