I’ve accepted that I cannot post on a regular schedule and have made my peace with it. That being said, there’s a pandemic going on and we’re all spending more time indoors and online than usual, so I thought I might as well get back to this blog and post something. Hence, creepypasta time.
This is a very famous creepypasta, so chances are I don’t really need to introduce it. No warnings apply; all the horror in this story is confined to the titular video game, so unless descriptions of pixelated bloody animals really get to you, you should be fine reading this one. That is, it won’t do anything worse than make you feel like an idiot for reading it.
“Sonic.exe"
Plot Summary
The narrator’s name is Tom, and he’s a big Sonic fan. He says he had no experience playing glitchy or hacked games prior to the events of this story, but now he never wants to again. He relates this story as though it happened a while ago. Keep that in mind.
One day, Tom was at home playing Sonic Unleashed (Tom’s main personality trait seems to be his love for Sonic games) when he heard the mailman arrive and went down to collect his mail. He’d received a letter from his friend Kyle, accompanied by a CD case. The letter looked to be hastily written. I’ll paraphrase what it said: Kyle implored Tom to destroy the attached CD quickly, before they both meet with a terrible fate. He told Tom not to play the game on the disc, as it’s what “he” wants, but to just destroy it. Unfortunately, Tom is a really big idiot and as soon as he saw “SONIC.EXE” written on the disc, he disregarded the entire letter in his excitement to play what he figured must be one of the Sonic games.
After Tom installed and launched the game, the title screen from the first Sonic game appeared. If you’re unfamiliar with what this screen looks like, the important things to note are that Sonic is displayed in the center and the background shows a lot of water. For a split second after Tom pressed Start, however, the image changed, and Tom was somehow able to make out the alternate image in detail. The sky in the background turned dark, the water became “hyper-realistic” blood (our favorite trope is back!), and Sonic himself took on a rather strange appearance. His eyes turned black and bleeding, with glowing red pupils, and his smile stretched uncomfortably wide across his face. The copyright, and I swear I’m not making this detail up, changed from SEGA 1991 to SEGA 666. Then the weird title screen vanished, and Tom, who I must stress again is a really big idiot, chalked the whole thing up to a glitch.
It soon became clear he was playing a hacked game, though. The only characters available to play as were Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Robotnik, and the music appeared to be a reversed track from Earthbound (…yeah). Tom decided to keep playing anyway, and started a game in save file 1 as Tails. He noted the game froze up for a few seconds before loading the level, and says he heard a “pixelated laugh” (low-quality sound file?) that he describes as sounding like Kefka from Final Fantasy. I know, I know, this is stupid, let’s get on with it.
The level was titled “HILL, ACT 1” and seemed, at first, to be an ordinary zone from the first Sonic game, although the accompanying musical track again seemed to be playing in reverse. Any collectable items that would normally be there were missing, leaving Tails with nothing to do but run through the empty expanse of the level for several minutes. Tom spotted something and had Tails come to a halt so he could take a better look — it was a small dead animal, bleeding on the ground. The sprite of Tails took on a distressed expression as he continued running, with the music slowly decreasing in both speed and pitch till it faded away entirely. More and more dead animals were seen, all apparently killed in gruesome fashion, though I’ll spare you the details; they add nothing of substance anyway.
After passing through the massacred animals, Tails suddenly came to a halt on his own and a cutscene started. Sonic was standing at the far end of the level, his back to Tails and his eyes closed. Tails initially looked happy to see him, but as he slowly approached Sonic his expression faltered; Sonic still hadn’t moved or even opened his eyes. Abruptly, Sonic’s eyes snapped open, revealing them to be black with red pupils. The scene cut to black and text appeared: “Hello. Do you want to play with me?”
I’d expect anyone not down to play a creepy hack would decide to do something else at this point, but Tom is a creepypasta protagonist and pressed on even though he didn’t like what he’d been seeing. The next level, titled “HIDE AND SEEK” loaded on its own, showing another canon location from the Sonic games (the Angel Island level from Sonic 3) although everything was on fire. At this point, why not, I guess. Tails frantically gestured in Tom’s direction as though beseeching him for help, and Tom seemed to take this as a sign that the video game character was earnestly attempting to communicate with him. Methinks this guy is a little dim.
After a bit more time spent making Tails run, more creepy backwards music, and so forth, the “pixelated laugh” from earlier played again and Sonic began popping up onscreen, seemingly teleporting about. It then became clear that a) Sonic was actively pursuing Tails and b) he was flying. Sure. Tails tripped (cutscene again) and, after a brief pause while Tails cried on the ground, Sonic appeared directly in front of him. As Sonic lunged forward, a loud screech played and the screen cut to black. Text appeared: “You’re too slow, want to try again?”
Spoilers: Tom did try again.
The game returned to the character select screen, but Tails’ sprite had changed. Think Zalgo. Tom picked Knuckles and continued playing. I’ll try and keep it brief here: the level was called “YOU CAN’T RUN,” it appeared to combine art assets from different levels rather than reusing an environment from an existing level, and even Knuckles didn’t seem to want to be stuck in this shitshow of a video game. After a bit of running, since I guess there’s nothing else to do in this hack but make your character run, Sonic appeared directly in front of Knuckles. More text: “FoUnD yOu!” I get the sense this author was at one point terrified of emo teens on Myspace. A boss battle began, with Sonic teleporting all over the place and Knuckles being totally unable to land a hit. This went much the same way as the previous encounter between Sonic and Tails, with Knuckles eventually collapsing in defeat and Sonic lunging at him before a cut to black. The text this time read “So many souls to play with, so little time… would you agree?” I do agree, that’s just what I always say. Again, the game returned to the character select screen, with Knuckles taking on a Zalgo-fied appearance just as Tails had.
