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I love creepypasta. I love the way it has evolved in form over the years, starting off as copy-pasted short stories on internet forums and eventually turning into multi-layered web series of videos, websites, and so much more. I vividly remember the fear I felt as a child reading stories about the infamous Lavender Town Syndrome in particular, though creatures like the Tails Doll occasionally made their way to my curious hands as well. In retrospect a lot of creepypasta of the old is rather crude, and most of us only recall the stories which focused on senseless gore and "hyper-realistic blood", but that doesn't really take away any of the appreciation I have for the craft. If anything there's a charming quality to inexperienced writers giving horror their best go, writing about things they themselves would find scary, and ideally learning from the process as they go.
There is also a particular sub-genre of creepypasta that still fascinates me despite how flawed it often tends to be - video game creepypasta. Blame it on Lavender Town if you want, but the idea of haunted video games captivates me to this day, whether they are found at crappy garage sales or GameStops that still definitely stock retro games on their shelves at affordable prices. I also adore the more modern manifestations of the genre in form of unfiction series like Petscop, Diminish, and Valle Verde, which effectively create video games that do not exist and that we cannot play for ourselves, much like the haunted copies of familiar games that creepypastas tell us about. These games all tell their own individual stories and carry an eerily personal nature as a result, one that comes with an inherent haunting quality that makes them so compelling. Of course, much like in classic creepypasta, we cannot actually experience any of these games for ourselves, as typically they are only crafted for show and aren't fully functional outside of the parts the viewer is meant to see. Personally I don't see this as a detriment, and keeping these games out of our reach only highlights their mysterious natures, which to me is ultimately a good thing.
There does exist one game, though, that any of us could play and experience for ourselves, that in my eyes might as well be a creepypasta made manifest - Sonic CD.
The Mega CD - or Sega CD for US audiences - was one of the more notable quirky console add-ons that spawned during the 90s. Though not as doomed as their brother, the 32X that received next to no games, the Mega CD didn't exactly fare well either, with the price of the add-on and a lackluster selection of games not exactly driving sales in the droves that SEGA likely hoped it would have. As such it's not unreasonable to assume that many people who would have played beloved titles like Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 didn't have the opportunity to experience Sonic CD for themselves, at least until its many re-releases years later.
Sonic CD's particular inaccessibility in classic Sonic's hay day puts it in an interesting position as a more obscure Sonic game. It wasn't featured as a part of Sonic Mega Collection along the other games of its era, being bundled in the more niche Sonic Gems Collection instead. The 2011 remake finally gave it the attention it rightfully deserved and this version of CD has since been bundled along its siblings in the form of Sonic Origins, but prior to this CD was shrouded in a strange mystery, not much different from the stories of uncanny and haunted game copies that we're familiar with today. This obscurity is only one part of the picture, though, as the same could be said for any of the numerous pieces of Nintendo DS shovelware that make up the handheld's library, and I have my doubts that many would claim a game like Imagine: Babyz to be a cult-classic creepypasta piece overlooked by its generation. But unlike cash-grab shovelware, Sonic CD has the gameplay and presentation to back itself up and set itself apart from other Sonic games, and it succeeds at this feat with immaculate grace.
The presentation of CD is beyond that of any other Mega Drive -adjacent Sonic game, competing for the top spot of the most memorable experience with the vibrance of Knuckles' Chaotix in my opinion. The format of a CD gave it much more room for cool things like music and animation, both features that contribute much to Sonic CD's identity and make it that much more special. They take CD from what would be a pretty neat Sonic game to living in my head rent free.
Saying that the animated cutscenes in CD look gorgeous would be redundant; it's good animation with a good art direction. Even with the rough compression they went through on the original Mega CD release, they give CD a striking aesthetic that something like Sonic 2, a game that was developed alongside CD, cannot have due to the limited space of a regular old game cartridge. Animated openings and cutscenes were possible to include on CDs obviously due to their increased storage space, and would become a staple in various later disk-based games, especially with those on the PlayStation. Sonic CD does, interestingly enough, predate the release of the PlayStation. It falls into a transitionary period between cartridge-based consoles and disk-based ones, not quite able to shed the 16-bit look and limitations of the base console it ran on but still reaching beyond those limitations with everything it had, even if it had to do so within about 700 megabytes. In a weird way this kind of liminality is carved into Sonic CD's very being, and contributes to the image we have of it.
