Sonic fans can be talented. Very talented. They can be so talented, in fact, that the stuff they produce is sometimes confused with the real thing. The latest example of this can be found in Netflix’s new video game documentary series, High Score.
While interviewing Sonic & Knuckles Rock the Rock champion Chris Tang, the show cut to footage demonstrating his technique for how he maximizes his score in Sonic games. After briefly showing Green Hill, the show abruptly switched to footage of…Sonic the Hedgehog Next Level, an impressive three act fan hack of Sonic 1 created by MarkeyJester.
Aside from the Sonic 1 assets, everything is original, so the fact that this ended up in a Netflix documentary speaks well to the hack’s quality. Although the question of how this made it into the documentary itself still remains. Did someone intentionally decide to include footage of a hack, or did they just grab some footage off of YouTube?
Even people who should know better have made this mistake, like when Sumo Digital accidentally included fan art of Sonic Underground’s Sonia in Wii and Steam copies of Sonic& SEGA All-Stars Racing.
I didn’t want to put this in the actual article, but the footage seems to have artifacting that is NOT from my connection. It looks like it was recorded straight off of YouTube or something. Maybe someone googled “Sonic high score run,” thought this looked neat, and recorded it off their computer? XD
Nope, I saw it on Netflix as a trailer.
Just watched the episode. For a show that is edited with such high quality (their pixel animations in the show are pretty nice), it’s super weird that they put in footage from a fan game. I thought they were going to acknowledge how prevalent the sonic fan game community is but that didn’t happen.
Also this series seems like it’s based highly off the book history of video games. If you want a good read with even more game history, read that book.