When it comes to the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Sonic Unleashed is one of the better 3D games in the franchise. Released on all main consoles in 2008, the title has some of the best platforming stages in the franchise, with the daytime levels getting lots of praise for their solid design and sense of speed.
Unfortunately, actually playing the game nowadays isn’t quite as convenient as it used to be. Indeed, while at least some version of the original was released on every home console in the day, and a stripped-down one was made available for certain phones of the time…
A PC version wasn’t included alongside them. As a result, anyone looking to play on PC would need to emulate it to try the game at all, while anyone looking to experience it on modern consoles would need to use their respective backwards compatibility features instead.
But now things have changed. Now, fans have fully recompiled Sonic Unleashed and ported it to PC under the title “Unleashed Recompiled”. Here’s the trailer showing the project in action:
As well as the Git repo where you can get the files needed to setup this version of the game:
And it’s by far the definitive way to play the game. Indeed, with everything from high framerate support to ultrawide support, multiple quality of life features to an in-game achievements system, this version of Sonic Unleashed has everything you could want and then some. Feel like the battle music gets annoying in the Werehog stages? Turn it off! Don’t like hints or tutorials since you’ve played the game a few dozen times already? Disable them, and get on with your day. Heck, you can even more easily run it on Steam Deck or install mods for the game too, making it a version that can be customised to an extent never seen before in the series.
It’s incredible to see, and only gets crazier when you realise how little time the project took overall. Indeed, do you know when the team started work on Unleashed Compiled?
September last year.
Yeah, they basically decompiled and remade Sonic Unleashed for PC in just 6 months.
That’s kinda insane, isn’t it? Like, they took an Xbox 360/PS3 game and reverse engineered it to work on PC in under half a year.
It’s truly mindboggling to think about, and yet more evidence of how insane video game modding and decompilation projects have gotten in the last decade or so. Things that would have logically taken years back in the old days, things that would challenge a team of professional developers working on a game full-time… are being pumped out left, right and centre. Projects that would seem like black magic to programmers of the 90s and 00s are now common one-man creations in the 2020s and onwards.
Regardless, Unleashed Compiled is an incredible Sonic Unleashed PC port, and one which we’re sure will be the basis of mods and fan projects for years to come. So, if you’re a fan of the original, check it out…
Then leave your thoughts on the game and its changes in the comments below, on social media, or on our Discord server today.
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