Deleted levels in video games have always been a source of fascination for gamers, and one of the best known examples of them is the four deleted zones in Sonic 2. Hidden Palace, Wood, Dust Hill, and Genocide City/Cyber City are all listed on the level select screen of a publicly available Sonic 2 beta. Hidden Palace and Wood Zone can be partially played, and there is an old preview picture of what is believed to be Dust Hill.
Genocide City, however, is a mystery. Selecting it in the beta will simply load a blank screen where Sonic will instantly fall to his death. The lack of information and excessively threatening name have made this zone CREEPY. I don't think I've ever played lost levels before, though I don't think I want to play any after the experience I had...
It started on a nice summer afternoon, I was playing Fallout 3 on Playstation, dad was still at his girlfriends from night before, and my brother was still at work, until I noticed, out of my peripheral vision, that the mailman had arrived and put something in my mailbox as usual and left. I paused my game to go see what I got in the mail... The only thing in the Mailbox was a CD case for computers and a note. I took it inside.
I looked at the note first and realized it was from my dear friend Kyle (Let's just call him that), whom I hadn't heard from in 2 weeks. I know that because I recognized his handwriting, though what was weird is how it looked; it looked badly written and scratchy and somewhat difficult to read, as if Kyle was having a hard time writing it down and did it in a hurry.
This is what he wrote...
"Tom,
I can't take it anymore, I had to get rid of this thing somehow before it was too late, and I was hoping you'd do it for me. I can't do it, he’s after me, and if you don't destroy this CD, he'll come after you too, he's too fast for me....
Please Tom, destroy this god-forsaken disc before he comes after you too, it's too late for me.
Destroy the disc, and you'll destroy him, but do it quick otherwise he'll catch you. Don't even play the game, it's what he wants, just destroy it.
Please...
Kyle"
Urgh, my curiosity finally got to me, and I decided to take a look at the disc and it looked like any ordinary computer CD-R disc, except it had a photoshop picture of the Possesed Amy from Sonic X's Scream Feast, with of course AMY at the bottom, but yeah Amy on the front, printed on that sort of adhesive paper used back then to customise consoles to look "hip", judging by how well the photoshop disk cover looked, I couldn't help but wonder if this CD-R was just going to be full of memes and troll GIFs, possibly a nasty virus or something, but the front said AMY and my curiosity just said f---- it, just F---- it!
I went up to my room, turned on the computer, put the disc in, installed it and seen what was on there, went through the files, checked it for viruses and malware, nothing showed up so it was fine, checked the files and just one thing was there, well 2, one was "UNDEAD.EXE" and the other was just some random file, didn't think much of it, so I right clicked the mouse on "UNDEAD.EXE" and hit play, looking forward to see what was in store. When the title screen popped up I noticed that it was the first Amy in Sonic the Hedgehog game, I was like "Awesome!" Because I liked the ROM hacks, before it went "downhill" in many fans, critics and, honestly, my eyes too, though I thought Amy in Sonic 3 was pretty good, however the first thing I noticed that was out of place was when I pressed start, there was a split second when I saw the title image turned into something much different, something that I now consider horrifying, before cutting to black.
I remember what the image looked like in that split second before the game cut to black; The sky had darkened, the title emblem was rusted and ruined, the SEGA 1991 was now instead SEGA 6666, and the water had turned red, like blood, except it looked hyper-realistic.
But the freakiest thing that was in that split second frame was Amy, her face was like on the CD, and her eyes were staring RIGHT AT ME. I was rather disturbed about that image when I saw it, though I figured that it was just a hack and forgot about it.
After it cut to black it stayed like that for about 10 seconds or so. And then another weird thing happened, the save file select from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 popped up, BUT I noticed something was off, the background was the dark cloudy sky of the Bad Stardust Speedway level from Sonic CD, and there were only three save files. The music was static. And the image for the save file where you see a preview of the level you're on is just red static for all three files.
What freaked me out more was the character select, it showed only Tails, Sonic and Sally…Sally was Kyle’s favorite character. I chose not to play as her out of respect for him and chose Tails. The game froze for about 5 seconds and I heard a creepy pixelated laugh before cutting to black.
