# Roadkill.BIN

I have a vague experience from my childhood that more than likely traumatized me for the rest of my life. I owned a Genesis and all 3 main Sonic games that were out at the time. The issue is that there was something blatantly wrong with the Sonic 2 cartridge. When I played it for the first time, everything was as normal until I got to the end of the first level. If my memory serves me right, Sonic stopped moving out of nowhere and was rolled over by Eggman's machine and died pretty graphically. Eggman returned to gloat over his victory, and then Sonic's body underwent a grotesque transformation, reanimating itself to kill the doctor, spilling his gore all over the screen, while Tails just watched, and there was nothing I could do. I didn't know what came after this point, since I just remember screaming at the screen and rushing to turn the console off. I never told my parents what I saw, but I avoided playing that cartridge for the rest of my life, since I was more than certain it was haunted. Of course, I've played Sonic 2 plenty of times now, both through the mobile port and on my computer, but never again on a Genesis, I just didn't see reason to.

Though, remembering it now piqued my interest. I still had that Genesis and a fair amount of the games left, so I wondered, since I never told anyone the cartridge was "haunted", I probably still have it somewhere. I checked around the house, and ended up actually finding it in an old box. It had a sticky note on it that said "DON'T PLAY!" which I must've written there. I removed it, and took notice of the cartridge label. This was clearly NOT a retail copy of Sonic 2, in-fact the cartridge label was more inline with the prototype pictures I had seen online, which I guess my parents just didn't notice before. Where did they get it from?

I wasn't sure exactly why I was doing this, but I felt like revisiting what had scarred me back then was just what I needed, even if it could be haunted. I rummaged through more boxes until I found my Genesis along with the controller and wirings. Plugging them into my TV, I inserted the cartridge, and turned on the console.

It started with the normal SEGA and title screens, which I remembered, and remembering another detail of the game, that Tails just watched the chaos unfold on-screen, I checked the options. The character selection was completely missing, leaving only Sonic & Tails together to be played. Which is fine. He doesn't get in the way most of the time. I started the game, I won't bore you with the details, Emerald Hill act 1 is just exactly the same as the base game, along with most of the second act. Getting to the boss is where things get interesting. After hitting the Egg Drillster six times, Sonic just, stopped moving. He didn't respond to any controller presses, and when the boss came back, Sonic didn't take the hit as normal. The machine rolled over Sonic, the Genesis doing its best to display the graphic effects of Sonic's bones and organs getting crushed, along with the "horrific" crumpling sounds and his screams, bitcrushed to all hell but present.

I felt weirdly vindicated to know that what I saw wasn't just a horrible nightmare, and yet, still shocked, because how could this have happened? Who would make something like this? Is this thing actually haunted? Either way, the scene continued. Eggman stopped his vehicle, stepping out to laugh at Tails, who had a shocked expression on his face. He then walked to Sonic's mangled and crushed body to gloat, laughing at it. That's when the next part of this horrorshow kicked in. Sonic's body began to transform, distorting as a mouth began to form at his midsection where he was ran over, stretching in size as his face and torso blackened. His mangled arm grabbed the doctor with unusual strength, holding him to his new mouth, and he chomped. He crushed the doctor with his new, razor-sharp teeth, killing him in seconds, and continued to munch on him as Tails ran off-screen, and the screen faded to black.

It didn't take long for me to process what just happened, and it certainly wasn't as scary as I remember it being. Perhaps it was just the blurry television, me being just a kid, both, multiple other things, but it didn't look nearly as realistic as it did. Deciding to continue as the title card for Chemical Plant displayed, I noticed multiple things different. One, the zone was a lot darker. Two, Tails still had a horrified expression on his face, I guess the poor boy was traumatized by having to witness all that. Running through the zone, the Eggman side of the ending signpost was blank, and the Tails side (since Sonic's gone) was again, bearing a traumatized expression. Act 2 was no different, darker, but the boss was completely skipped. Hard to have a boss when he's dead.

The rest of the game is the same story. I only played through because I enjoyed Sonic 2 enough to play it once more. Though, the game ended at Metropolis Act 3, with no boss, simply fading to black with an ending screen featuring what I could only assume was Eggman's corpse horribly disfigured by the distorted Sonic, along with text that simply read "THE END." Makes sense, the rest of the game after that kinda relies on Eggman being alive. After 5 seconds, it went back to the title screen, but Sonic was missing this time, only a frightened Tails was left.

I was kinda interested to see what a second playthrough would bring for me, so I pressed on. Of course, it was Tails only, the zone was still darker, but now this time there were no Badniks at all, without any Eggman to make and set them up. Enjoying this "reprieve" I ran through Act 1, and reaching the end of Act 2 there was no boss, but Sonic's mangled corpse, unaltered, as if the transformation never occurred. As I made Tails approach the corpse, it once again transformed, and the poor fox was torn to shreds by Sonic. I had an unamused expression on my face as I said to myself "No, Sonic, why, why would you do that, Tails is your friend, no, you can't do that..."

The game froze up after Tails died, and I couldn't get it to work again after that, turning the console off and on again only resulted in the "grisly" picture of Tails' corpse showing up on screen along with the text "TRY AGAIN" which was funny because the game was literally preventing me from trying again. Just wanting to make sure my console itself wasn't busted I grabbed a Sonic 3 cartridge out of storage which I knew was perfectly fine and tried to play it, and, thank God, it worked just fine.

Still interested in seeing just what was going on, whether this cartridge was haunted or not, I looked up online how to dump cartridges. I had to wait a while for equipment I needed to arrive in the mail, and began the process, resulting in a dumped ROM. Out of curiosity I quickly played it in Gens, and lo and behold, it had the same result as when it was played on real hardware! That told me it wasn't haunted at all, which was nice to know. In-fact, it told me one more thing: this was nothing more than a dumb ROM hack, sold as the real deal, which means someone out there was TRYING to scare people.

Unfortunately, that's all I have; I didn't really bother trying to investigate the ROM further to try to get to the bottom of it, mostly because I didn't care enough. Maybe later, I'll give it a shot, but for now, I'm happy enough just to know that it's not haunted.

!!! note I believe this artwork was made by Porcupineanon, but let me know if I got that wrong, and I'll correct it.
![Artwork by Porcanon (? Let me know if I got this wrong)](https://files.catbox.moe/kus8kg.png)

!!! info I noticed looking through the archives that this artwork was posted with a take on the character however I didn't take it into consideration while writing this story (because I didn't know about it lol) and the pasta is based on the original idea.