Video Game / Sonic P-06

Project 06 Cover Mockup 2024

^{Project 06 Cover Mockup 2020}

Sonic P-06 (short for Sonic: Project '06) is a Fan Remake of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) currently in development for Windows hardware, aiming to recreate the game from the ground up while improving on many of its widely-disliked visual or gameplay aspects.

So far, there have been five releases in total:

• April 2019 (v1.0): Contains the Wave Ocean and Kingdom Valley action stages with Sonic as the main playable character, with Tails and Silver also briefly playable in their respective stages. Also included are options to change the user interface to that of the E3 2006's demo, and collectable Gems scattered across the levels that can grant Sonic new powers. Trailer here.
• October 2019 (v2.0): Adds the Dusty Desert, Flame Core and Radical Train action stages for Sonic's story, with the Sonic/Elise combo and Knuckles also playable in their respective stages. Trailer here.
• July 2020 (v3.0): The "Sonic Release" which adds the rest of the action stages for Sonic's story, including Tails' version of Wave Ocean. Trailer here.
• September 2021 (v4.0): The "Shadow Release" which adds Shadow's entire campaign, with Rouge and E-123 Omega playable in their respective stages, along with adding more obstacles and new in-level cutscenes for the campaigns of both hedgehogs. Trailer w/ download link here.
• April 2023 (v5.0): The "Silver Release" which adds Silver's entire campaign, with Blaze and Amy playable in their respective stages, making all of Sonic, Shadow, and Silver's campaign stages available. Trailer w/ download link here.

The project is being undertaken by Argentinian programmer Ian "ChaosX" Moris and has already been significant enough in the community to gain its own page on The Other Wiki.

It should go without saying that any trope examples already present in the original game should not be listed here.

See also Sonic 2006 Legacy Of Solaris for a similar fan recreation and improvement of the original game.

