"TAILS IS AWESOME! HE CAN FLY AND STUFF! NOTHING BEATS THAT AMAZING FOX! SONIC CAN SUCK IT IN THE CHEEKS!!"
Seriously, that's what random kids say to me my entire life. Why does everyone love Tails?
Simply just take Sonic, turn him into a fox, make him slightly weaker, make him have yellow fur and have him fly. Bam, instant character. However...the experience I had was a bit...creepy, to say the least. My name is Nathanel and this is the following story I had during life.
It started about two months ago where a friend of mine, Taylor, sent me a box of Sega Genesis games labeled "GAMES STUFF." Inside, besides a collection of Genesis games, had a small note inside it reading "This contains a game about a 1992 fox. ~Taylor." Was my friend a Tails fan as well? I didn't actually mind since at least my friend didn't hate Sonic. I found the cartridge of the "game about the 1992 fox." It's a Sonic 1 cartridge with "TAILS" written on it in sharpie. I put it in my Genesis and it seemed to work perfectly. The SEGA screen came up, but for some strange reason the sound effect didn't come up. I shook this off as a small sound effect glitch. The next screen came up; the Sonic Team screen. Instead of the normal text, however, it said...
'Tails Team'? I know now that Taylor was a Tails fan, but why would anyone modify the game to say this? Just a humourous joke?
Anyway, I started up the game with Green Hill Zone Act 1. Everything was normal; sky, music, Badniks, everything. The only thing that wasn't normal was that there was no signpost. When I reached where it should be, it just showed the score tally with the usual SONIC HAS PASSED ACT-X message. Act 2 was a bit more abnormal. The music was not playing correctly (more glitched), there was no Badniks, and the sky was grey. After I collected some more rings...there he was.
No screamers or anything; just Tails, blindly standing on the same hill as Sonic. Noticeably, he had no tails on his sprite. I wanted to see if he did anything, as I still had control of Sonic; I slowly walked towards Tails. As soon as I hit Tails, Sonic instantly lost all his rings and Tails quickly jumped away. As soon as that happened, everything also faded to normal. palettes, music, badniks, the normal Green Hill I remember. "What happened to Taylor's Sonic game?" I thought. I continued on with Acts 2 and 3 as normal and continued on to Marble Zone 1; which also seemed normal, except with the nonexistant signpost once again. Once again, Act 2 was a bit more abnormal. No Badniks, weirder music, and grey sky; just like the abnormal Green Hill 2. Tails didn't appear this time, though.
Continuing on to Act 3, Marble Zone retained it's "darkened" world; different palette, no badniks, grey sky. About halfway through the stage, however, the "hitting boss" sound effect played and repeated itself about six times. On the seventh I heard the explosion sound effect, and the "badnik destroyed" sound effect. I clearly wasn't battling Robotnik at this time...who done this? Of course it had to be...him. When I reached where Robotnik's machine should be, it never appeared. The boss music played, but nothing appeared. After at least two minutes, I finally found something come from the left side of the room.
Tails jumped in from the left side. His shoes were entirely colored black now. The fox jumped right into me. I thought I was supposed to be fighting Tails, so I did so and fought back by jumping into the little fox. Like the regular Sonic 1 bosses, Tails took eight hits to defeat, who kept jumping into me. When I defeated Tails, he suffered knockback and fell into the lava bit, slowly sinking. I can hear faint, distorted words coming from the Genesis at the same time. "Why?! Why did you make me sink into lava and die?! You'll pay for this, Sonic...!" Was Tails trying to speak to me from the Genesis console? No... that couldn't be.
The next Zone was Labyrinth Zone; clearly wasn't the third Zone in the original game.The music was gone now, and the badniks were turned into Ts. Stands for "Tails", perhaps?
At least the Badniks are back now. The water was now pitch-black, and I felt afraid to go into it all the time. At the end of the Act, there was a long hallway. I finally reached the end of it, seeming forever to get to the final room, and there was a blank room. After a minute, a switch rose up from the right side of the screen, but I can't make Sonic move. Tails came up from the right side as well, now pitch black himself, and hit the switch, followed by him quickly jumping away. When he jumped away, the switch exploded, and the drowning music started to play. Walls were closing in, and when Sonic was standing, he looked a lot more frightened than usual. Right when the walls came to contact with Sonic, the screen turned to black and the music stopped at a loud note. Now, it was left black for what seemed forever. I finally considered turning the Genesis off and going to bed.
I probably shouldn't have.
All there was were Tails and I in a pitch black room, with his appearance when he first met Sonic in the game. He began to open his mouth and speak in his normal childish voice; distorted somehow.
"I was tortured. I was forgotten. I was a subject of ridicule. Don't you want to play something with me? Why do I always get to be Sonic's sidekick...?"
Those words broke my heart as soon as I heard them. I felt Tails' pain; he was incredibly disappointed with how he was always Sonic's basic meat shield, and he wanted to get revenge on the hedgehog and become SEGA's new hero. As I was heartbroken as mentioned, Tails said one more word.
"Goodbye." I woke up, and the Sonic 1 Tails cartridge was instantly nonexistant; I swear, it could've been there before I was fast asleep. I then text-messaged my friend Taylor about my experience.
Nathanel: I had this creepy experience about that Sonic 1 Tails ROM hack...
All Taylor said was: "Sonic 1 Tails? Never heard of it."