UPDATE: A “Brief” Introduction to Sonic World Ultimate

So, Take Me Back in Time…

Why, hi diddly ho, neighborino, ’cause by golly, we’re living in a fine time for America and maybe possibly Greenland! We’re snowed in, our foreign relations are ironically on thin ice, and another innocent white American just got blown away by our immigration system! While you watch that clip of the ICE officer slipping on actual ice on repeat for the eightieth time, I’m happy to announce that a surprisingly impressive update to the Sonic World DX fan game is getting released… in late 2026, whenever that is! ‘Course, as everyone other than the sick-in-the-head conservatives who try to villainize ICE’s victims knows, it’s rather hard in these trying times to simply wait for things to happen. I should know, my Mom’s been sitting on the couch watching Young Sheldon and The Waltons since Christmas, and I’m almost certainly gonna join some of the inevitable protests in the Boston area. So, I’ll be investing a little extra time in this blog in between job searches, but before we get into a major update to my earliest-ever posts, let’s get you properly acquainted with my ongoing Sonic World Ultimate project and, most importantly, my favorite changes to the game’s legacy versions so far!

…To Another World

Uh, yay! We’re gonna see Gemerl added to DX! I barely played Sonic Advance 3 growing up, but at least there are some impressive stages and graphical enhancements coming! ‘Course, what makes the vague release date disappointing is that 2025 was said to be a huge year for DX, and all that really happened was a Gemerl reveal in late December that wasn’t even for the current version. In other words, minus the obvious effort that’s gone into it, it was mostly showmanship, and I think they realized the game wasn’t nearly as successful as they thought it would be. In fact, an improvement mod for version 1.2 was just released by developer Drox342, and one of the most popular character mods for it was just a legacy version character restoration, if that tells you anything. In any case, I’m glad to say that, as part of Ultimate, Gemerl was enhanced quite a bit, as were all the other characters!

Okay, seriously, though. What the hell is Ultimate?

Well, on this blog, you’ll get to see enhancements in textures, animations, and movesets for every character, plus overhauled mod characters and alternate skins for the base characters! The best part? Every one of those characters has their own unique super and hyper forms! The stages have been whittled down to improved versions of the highest-quality examples! Both stage mods I’ve released on Gamebanana, those being City Escape and Grand Metropolis, have been improved even further for Ultimate alongside encore versions of pre-existing stages (take the original daytime Wave Ocean or a late sunset iteration based on Blaze’s from P-06, for instance.) Next to enhanced enemy textures, animations, and additions like the Egg Gunners—not to mention even fixing a few object-related transparency issues—fog has been implemented from scratch into the source code, meaning stages look about eleven times more beautiful!

Characters

To give you a basic sense of how far this overhaul goes, let’s show off the surface-level changes made to the base characters. Keep in mind that the descriptions I gave them fall in line with rewrites of mine like Shadow the Hedgehog: The Recollected Cut, as well as my own unofficial interpretations.

Legacy

Ultimate

Stages

While the individual animations for the characters are greatly improved (I’ll be showing off GIFs of the best examples in a little while), the base stage modifications are off the charts!

Legacy

Ultimate

While Chemical Plant has been withheld from release per the request of its creators, Sergeant Gerbil’s version for DX now has new full bright light textures and an encore version inspired by Network Terminal.

Emerald Coast has been made to look and feel sunnier. Notice the blue fog in the distance.

Other than emissive lights, Speed Highway has had its lighting changed to match the stage from Generations.

Dawn Avenue has a new pink haze, not to mention a chunk of incomplete building roof removed.

The Egg Carrier has a dark distant fog as well as green emissives in the center of the boss area.

My redone City Escape from Gamebanana, plus new road textures and several other changes!

Radical Highway has also been redone. The atmosphere takes liberties from the Shadow Generations stage, and certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

The battle mode version of Wild Canyon has been replicated, morning fog included. Certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

The battle mode version of Dry Lagoon has been replicated, dusk fog included. Certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

Due to the sand water type not being affected by lighting, Sand Ocean’s encore version is Evil Foundry.

Prison Lane has been given a deep red emergency fog to go along with the newly added alarm noise, which originally went unused. Certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

Green Forest possibly has the best altered lighting. The tint of the fog is based on the stage from SA2: Redux. Certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

Aquatic Mine is now dark and murky. It contains better fire textures and takes advantage of the new nighttime water type. Certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

Hey, look, Mission Street has proper lighting! G.U.N. Soldiers have been added, and the typical rival is the G.U.N. Commander. Certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

The mismatched textures in Crazy Gadget have been fixed, and the fog combines that of Crazy Gadget and Eternal Engine. Certain textures were borrowed from Hyperballic’s Cinematic Textures mod for SA2.

ARK Lap now has Terminal Velocity as an encore version, which is tested here with assets from Drox342’s DX 1.2 improvement mod. The specific reason will be explained in the next update.

Seaside Hill is now at sunset to match its multiplayer race version.

Ocean Palace now possesses the time of day and theme music of the ring race Egg Treat.

Grand Metropolis now uses its original geometry. This comes from MirrorOfDespair’s leave package, only new objects have been added.

Egg Fleet takes place during a thunderstorm in reference to concept art for Heroes.

Lethal Highway is now stormy and blue-tinted in reference to the unused Shadow the Hedgehog level, “stage9900”.

As I said, Wave Ocean now takes place at late sunset. The new ’06 enemies have also been added.

Kingdom Waterfalls is now the version for DX, plus enhanced fog and the new ’06 enemies.

