If you remember a couple of years back, a highly ambitious fan project aiming to re-create the classic Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with high definition visuals released its first ever alpha to the public. It was certainly stunning – however, issues behind the scenes involving the programming and engine arose shortly thereafter, which sadly brought a swift end to the future of Sonic 2 HD.

However today (and what a day to announce it on), the project was announced to be back on via the Facebook page. A fan came and saved the day, lending his own independently created engine to the game. Even without all its previous team members, Sonic 2 HD is back in production with even a Mac OS version coming at a point. The full post is as follows:

Hello everyone!

The only thing more surprising than seeing an official post from us here is our announcing that S2HD is no longer dead.

You read that correctly: work has once again begun on Sonic 2 HD! That said, we’d like to give you all a brief tie-in for recent events leading to the project’s reboot.

As many of you know, the leading reason behind the project’s cancellation was due to the programming element being removed with no possibility of return in its existing form. As of last year, this changed. Before anyone raises the question, no, the former programmer and the S2HD team members have not had a reunion; instead, a fan of the project independently created and submitted his own engine to Vincent, the project leader, for evaluation. After integrating the art assets from the alpha release and successfully testing it, Vincent began to let the rest of the prior team members know, and we’ve picked up where we left off sans those who are unavailable due to real life obligations. Two other talented programmers have since offered their skills to recreate the game’s physics to match the original, and to port the game to the Mac OS platform (the latter of which is still in the earliest possible stage, and we have no estimate on when it will be playable, so stay tuned!).

In response to some of the questions we have seen, the Alpha Release build is officially discontinued and will not get any form of support as we do not have the source code. The next release will be entirely new programming from the ground up.

We’ll provide more details in how you can help us out in the next few days. It’s good to be back!

From that final note, you can see the team might be reaching out for some help from the community soon. Make sure you keep up to date with their Facebook if you feel you can contribute. I personally wish them all the luck in the world that they’ll succeed – Sonic 2 HD is a huge undertaking but it would be a dream to see it become reality!

Got any fond memories of Sonic 2 you wanna share with us? Be sure to head over to Twitter and get involved in the week long celebration for Sonic’s birthday which we’re collaborating with SEGAbits and Sonic Retro. Use the hashtag #Sonic23on23 to get in on the conversation, and we’ll be looking out for some of the best to re-tweet and favourite!

Source: Sonic 2 HD Facebook