Sonic Crackers

This short article is in need of work. You can help Sonic Retro by adding to it.

Sonic Crackers "cracktro" screen.

Sonic Crackers (referred to as Sonic Studium in the ROM header) is an early prototype build of a game that incorporates many of the concepts found in the game Knuckles' Chaotix. Its name comes from a peculiar ASCII-art title screen, which looks like it was thrown together in 5 minutes. Sonic Crackers is thought to be an engine test, composed of various different game engines, swapped out using RAM coding.

The game features Sonic and Tails, held together by rings as seen in Knuckles' Chaotix. The stages and music are also similar to those in Chaotix. There are no sound effects at all during gameplay. There are no badniks to be found neither, however there are spikes, and you lose rings when hitting them (even though you have none). When dying you enter a field stage.

Interestingly, the date on the lower right of the title screen reads "19940401". This lead to some debate on if the title screen, or the ROM was a April Fools joke. With the discovery of the Chaotix protos this is clearly not the case.

Levels

Attraction Levels

By pressing the pause button and pressing a direction key, you can move Sonic in the corresponding direction to anywhere in the level. While moving, Sonic and Tails' arms become detached and stay at the original location until the game is resumed.

First Level - An industrial themed level which can't be completed. When reaching the top nothing happens. The pallete changes each time the level is entered. Game over activates when the timer reaches 3 minutes.
Second Level - A circus/carnival themed level which also can't be beat, it just loops. The collision detection is glitchy so it is difficult to walk on it, it is best to hold the direction you wanna go and hope for the best. Tails seems to be able to walk on the gound without any trouble although. Game over activates after 1 minute.

Field Levels

These incomplete field stages, commonly referred to as Special Stages, even though they are not -- The "Special Stage" selection on the level select menu causes the ROM to crash. These field levels were never properly completed and don't have any collision detection. To exit these stages simply pause and hit any button.

First Level - The floor is covered in yellow and pink tiling and the background set high in the stratosphere. Clouds and rainbows can be seen.
Second Level - A dark level set atop a glowing technological city.