The screen stayed black for about 10 seconds or more, then it showed the typical level title thing, except the simplistic shapes were different shades of red and the text showed only "GRASS LAND, ACT 1". The screen faded in and the level title vanished revealing Tails in a grassy plain. The music was different than any of the classic Amy in Sonic games though, it sounded like The Song of Healing in reverse. I started playing and had Tails start running like you would in any of the classic Sonic games, what was odd was that as Tails was running along the level there was nothing but flat ground and a few trees for 5 minutes.
I suddenly saw something and I stopped to see what it was; it was one of the small animals lying dead on the ground bleeding, Tails had a shocked and saddened look on his face that I never saw him have before, so I had him move along, and he kept that worried look on his face. As he kept moving I saw more dead animals as Tails moved past them looking more and more worried as he moves past more dead animals, I was shocked to see how they all died, they looked like somebody killed them in rather gruesome ways; a squirrel was hanged on a tree with what appeared to be his entrails hanging out, a bunny had all four of his limbs torn off and a duck had his eyes gouged out and his throat slit. I felt sick to my stomach when I saw this massacre and apparently so did Tails. After a few more seconds were no more animals and the music had stopped, I still kept Tails to continue.
After a minute passed after the music stopped, Tails was running up a hill and then he stopped, it wasn't until I saw why; Amy was there on the other side of the screen with her back against Tails with her eyes closed. Tails looked happy to see Amy but then his smile faltered, obviously noticing that Amy wasn't responding to him, if not acting as if she was totally oblivious of Tails' presence. Tails walked slowly toward Amy, and I noticed that I wasn't even moving my keyboard to make him move, so this had to have been a cut scene.
Suddenly I began to have a growing feel of dread as Tails walked closer to Amy to get her attention, I felt that Tails was in danger and something bad was going to happen. I heard faint static growing louder as Tails was but inches away from Amy and stopped and stuck his hand out to touch her. That foreboding feeling in my gut was growing stronger and I felt the urge to tell Tails to get away from her as the static grew louder.
Suddenly in a split second I saw Amy's eyes open and they were just like that title image, thought there wasn't a smile. When that happened the screen turned black and the static sound was off.
Then, I suddenly heard a distorted, female-like voice that came from the game. "Are you ready to have some fun? You will have twenty seconds to escape the fire. The clock starts now."
At this point I was creeped out, I didn't want to continue with the game, but my curiosity got the better of me when I was taken to a different level with the level title now saying "HIDE AND SEEK".
This time I was in the Angel Island level from Sonic 3 and it looked like everything was on fire.
Tails looked as though he was scared out of his wits this time. He actually looked at me and made frantic gestures to me as if he wanted to get out of the area he was in as fast as possible. I was starting to get freaked out by this...I mean Tails was actually breaking the fourth wall, trying to tell me to get him out of there.
So I pressed down on the arrow key as hard as I could and made him run as fast as he could, a pixelated version of that creepy theme when you meet Shadow at the ARK as Robotnik from SA2 was playing as I made Tails trek through the desolate forest, trying to help him escape from whatever he was trying to run from.
Suddenly I heard that creepy laugh again... that awful, laugh... right after 10 seconds have passed as I helped Tails run through the forest, and then I started seeing flashes of Amy popping up everywhere on the screen, again with those eyes.
The music changed to that suspenseful drowning jingle as I see Amy behind Tails slowly gaining up on him RUNNING!
Suddenly when Tails tripped (another cut scene) the music stopped and Amy vanished. Tails laid there and started crying for 15 seconds. The scene was rather upsetting to watch and I kind of teared up myself. But then Amy appeared right in front of Tails and Tails looked up in horror.
A grin slowly grew across her face as she looked down at the horrified fox, I could do nothing but watch.
Just in a split second Amy lunged at Tails right before the screen went black, there was a loud screeching noise that only lasted 5 seconds.
I heard a female-like, distorted, evil laugh. "Aww, that's too bad! Let's try that again."
I was brought back to the character select, but the save file that had Tails was different; Tails was no longer in the box itself but in the TV screen itself, which was flickering with that red static, Tails' expression scared me, his eyes were black and bleeding, his orange fur had gone black and he had an expression of anguish on his face, Trying to ignore it I picked Knuckles next.
END OF PART 1