Similarly the soundtrack of the game surpasses the limitations of sound chips by being streamed right out of the CD itself, making the game sound much better than you'd imagine it should. The price of the sound quality does come with many caviats, one of them being that the music in the game does not loop seamlessly, fading out before restarting the track as you traverse the stages of the game. This was fixed in the 2011 remake as you'd expect, which gave us a more polished experience of the game as a result. I would argue, however, that some of CD's inherent magic gets lost with this improvement. Part of the game's charm comes from the slight uncanniness it carries that stemmed from various hardware limitations of the time, including music that cannot loop. While a bit of an irritating detail, it contributes to the larger image of Sonic CD, its identity as something almost otherworldly when compared to its siblings. Sonic 1, 2, and 3 are very conventional games, released on a popular console and fitting your expectations of what a video game should be, even with 3's illegitimate affair with Sonic & Knuckles. Sonic CD struggles to fit this idea of convention thanks to its rather experimental nature and bold approach to its presentation, which make up an identity that is intricately tied to the platform it released on and every hardware quirk that comes with it.
It's remarkably easy to fumble something as complex as time traveling and its implications in any piece of media that involves it. Sonic has explored it more than once with games like Sonic 2006 and Generations, both dropping the ball in one way or another to varying degrees of severity, but Sonic CD handles this central gameplay mechanic gracefully as ever. It keeps things simple and abstract, contains any and all havoc to the mysterious Little Planet not seen in media outside of CD, and most importantly gives the player the mortifying ordeal of being responsible for the actions and mistakes they make. 06 and Generations utilize time travel as a means to tell a story; CD on the other hand beckons you to, simply put, fuck around and find out.
You can play the entirety of Sonic CD without ever traveling to the past or the future outside of the third zone of each round, which is always set in either the good or the bad future. You are allowed to ignore the time travel mechanic altogether, with the catch being that you will always get the bad future as a result of your negligence. While CD's Time Stones are an alternative way of achieving good futures and by extension the good ending, they're much too similar to the Chaos Emeralds from other classic games to carry the same weight of consequences as direct player action through exploration. The Chaos Emeralds are locked behind some resemblance of a skill barrier, requiring the player to retain enough rings for a shot at the special stages in the first two games. Sonic CD, while offering this same skill-and-or-luck-based route, prioritizes stage exploration as the intended method of reaching the true end. Whether this is more effort than the special stages of the classic era likely depends on who you ask about it, but importantly it doesn't pit the player solely against the whims of the bumpers from Sonic 1 or the faux-3D seen both in CD's and Sonic 2's special stages. You simply have to put in the effort to learn the stages and where they allow you to time travel to reach the robot transporters - or look up a guide that tells you where to go. In either case you are presented with a type of agency the other games of the time do not give their players, at least to this same kind of extent.
The time traveling of CD naturally contributes to its identity, and by extension the uncanny liminality I mentioned earlier. Liminality does, after all, refer to the transitional period between "something that used to be" and "something that has yet to be", and comfortably slots itself to the concept of traveling between time periods. The idea of liminality in online spaces has taken its own unique form that Sonic CD doesn't quite fit despite its presentation, but I don't think that makes CD any less of a liminal odditity among Sonic games. The game falls into the area of a strange transitional period in both the evolution of console hardware and as a thematic part of its core gameplay. Your actions and choices in the present shape the future of Little Planet; you are in control.
Though not exactly creepypasta worthy on its own, it is the loss of the player's control that often makes video game creepypasta as unnerving as it can be in the best examples of the genre. Convenience would have it that there exists a version of Sonic CD in which the player will never be able to achieve a good future through normal gameplay: the 0.02 prototype. It's obviously unfinished and buggy in its own right, but unintentionally toys with the loss of the control the game inherently grants its players in its finished form. In this prototype your actions don't matter; you cannot escape the bad future without tampering with the game. This is only taken further by the presentations of the bad futures as bleak and roboticized nightmares that you're forced to trudge through while knowing you failed to save Little Planet. To think there's nothing you could do to change the future - no, that can't be right, there must be a way to fix everything. So you try again, hoping to make a difference. Look up the maps to find the robot transporters to make sure you don't miss any this time. In the modern era when we know these games inside and out there's very little reason to doubt these methods and their validity, but before the accessibility of the internet in the 90s and the little available guides that even were there, doubt had much more room to sprout. You followed the instructions to a T, so why did you get a bad future again? Was the guide wrong? Or is there something wrong with your game?
