Sonic Eraser
From Sonic Retro
| Sonic Eraser |
|---|
| System(s): Sega Mega Drive/Genesis |
| Publisher: Sega |
| Developer: Sonic Team |
| Genre: Puzzle |
Sonic Eraser is a video game that was downloadable for players that had the Sega Meganet, a modem for the Sega Mega Drive in Japan. It was released in 1991. The Meganet modem did not sell well in Japan and the related service was discontinued there, causing Sonic Eraser became a long-lost Sonic game.
Sonic Eraser was unknown to the Sonic community until 2004, when Sega launched an online system on their Japanese website, which for a small fee per game, allowed users to download and play some original Megadrive games. Included in the selection were a number of games only released on the Meganet system in Japan. In February 2004, PACHUKA, the owner of the Sonic CulT website, discovered the online service and purchased several games, including Sonic Eraser, and various other previously unreleased Meganet games. The ROMs provided by the online service were packaged with a licensed version of Gens, and came in the form of self-contained encrypted CD images, which could only be loaded by the software provided by Sega. Nemesis wrote a tool capable of descrambling the encrypted images, and converting them to normal ISOs. Once in the form of an ISO, the ROMs were simply copied out, and were released on the Sonic CulT website.
The game was made available on Sega's B-Club download service in Japan.
Gameplay
The game is a fairly simple puzzle game. In the versus mode of this game, when a player gets a combination of three consecutive "erasements" of pieces, that player's Sonic attacks the other player's Sonic. The other player momentarily loses control of his pieces.
Gameplay modes
The game offers 4 unique modes of gameplay.
- Round Mode: This is sort of a puzzle mode consisting of 10 stages. Each stage has a bunch of whirlybob ring shapes interspersed with other normal shapes. Just like the other shapes, the whirlybobs disappear when paired. The object is to clear them all from the playfield by eliminating the shapes between them. The time limit is 3 minutes for each round, and pausing the game doesn't stop the clock.
- Normal Mode: This is just the standard low-pressure game. Play for points as long as desired. The better the performance of the player, the higher the difficulty level will rise and the speed at which clusters fall increases.
- Doubt Mode: The rules are normal except that white squares will never fall. Instead, a single shape from almost every cluster will turn into a white square when it hits the ground.
- Block Mode: This mode allows clusters to stand on-end and stacking them high can lead to massive chain reactions. It only takes a single pair to send the whole tower tumbling.
External Links
- Translation available on Romhacking.net.
| Sonic the Hedgehog games for the following systems | |
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1991 Sonic the Hedgehog | Sonic Eraser 1992 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 1993 Sonic the Hedgehog CD | Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine | Sonic Spinball 1994 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 | Sonic & Knuckles 1995 Chaotix | Sonic Classics 1996 Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island |