Sonic ERaZor (ConceptTopic, 8)

From Compile Worlds

Sonic ERaZor, aka ERZ, is one of the most ingenious hacks of Sonic 1 you'll probably ever play. Ironically, it's because it takes everything you know and love about the original game and tosses it out the window. The game's difficulty is always on hard mode, but it's a fun kind of hard, save for a couple of tricky spots, which can be skipped with a special monitor if you're really that frustrated. It also contains lots of epic music ported from other games, including an awesomesauce remix of Malicious Fingers. There are also many other convenient features, such as stack-able barriers, Rings that appear everywhere for destroying objects, and infinite continues available at your disposal. The game is separated into 5 short chapters with humorous story intervals inbetween.

Places

Spring Yard Place

The central hub of the game, ala Sonic Advance 3, where giant rings are used to teleport you everywhere. You can also use these said rings to view the epic intro and ending sequences as many times as you please.

Night Hill Place/Green Hill Place

This once familiar terrain eases(?) you into the hack with altered layouts and an evil enemy crab to serve as a miniboss. The boss is retake on the classic Green Hill Egg Mobile, with extra maces and a new platform that will alter your old strategy a bit.

Special Place

Yes, you're literally forced into the Special stage in between Green Hill and the next stage. Except, unlike the original, this special stage is an intuitive maze, where the walls are made of goal spheres that must be avoided, lest you want to teleport back to the beginning or the last check point. At the end, all six Chaos Emeralds are waiting for you.

Ruined Place

Based on the Marble Zone of the original, this stage features lots of music and some action packed jumping. At the end, there is a maze of teleporting spikes which Sonic must navigate in a timely manner by careening himself all over the place with bullets shot from his ass.

Labyrinth Place

The obligatory water level of the hack, it throws another interesting gimmick into your face: during certain segments, the camera will force itself to be fixed at your current height, and if you end up below the camera's vision on the bottom, you die. Thus, you must tread carefully.

Finalor Place

Skipping Starlight and Scrap Brain entirely, we get straight to the point in the third and final boss battle of the game. Again, it is a modified version of the original game's boss, made to be much harder of course. Defeat Eggman one last time and see what all your hard work has accomplished...