It is the uniqueness of CD's time traveling that plays a big part in why the game lends itself so well for the field of creepypasta. It contributes to gameplay that stands out from the other games, subtly presents themes of liminality by not only existing as a game between Sonic 1 and 2 on new hardware but also by giving the player a sense of agency, and gives us the shock that are the bad futures, direct announcements of our shortcomings and failures as a player. In right hands this somewhat abstract time travel works not just as a core gameplay mechanic, but also as a careful narrative device with tremendous potential to shock and unnerve the unwarned public.
Metal Sonic, the only mechanical and robotic replica of Sonic that made it out of the classic-era. A sleek design mirroring Sonic much more carefully than any other, speed that matches the counterpart he believes to be the copy of himself, evil red eyes - he has it all. Metal Sonic is cool, not in the same way as characters like Sonic and Shadow are, but in his own, robotic-clone kind of way.
He's also effectively a canonical version of sonic.exe.
Sonic.exe hardly requires an introduction at this point in time. A creepypasta story of a highly modified executable version of Sonic 1, it serves as a microcosmos of many of the tropes people tend to associate with video game creepypasta from hyper-realistic blood and gore in a 16-bit video game to much too detailed descriptions of images that the author could only have observed for a fraction of a second. The story is not terribly good, believable, let alone plausible, but gained enough popularity for the titular character, sonic.exe, to gain a life of his own. I personally find this development interesting in the presence of a character like Metal Sonic who fills a very similar niche as sonic.exe, though with considerably less senseless and tasteless blood and gore. Metal Sonic, too, is nothing short of a computer program mimicking the likeness of Sonic, committing nefarious activities whether on the behalf of Eggman or for his own gain, and even almost torturing small animals in Sonic CD in the form of his holograms spread around the past. In the defense of sonic.exe, this creepypasta creation is more an eldritch horror of some sort rather than strictly a computer program, though being named after an executable doesn't do him many favors in establishing this piece of trivia.
Depite being a much more grounded force rather than an eldritch being, Metal Sonic arguably surpasses sonic.exe in the realm of being an "evil Sonic" and has interesting qualities that make him a suitable creepypasta element, even if he's far from occupying the same tropes as sonic.exe. The Sonic OVA explores Sonic and Metal Sonic as people (or furries, or creatures, or whatever they are) who are the same person, but different, but still the same. Though this has some similarities to the way Sonic Adventure 2 presented Shadow to us years later, Sonic's and Shadow's similarities to Sonic are mostly visual and coincidental, and serve the narratively convenient purpose of allowing the military to frame Sonic for Shadow's actions and crimes. Metal Sonic on the other hand was deliberately crafted in Sonic's image, and in the OVA's canon also shares at least Sonic's line of logic and thinking, perhaps even more than that. The OVA's execution of the concept is far from the kind of psychological horror this has the potential to be utilized for, but regardless provides a suitable basis for taking the concept further. How much are Metal Sonic and Sonic the same person? Does Metal have the same thirst for freedom Sonic does, despite being kept firmly under Eggman's control? Metal does not have a voice to express his thoughts with; does it eat away at him, keep him a prisoner in his own body? Is he only acting according to his programming, or is there a deeper sense of hatred for the living, free creature his biological counterpart is allowed to be? Besides being interesting questions in terms of character study, they additionally highlight a kind of psychological and even body horror the character's very premise is suitable for. This may not immediately seem to have a place in video game creepypasta, but a more character-lead experience not unlike that of sonic.exe could successfully utilize Metal Sonic's inherent traits to create something compelling, disturbing, and unnerving. This potential is held back only by the horror of Metal Sonic being directly tied into the existence of Sonic, almost demanding the inclusion of both to some degree to make the most out of the available tools, but I have no doubts that a skilled writer would be able to work around these constraints to give spotlight to the original and canonical sonic.exe and the torment of his existence.
My favorite element of Sonic CD are its regional soundtracks. The original Japanese OST that was also heard in the PAL versions of the game can be considered the "intended" experience of CD with its more upbeat and melodic approach, painting a much different picture of the game than its US counterpart. This isn't to say the US soundtrack is bad, far from it - I'd go as far as to say its depiction of CD is one that captivates me infinitely more. The US OST is tonally darker, and prioritizes atmosphere over catchier tunes. Infamously the boss music in this version is considered more unsettling than that of the original version, and the same could be said for the game over jingle that sounds outright sinister. For a game like Sonic CD that already sets itself apart as an entry in the Sonic series these darker quirks further build its image as an outlier, and give it a similar charm that would later be emulated in various video game creepypastas, though CD hardly started let alone established this trend. Rather it unintentionally, at least in retrospect, contains a trope or two of common creepypasta staples and themes, a creepy kind of music being among the most visible (or audible) of these.