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Sonic P-06 has the following tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Stages have restored or alternate voice lines that add flavor or context to various encounters and setpieces.
  • New cutscenes have been added to various levels, such as Sonic and Silver interacting throughout Kingdom Valley, or Omega facing down Mephiles at the end of his section in Wave Ocean.
• Art Evolution:
  • The game's colours have been slightly toned down, the lighting is much more dynamic (especially in locations such as the magma caves in Flame Core and with the searchlights in White Acropolis), Wave Ocean's water is more saturated, Crisis City and Flame Core have a heat wave effect, weather conditions that were supposed to be in the original game are now present, with rain in Kingdom Valley and dynamic weather that changes between sunny, cloud and rainy in Tropical Jungle, the textures have been made much clearer and higher-resolution, and several of the animations have been completely re-tweaked to look much more lifelike and less stiff. Needless to say, all of which makes the game look gorgeous compared to the Vanilla version. Special mention goes to the post-Wave Ocean cutscene, which has Sonic baring his teeth and shooting a silent, angry glare at Eggman compared to his previous expressionless look.
  • Shadow's animations for his running, teleportation, Chaos Attacks and Battle Aura have been significantly overhauled to more-or-less match how they looked in his CG cutscenes in the original game. Combined with his faster and easier-to-control gameplay making it far more doable to string together elaborate combos — as well as being outright encouraged to by the new Scoring system — they give Shadow's combat sequences a much flashier, almost Devil May Cry-esque look when done skillfully.
  • A few stages now look different depending on who you play them as, complete with updated lighting and shading to match.
    • Wave Ocean now takes place at different times of the day. Sonic and Tails go through it in the daytime (as per the original), Shadow and Omega at dusk, and Blaze at dawn.
    • Sonic and Shadow go through Crisis City during the day, but Silver and Blaze's version of the level takes place at night with black clouds, matching with Silver's intro cutscene for his campaign.
    • Tropical Jungle is set during the day for Sonic and Rouge, but Silver goes through the level during the evening.
    • When Shadow and Silver go through Aquatic Base, there is a grey screen filter throughout to indicate that they are in the past, which matches the main game's preceding cutscene for the level. Sonic's version, due to being in the present time, does not feature this filter.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Several abilities from the Adventure games have been reincorporated here to give players more maneuverability and combat options, especially combined with the improved physics and collision detection:
    • On top of a slight speed boost, most characters can use a Spin Attack jump to directly attack enemies in the event of close combat, it being identified by a colorful aura.
    • Sonic's Spin Dash and Slide Attack are now mapped to different buttons, and the former can be repeatedly revved up and used while moving just like in the original Adventure game. In snowboarding sections, he also has a new Kick Dash to regain momentum and control.
    • Tails' flight ability is linked to the Action Gauge, and he has access to the Tail Swipe attack for better close combat on the ground and in the air; the latter of which he can use to extend his jumps and conserve flight time if he clips an enemy with it.
    • Knuckles now has his respective Dash Punch and Spiral/Crimson Uppercut from Adventure and Adventure 2 as additional combo moves. He can also now damage enemies while gliding like in the original games and loses much less height while doing so, which lets him cover greater distances.
    • Shadow can now Spin Dash just like Sonic, his Homing Attack combo is faster and more fluid and he can cancel out of his Chaos Attack stance at will, which also doesn't activate when giving a Homing Attack to enemies that only take one hit to kill. The Chaos Spear now does damage while charged, has a targeting reticule and using it in the air allows him to use a Homing Attack once again and reset it after hitting an enemy, Chaos Snap is easier to use and the camera tracks him much better when using it and his Chaos Blast is also greatly improved, gaining a massive increase in range and damage compared to the pathetic little burst it was in Vanilla 06.
    • Rouge now has her kick attacks and Drill Drive from Adventure 2 — the latter also coming with a new Shockwave Stomp for incapacitating nearby enemies — and can aim and throw her Bat Cracker grenades more easily instead of haphazardly spreading them around, making combat much less tedious.
    • E-123 Omega can switch from a behind-the-back view to a sentry-like mode where he can directly aim and shoot his gatling cannons like in a first-person shooter. His hover glide is now no longer infinite but represented by the Action Gauge now, just like Tails, and his missiles hit noticeably harder. As per the Silver Release, Omega also regains his Three-Strike Combo attack — two wide claw slashes and rotating on the spot with a double-armed burst of cannonfire — from Sonic Heroes, allowing him to more easily smash through obstacles and take out enemies too close for him to shoot.
    • Silver can shoot a small blast of raw energy (a "Psychic Shot" as per the manual) to attack enemies when he doesn't have any objects to throw at them or if the player doesn't want to use his Psychokinesis. His running speed is also significantly improved, breaking into a psychokinetic glide at top speed, and his default mid-air hover can cover a much better distance. Uniquely, Silver also has two P-06-original character upgrades; found hidden in his levels akin to Adventure 2. The Lotus of Resilience (found in Dusty Desert) turns Silver's jump into a stronger spinning one and extends his Teleport Dash, and the Flame of Control (found in Aquatic Base) increases the damage of his charged Psycho Smash and lets him charge his Psychic Shot attack to fire piercing Psychic Knives, pulled from his rival battle in Sonic Generations.
    • Blaze has her previously removed Fire Claw ground attack^note With which she covers her claws in fire and slashes outward with both arms in a criss-crossing pattern re-added, her Spinning Claw is easier to control and has greater range, and she can now Homing Attack out of her Fire Claw dash; increasing both her mid-air range and combat prowess while maintaining her previous great agility.
