Pico Sonic

Pico Sonic is a fan-made, side-scrolling run-and-jump game inspired by the classic Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The game was developed by Komehara and is a partial demake of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 made with PICO-8. It features a simplified version of Angel Island Act 1 with some tweaks. Various classic Sonic games were used as reference, including the 8-bit games (Game Gear and Master System), which have sprites closer to PICO-8’s resolution and color palette, and the GBA titles.

In the game, Sonic arrives on Pico Island, ready to collect all the 8 Pico Emeralds that have been scattered. The game focuses on Sonic’s main movements and the exploration of the stage. It’s considered a technical demo with some exploration challenge. Sonic has all basic movements from Sonic 1 but lacks look up and double-jump powers. There is also no timer, making it more about exploration than speedrunning.

The game includes a single demo stage which covers the first part of Angel Island Act 1. The scale is close to 1:1, but Sonic is slightly smaller (relatively to the environment) than in the original game. The game uses a custom map “streaming” system to allow a bigger map than PICO-8’s standard tilemap. There are no enemies, hazards, rings nor item boxes. Rocks are not destructible. Some enemies have been replaced by static obstacles, and most importantly some items have been replaced by emeralds that can be collected to make the stage more interesting.