Music and sound design are some of the most important aspects of any video game project, and their presence or lack thereof can drastically alter the mood and feel of a game. Sonic CD was more than likely intended to be closer to a fun and whimsical experience, even groovy in some ways, and while that isn't entirely lost with the redone OST it was fundamentally compromised. Sonic CD for the people in the US region was a kind of creepy game as a result of the changed music, but I don't see that as a negative thing, but rather a perspective into the difference something like sound and music can make in a game, and an alternative view of Sonic CD as a whole. The US soundtrack brings CD remarkably close to the idea of a creepypasta game as something familiar that's somehow different in a way that makes us uncomfortable. It paints the game's own liminality in a more threatening light, and brings attention to the imperfections of the game not as means to mock them but as contrasting elements to the intended vision of CD. It is much easier to overlook things like compressed animations and music that fails to loop when the environment around them is welcoming and pleasant, but in a world that is hostile these bumps in the road turn into sharp edges that are much harder to ignore, until they start chipping away at your immersion. And it is the breaking of your immersion that creates a particular sort of discomfort with video games in particular, when things aren't quite as you feel they should be. Sometimes this happens after you discover a glitch for the first time, seeing beyond the stage the game's developers built for you, revealing the strings of numbers, letters, and commands that hold the performance in front of you in place. Other times it is the technical limitations that hold a game back especially in retrospect that compromsie the stage. Rarely is it an unintentional clash in the midst of the overall presentation that gives you the feeling that something about what you're experiencing isn't quite right - and CD carries that mark with it thanks to this fascinating choice in altering the soundtrack.
Fear, horror, and creepiness are all very subjective things. What unsettles one person may not have as big of an effect on someone else, perhaps the biggest showcase of this at the time of writing being the analogue horror scene on the side of video series. I've watched enough analysis videos and the like to have the impression that many people aren't terribly happy with the way analogue horror has gone in recent years. Many creators in the scene are on the younger side or inexperienced as artists, and as such their understanding of what is scary or terrifying likely hasn't reached its full potential just yet. Thus it's not unreasonable to argue that a lot of newer analogue horror falls into the realm of "slop" - repeating the same tropes over and over, using VHS filters as means to make the story scary, haphazardly tying a narrative of senseless blood and gore into a media franchise in the hopes of reaching a wider coverage. It's not unlike the video game creepypasta I've reminisced about over the course of this page, as if it has only taken a new form thanks to the accessibility of video editing software.
This is to say, my view of Sonic CD as a creepypasta game is just as subjective as a middle-schooler's view of their "ARG Analogue Horror VHS Tape Minecraft Archive" as the scariest thing they've ever made. I'm not even arguing that CD is a particularly scary game, it's ultimately still the light-hearted experience of whimsy and adventure that it was always meant to be regardless of any hardware limitations or OST changes. But in its imperfections I see a particular potential for a compelling creepypasta element that I'm not sure has been explored before, at least in a deeper and more meaningful way. CD will never be the next sonic.exe and I'd rather not have it be forced into that role either through any means, but to use it as a vehicle to explore something else much in the vein of games in unfiction would be more than a delight to see manifest.
I sincerely believe that Sonic CD has a strong niche as a platform for creepypasta storytelling due the features I've discussed about it on this page. Unfortunately they haven't been tapped into much so far from what I've been able to tell; searching along the lines of "Sonic CD analogue horror" on YouTube does bring you results, though these tend to fall more into tropes in the analogue horror genre and video game creepypasta as a whole rather than breaking these molds to become something new and different. The largest pit fall many cases of Sonic-centric horror seem to fall into is the inability to shed sonic.exe from their backs - an anomalous force of some kind seems to frequent these stories, more often than not manifesting as a replica of Sonic and tormenting his friends. Sonic creepypasta and horror don't have to revolve around this concept, though, and especially the classic era could easily be treated in a light more similar to the way Mario horror has been treated over the years, with the game as a medium for you to experience anomalous, unnerving, or mysterious phenomenon through. And what better game to utilize for this purpose than Sonic CD.
Perhaps one day the words "Sonic CD" and "analogue horror" will create a compelling unfiction piece that aims to make the most of both CD as a remarkably strange Sonic game, and analogue horror as a storytelling medium. Perhaps I need to make that manifest myself at some point.
11/06/2024
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