    • Save for her (now much better-handling) Double Jump, Amy's moveset from the original game has been completely scrapped and replaced with an updated version of her Adventure moveset. It includes a faster and stronger Hammer Attack, the Vault Jump, mid-air Hammer Spin and Spin Hammer Attack (ala the Warrior Feather), the latter of which is now mapped to a button so it can be used while moving. She also gains a new running variant of the Vault Jump that quickly launches her forward to clear gaps, and has a traditional Spin Attack jump akin to how she played in Adventure 2's multiplayer and Heroes.
  • While auto-running is still on, players can directly control their speed in Sonic's Mach Speed stages by holding back or forward. Jumping now hits enemies, he can slide and bound jump, can now control his horizontal movement after a jump and touching a wall or object won't hurt him unless it's a deliberate level obstacle or they run towards it fast enough. The controls are also far less sensitive with turning on the ground.
  • Touching the lava in Flame Core will only cause your rings to deplete one by one rather than all at once, but the player will still slowly sink into it (as expected for thick molten rock) and die once they run out of rings.
  • The giant ball in Sonic's version of Aquatic Base is far more controllable and will shrink to half-size first when damaged as opposed to popping immediately, making it safer and easier to use.
  • The radar from the original Sonic Adventure returns, allowing Rouge to search areas for keys far more easily. The keys are also now hidden in different places — as opposed to the same locations every run — each time you try a level where the mechanic appears^note Kingdom Valley and (new to this mod) Rouge's version of Tropical Jungle, turning it into more of an engaging treasure hunt like in the Adventure games as opposed to a simple-but-monotonous necessity.
  • Much like in Sonic Forces, in-level dialogue can be turned off.
  • The game has a full autosave feature for whenever a level is completed or a permanent upgrade — such as one of the Gems in Sonic's stages, or the Memory Shards in Shadow's — is collected, avoiding the classic reviewers' pitfall of having to redo entire sections again upon a Game Over.
  • The controls for all the vehicles in Shadow's stages are much more polished and their durability is improved, making them much less susceptible to flipping over, lose control when turning and/or instantaneously exploding out of nowhere.
  • The infamous "Egyptian Billiard Ball" sections in Silver's version of Dusty Desert have been streamlined and the player now has a lot more control over the balls, able to stop and push them with ease.
• Balance Buff:
  • E-123 Omega and Silver have gotten their respective hovering techniques rebalanced. On the one hand, their hovers can no longer be "stuttered" ^MeaningRepeatedly tapping the Jump button to continually reset the momentum of the hover — which, due to the way the physics in Vanilla 06 work, falls off very quickly — and offset the gravity, allowing them to go much further than intended; such that Omega could glide nigh-indefinitely with little-to-no height loss, and Silver could go triple the distance he normally could with a full Action Gauge. Omega's hover now runs on the Action Gauge as well, and stuttering with Silver — while still possible — requires him to dramatically descend with each tap. However, this is much less necessary for the characters than it was in the original game; since both hovers now build momentum if the characters started them from a standing position, and preserve momentum better when they enter the hover while moving. This means that Omega and Silver can easily cover over twice the distance using their updated hovers than they could with their previous ones, on top of being easier to control.
  • Not only is Shadow given his spin dash back, his grounded handflips can now be used while moving. This further differentiates Shadow from Sonic, since Shadow has a grounded combo with an expanded AOE that can catch multiple enemies at once.
• Call-Back: On top of restoring several characters' moves from previous games, several can be spotted:
  • Instead of simply finding them already in there, Sonic's version of Aquatic Base now has him directly accompanied by Tails and Knuckles in a team of three. Likewise, Tails follows him around in White Acropolis, ala the Sega Genesis games and Sonic Adventure.
  • The Thunder Guard (Yellow Gem) power for Sonic is now referred to as the Thundershield, after the eponymous shield power-up from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
  • Going with the improvements to the Chaos Blast, Shadow now yells the name of the attack as the camera zooms out to show the destruction caused, both exactly like in Shadow the Hedgehog.
  • Several options from earlier versions of the game can be toggled in the Extras menu and Game Room settings, including usage of the E3 2006 music tracks and UI. The Xbox Live Arcade demo version of Kingdom Valley and (as of version 5.0) the E3 demo version of Silver's Crisis City even show up as secret levels.
  • Looking up at the skybox in stages that take place at night or dawn/dusk — Wave Ocean for Blaze and Shadow, Tropical Jungle for Silver, etc. — reveals that the Moon still has an enormous crater in it from having been shot by the Eclipse Cannon.
  • All of Shadow's vehicles now have decals of the Project Shadow emblem◊ from Sonic Adventure 2.
  • For a more subtle one, Amy gains a new Idle Animation that has her summon and observe pink illusions of three Tarot Cards. It's actually a reference to how she first came to meet Sonic.
• Call-Forward:
  • Silver's Flame of Control upgrade lets him charge his Psychic Shot attack to fire off Psychic Knives, a technique Silver uses during his rival battle in Sonic Generations.
  • In the Test Stage, the Dark Reaper appears as a playable vehicle.
• Combos: Though already a focus on Shadow's gameplay in the original game, Shadow's abilities have been buffed significantly to allow Shadow to really let loose intricate chains of enemy beatdowns. Among other things, Shadow's Chaos Spear has been buffed to come out faster and deal more damage, and allows Shadow to draw out his combos without touching the ground so he can reorient himself and continue his homing attack and air juggle strings.
• Discard and Draw:
