Screengrab: YouTube
For all of the hate that Sonic has received lately, thanks to years of ill-advised reboots and change-ups, it's still true that the franchise totally ruled at one time. The "Emerald Hill Zone" stage in Sonic 2, with its eye-searingly vibrant graphics and bangin' soundtrack, will forever remind me of the times I snuck downstairs at 5 AM to get a sweet, sweet fix of high octane pixel juice.A modder called "CryZENX" just brought this legacy back with a distinctly 21st century blockbuster vibe using the popular Unreal Engine 4 graphics engine, which is free to use. The developer posted a video on YouTube yesterday, which shows everyone's favourite chili dog vacuum running around a beautifully rendered green landscape complete with frolicking deer and far off, misty mountains.It looks like what "Emerald Hill Zone" would if it was located in Skyrim, basically. But instead of looting murdered peasants for small change and worthless trinkets, Sonic just zooms and jumps around the lush, open world.The demo appears to use assets—vegetation, rocks, trees, and the like—that were released for free by Epic Games back in June. Originally, they appeared in an animated short called "A Boy and His Kite" that Epic created to show off what the Unreal 4 engine can do. Unreal Engine 4 itself was just recently made available to the public to use for free in March.The Sonic franchise is still struggling to find its footing and ascend to the heights of its glory days on the Sega Genesis—the Sonic that I'll always remember—and as far as suggestions for new directions for the franchise go, a giant, lush, mystical open world doesn't seem like such a bad idea.