Tokyo Streets has better textures and more realistic lighting. Lounge music from Saints Row 2 is carried over.

Pumpkin Castle is bathed in darkness, which contributes greatly to the spookiness.

Misty Gorge now has a dry red rock aesthetic and dead trees. For fans of Shadow Generations, this should satisfy your craving for more Rail Canyon. Which I guess is suddenly a thing now.

Animations

If you’re at all familiar with my feelings toward any art styles that begin with “a” and rhyme with “Santa Fe”, you might feel inclined to chastize me for judging something I’ve never even dabbled in myself. You might say, “if you know so much about what makes good animation, then let’s see you try animating something yourself!” Well, fine people, this is your chance—below are GIFs capturing some of my finest character animations for this game, and I’m proud to announce that this argument against me has lost all weight! Sure, I’m not exactly interested in doing this on a professional level, but please. Go watch RedLetterMedia’s most recent Christmas episode of Best of the Worst, in which they watch and discuss Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa. For my first-ever animated work, I think I’ve got a leg up on that travesty… not that it says a whole lot, though.

Let’s start off simple with Sonic’s idle animation, which was modified from the original loop. Be advised, as I’ll be showing these clips both in fragMOTION, the software used for modifying Blitz3D files, and in-game as the animations run at different speeds in either case. Granted, I’ve increased the default speed for idle and victory animations via the source code, so the difference isn’t too drastic.

Next is Shadow’s new flip kick, which originates from Shadow the Hedgehog and replaces his default spin kick. For this, I actually had to redo his visual effects via the source code so his air shoes generate exhaust.

I’m personally very proud of how well Omega’s chaingun animation came out, considering it was mostly from scratch and desperately needed improvement. See? The muzzle flashes are even aligned with the barrels! Of course, there are far more impressive firing animations in this mod!

Take Fang’s shotgun animation, for instance. This possibly needed to be redone more than any animation due to the fingers not being posed properly, meaning they weren’t even gripping the buttstock. For reference, this was (a) entirely from scratch and (b) great for mastering keyframes when it comes to adding fluidity to the sequence.

As for Bean, his movement cycles are simply too amusing not to showcase.

Clearly, though, as someone who’s in no way a fan of Sonic Riders beyond the premise and environmental design, the Babylon Rogues are where I have to falter, right? Well, here they are, all animated with X-Gear that only shows up when held, which is thanks to the process of adjusting the scale per every animation. See? Even their eyewear flips down! Get un-gravitified, morons!

If you end up using this mod, you might notice that Mephiles is mostly motionless. This is because I find him scarier as a Weeping Angel-esque statue, as he’s written in Episode Solaris of The Recollected Cut to come off as charming and manipulative in spite of his lack of motion. Therefore, take a look at his “walking” animation and tell me there’s not something off-putting about him.

Next is a special one. When it came to reanimating Gamma, I used the stunning animation by YouTuber Ranon as a base, especially considering his proof-of-concept for an E-102 game takes place in a similar test level to this game’s. That and I just wanted to rub the way his gun’s hanging frame flips about realistically in your faces.

Tails Doll’s head inflates when he casts a curse. I hope you like sleepless nights.

The G.U.N. Commander was basically the next step after Fang, that is going from an animal character using a gun to a human character using a different gun. Fortunately, it came out rather nice, with the man even pulling his pistol out from inside his jacket… which is weird, given he’s already holding it in his new idle animation.

That’s right! Even modded characters got new animations! The first is EnderPreston’s playable Egg Pawn, who’s almost entirely reanimated, but I’ll only be showing off his new Egg Spear blows for now.

Doom’s Eye is important for one main reason: he was never made playable until now. Not in Sonic World, and not in Shadow the Hedgehog, even with a second controller plugged in. Of course, in this case, he is an enemy exclusive to chaser missions (renamed to “Escape Artist” missions in this mod), so I actually went through the litany of giving him a full animation suite to be used with Mephiles’s moveset, which is helped by the fact that Mephiles now scatters “shadow balls” instead of inaccurate minions. These are two of his best animations, the first of which is only here because I decided to make him blink.

In this mod, all of the nonplayable gallery-only characters (Orbot, Cubot, Maria, Vanilla, and Eggman Nega) are made playable, and Vanilla is no exception! However, she uses Tails’s moveset so her and Cream won’t both be followed by Cheese when paired together, and she’s been entirely reanimated as Kojirakage’s original mod released for DX felt rushed. Her animations all look great, but really, this one’s all you have to see for now. Spin me right ’round, bunny. Right ’round. Right ’round like a record.

This one here was like literal magic. Because StarGold102’s Black Knight Sonic for DX doesn’t come with any of the animations from the game (not to mention the ones he does use feeling a little rushed), I figured I’d merge his glove and Caliburn with Dylov’s Secret Rings Sonic for DX, replace his textures, and update his animations. What came out was, well… I’m starting to doubt that this wasn’t my calling all along.

*sigh* Yeah. Uh-huh. I even went all-out with Shadow Rift’s Sanic Ball meme mod. Because I remember playing the iOS game when I was fifteen. Suffice it to say, I’m almost a little ashamed about this one. Almost.

Screenshots

If you’ve stuck around through this whole post, then let me be the first to say, God bless you. I hope he finds a way to forgive you. Regardless, there’s a ton of great modded characters and stages to showcase, so until we explore more minute details involving the gameplay, UI, bug fixes, etc., here’s a bunch of screenshots to tide you over! Happy Polar Vortex!