  • Amy loses her previous Invisibility powers from Vanilla 06 but gains a load of new Sonic Adventure-esque hammer techniques and a big boost to her strength and agility in return, so it's not a big loss given how much more powerful and mobile she is here.
  • On a similar note, Omega loses his previous infinite hover glide — instead being replaced by a more balanced one that's powered by the Action Gauge, like Tails' flight and Silver's Teleport Dash — but becomes a lot more versatile all-round and less clunky in return, thanks to his much-improved weaponry and access to new tools like a Three-Strike Combo and first-person shooting mode.
• Easter Egg:
  • The jumpball visual effect some characters had in the Adventure games can be toggled on and off in the Game Room settings, which also works while rolling.
  • The E3 2006 versions of certain music tracks are available to listen to in the Extras menu, and can even be played in-game via the same Game Room settings. The UI can also be customized by mixing-and-matching elements from both the E3 demo and final retail release.
  • The Test Stage has a secret entry point to the Xbox Live Arcade demo version of Kingdom Valley. Version 5.0 adds another one, this time sending you to a recreation of the E3 demo version of Silver's Crisis City.
  • Shadow's car from Team Sonic Racing is available as a vehicle he can drive in the Test Stage.
  • In Shadow's version of Kingdom Valley, an 06-styled Chaos Zero can be found by taking an alternate route through the sewers during the hovercraft section.
• Game Mod: Sonic P-06 eXtended by 4ndrelus, which adds a Quick Step-inspired variable dodge ability for Sonic's Mach Speed sections, along with a few other new moves, including the mid-air Stomp and the Drop Dash.
• Game Over: As opposed to how the original game simply fades to black and sends the player back to the Episode Select menu whenever they run out of lives, P-06 adds a particularly chilling Game Over screen beforehand, using a short remix of "Mephiles' Whisper" from the original soundtrack; a very bleak minor-key piano tune backed by sudden heavier notes and sinister funereal bells. It genuinely gives the infamous North American Sonic CD Game Over screen some healthy competition.
• Golden Super Mode: Sonic and Shadow have some form of this, each acquired in a similar manner:
  • Sonic gains the ability to change into Super Sonic using the previously-cut Rainbow Gem (which can be found in a hidden area of Kingdom Valley after completing all of Sonic's levels with S-Ranks and finding all the other Gems) and the usual 50 Rings. It makes him invincible, faster and lets him absorb nearby Rings, as well as to perform a very powerful Super Sonic Boost using the Gem Ability button; perfect for crossing big gaps and decimating most enemies on contact.
  • Shadow also gains an extra level for his Chaos Boost (from a Light Memory Shard that appears in Dusty Desert when you achieve S-Ranks on all of Shadow's levels) that has him take off his Inhibitor Rings, which massively boosts his speed and power on top of making him invulnerable (and of course, the glowing golden aura) but the Action Gauge depletes quicker and it leaves Shadow unable to move and vulnerable for around 5 seconds when it runs out.
• Lampshade Hanging: A previously-cut line for Blaze has her remark toward the destructive Orca from Wave Ocean, when it destroys the rock formations and walkways she's trying to cross the sea on.
  Blaze: (angrily) Hey! Are you trying to crash on purpose?!
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Averted for the new lava in Flame Core. Instead of simply being a damaging surface you can otherwise walk on unimpeded — or occasionally, something you instantly fall straight through and die — like in the Vanilla game, P-06 tweaks it so that you slowly sink into the lava like quicksand when you're in it, as per the expectation for thick molten rock. All the while, it rapidly drains your Rings (unless you're invincible), and kills you when either those run out or you sink too deep.
• Scoring Points: The game's original scoring system has been updated to actively encourage players to go for multiple actions in a single jump and/or destroy loads of enemies at once, much like in Sonic Adventure 2. By making use of techniques such as Sonic's Bound Jump and Shadow's Chaos Snap — as well as the Chaos Blast in crowded areas — you can easily stay airborne, pick off nearby foes in sequence, and then receive the big point bonuses when you finally do touch the ground, which is extremely useful when going for the S-Rankings.
• Shout-Out: The BGM used for the Test Stage is "Grand Battle" and "A Skirmish" from the Dragon Ball: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans OVA.
• Super Mode: All three of the main hedgehogs have some form of this, each acquired in a similar manner:
  • Collecting all the other Gems scattered across Sonic's levels and getting every S-rank makes the Rainbow Gem appear in Kingdom Valley, which then allows Sonic to become Super Sonic with the same caveats as in the original games. Pressing the button for Gem abilities while in Super form will also trigger the Super Sonic Boost ability, a brief offensive dash that can be powered up by continuing to upgrade the gem.
  • Achieving an S-rank on all of Shadow's stages will cause an additional "Memory Shard (Light)" permanent upgrade to appear in a secret area in Dusty Desert. Once collected, pressing the button to activate the Chaos Boost when it is at a maximum level will cause Shadow to remove his Inhibitor Rings, pulse with bright golden energy and become invincible, with the level indicator and Chaos Meter below starting to glitch out in red as a result. This continues until the Action Gauge fully depletes, with a brief cooldown period of a fatigued Shadow recuperating afterwards.
  • Silver gains his own powered-up form from the Sigil of Awakening that appears at the end of Flame Core when you achieve S-Ranks on all of Silver's levels, which works similarly to Shadow's Chaos Boost modes; after filling up Silver's maturity meter by defeating enemies, he can boost his ESP abilities to insane levels, letting him do things like fling enemies around from a much further distance, fly through the air using his Teleport Dash, and passively deflect projectiles headed towards him.
• Vocal Evolution: Omega's inexplicably high-pitched and lispy voice has been refiltered to make him more in line with how he sounded in Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog, and Mephiles' voice comes with a malicious, distorted echo that makes him even more intimidating.