In 1999, Cyan Helkaraxe wanted to stir up more interest in Sonic 1 among the Sonic community. He decided to do something which had never been done at that time: create a ROM hack. The resulting hack would become known as the Sonic 1 Beta Hoax.
Cyan set to work on the Sonic 1 REV00 ROM, researching its internal workings primarily by a trial and error process, since there was absolutely no documentation on Sonic 1 available at the time. His goal was to create a hoax prototype a game that mimicked the behavior of a "genuine" Sonic 1 prototype.
In May 1999, Cyan released his hack to Simon Wai's Sonic 2 Beta page. The ROM was deliberately not listed as a hoax; rather, it was released under the title "Sonic 1 beta?".
The release of the hoax prototype stirred up more interest in Sonic 1, and when it was identified as a hoax, Andy Wolan invited Cyan to the Sonic Stuff Research Group for his work in creating the ROM hack.
BakaSonic is a hack of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive by Bakayote. A demo of it was submitted for the 2014 Sonic Hacking Contest.
Started by Bakayote as practice for hacking, BakaSonic has been evolving since its creation, even being a prank at one point early in its development. This hack contains level art, object art, code and music modifications.
Insector X is a horizontally scrolling shooter.
The Genesis version has a number of differences: "realistic" sprite work (compared to the "cute" style of the original), brand new music, a reworking of the secondary weapon system, the removal of the autofire powerup, and new stage sections, among other things. Hot-B's original design for the game was better realized on the Genesis, as Taito requested a more comical style of game for the original release.
Remute is kicking off 2023 with an ambitious, longtime dream project - a Sega Genesis / Mega Drive adaption of the german counter-cultural cyberpunk cult movie Decoder!
Miniplanets is a homebrew mega drive/genesis game released in (approximately) 2016 by Sik.
Qisha is the protector of the planelago system, a planetary system consisting of five planelagos of nine miniplanets each. Each planelago was guarded by one of Qisha's children, but one day suddenly a mysterious force appeared and cursed them into statues. Qisha must go through all planelagos to retrieve the crystals to save the children and send back the mysterious force back where it belongs.
Guide Qisha through 3D miniplanets in this new and unique platformer for Mega Drive. Jump over obstacles and collect keys with the special twist of paths wrapping around to the other end of the miniplanet.
Pantufa the Cat: Extended Edition (Pantufa the Cat 2 in Europe) is a modification of Sonic the Hedgehog for the SEGA Genesis / SEGA Mega Drive derived from a similar project from late 2011, Pantufa the Cat.
Aliens is an unreleased Sega Genesis game based on the movie of the same name. The game was set to be developed by Konami and was going to be a port of the arcade game, although never released for unknown reasons.