Tom had, at this point, begun to suspect that the game was talking to him directly in some way. He even had the bizarre notion that the video game characters he’s been playing as were in some fashion being legitimately harmed by the game, however that’s supposed to work. He was very freaked out. Did this stop him from continuing with his playthrough? Haha, don’t be silly. He did pause to take a nap, though. After a dream where the Sonic characters talked to him and essentially confirmed what he already believed about the game (that video game characters were harmed in its creation, that Sonic is out to get him personally and has already done something to his friend Kyle who sent him the disc), he awoke and decided he had to see the game through to the end. Great idea, bud.
Tom picked Robotnik next, as there was no other option left. The level this time was simply titled “…” and didn’t appear to be a canon location from Sonic at all, though it was done in the same style. For once, the music wasn’t a reversed track or something from Earthbound. While Robotnik didn’t look to be in an outright panic as the previous two had been, he did seem on edge, described as having an idle animation where he’d look from left to right then shrug at the camera in confusion. Proceeding through the level, Tom reached a long staircase and began descending. After heading down several flights of stairs, Sonic popped up again and the screen once again cut to black, before cutting to a close-up image of Sonic that’s described as… wait for it… hyper-realistic. Oh good, my favorite trope.
Multiple paragraphs are spent on this description of the creepy Sonic image, but I’ll be honest, once I got to “hyper-realistic” I started skimming the page and I’m not going to bother to do a closer reading. I guarantee that whatever you’re picturing is, if not scarier than what was actually described, at least more amusing.
Text appeared reading “I AM GOD” and Tom about lost his shit at this, freaking all the way out. Nerd.
Again the game cut to black, then displayed more text: “Ready for round 2, Tom?” The game returned to the character select screen, showing Robotnik in a similar state to the other two, and then Tom’s computer seemingly crashed and he was unable to get it to power back on. (He does say he was later able to get it to boot, but that the Sonic disc seemed to be stuck in the drive and he couldn’t remove it. Yo, Tom, try using the command line for that one.)
As Tom sat in front of his seemingly dead computer, he heard a whisper from behind him: “Try to keep this interesting for me, Tom.” He wheeled around to see a bloodstained Sonic plushie lying on his bed.
Closing Thoughts
Whew. I tried to keep myself from editorializing too much, I really did, but I fought a losing battle here. This pasta is really, really dumb. I tried to cut it slack — it’s old, it’s popular, it must have scared somebody — but I’m having trouble finding any redeeming value in this tale.
Where to start? Tom’s an idiot, but that’s par for the course with a great deal of creepypasta and I didn’t expect too much of someone whose sole passion in life is Sonic the Hedgehog anyway. Let’s take a step back and look at the broader picture here. Tom receives some unexpected mail from a friend, a friend whom he hasn’t heard from recently, who seems greatly distressed and urges him to destroy the attached disc right away. At no point does Tom attempt to verify that his friend is safe, even after he has reason to believe there is some legitimate danger attached to playing this game. Nor does he give much of a thought to his own safety, even after the game begins threatening him directly and calls him by name. It’s not that he doesn’t take the game seriously; his sole concern, instead, is for the video game characters that Evil Sonic is torturing. He has a real friend in danger, he himself may well be in danger, yet he’s worried about whether some cartoon animals and a cartoon mad scientist will be okay. What the hell is this guy’s deal?
In the hands of a more self-aware author, a character like Tom — whose priorities are so off he ignores the danger himself and his real-life friend might be in in favor of focusing on the plight of fictional characters — could be a great character in a horror story. He comes across completely batshit, and if there was anyone else around to call him on it it could lead to an interesting dynamic. Unfortunately, Tom’s take on the situation is presented completely uncritically, in a way that makes it clear that the author also thinks that the plight of video game characters is the true horror here.
As I pointed out at the beginning of my summary, Tom tells this whole story as if it happened to him some time ago, which undermines any impact the ending might have had. The implication seems to be that whatever happened between him and Evil Sonic is now done and dusted, since there are no further tales of disturbing events or any sense of consequence to him having played this game (besides the bloody Sonic plush showing up on his bed).
The prose is sloppy and amateurish; I know I harp on about the importance of showing vs. telling, but I’m gonna have to do it again, because if we weren’t being constantly told exactly how Tom feels about the experience it’d go a long way towards improving this story. We don’t need to read lengthy paragraphs of him theorizing that the Sonic of this game is some sort of demented sadist god torturing the other characters for funsies. It adds nothing, since it’s already clear that that’s exactly what Evil Sonic’s character is, and it detracts from the reader’s ability to draw their own conclusions. “Hyper-realism” may not have been done to death at the time this story was written, but it’s a bad trope anyway, so “Sonic.exe” wins no points with me there.
Aside from the game calling Tom by name, every bit of this hack is doable, and in fact it has been done. I don’t have a link handy, but I know there have been multiple Sonic hacks made using ideas from this pasta, including one that expanded upon the gameplay described here (adding voice acting, multiple endings, and so on) and another that, while not scary exactly, used Evil Sonic to add an extra gameplay challenge. Clearly, this pasta had both impact and sticking power. No idea why, though.