Somari has always been an interesting novelty since I initially discovered it back in the Wild West days of YouTube. It was so strange seeing this entire recreation of Sonic 1 on the NES with Mario in place of Sonic. The Famicom bootleg market was filled with weird crossovers such as this (Street Fighter and Mario Kart!), but Somari looks and (almost) plays like a Famicom Sonic 1 which had me curious enough to try it. Mario-Erm…Somari…being the star just made it more enticing.

After actually getting my hands on the game, I wasn’t too impressed. While it initially appears like a fun time, the knockback your character receives from damage made it pretty frustrating to actually play. The poor acceleration also meant certain jumps were rather difficult to make, and resulted in ‘fighting’ the terrain. There’s a particularly infamous spike pit in Green Hill that the player simply can’t escape from. The rings the player has are also likely to bounce back into the player, resulting in a rather obnoxious softlock. It shows things really weren’t tested thoroughly, as is the case with most of these bootlegs. It’s not the most frustrating bootleg of the bunch by a long shot, but it’s not great.

This hack actually turns Somari into something I can recommend! The graphical touchups makes the game a lot more faithful to the Genesis original and actually looks really impressive for the system. Somari (now Sonic)’s physics have been adjusted a bit so he accelerates a lot more quickly. While it might take some adjustment to get used to, it makes the game’s more challenging platforming manageable.

The hack also adds a lot of things that impressed me. The Special Stages being restored is a welcome surprise, since I believe every revision of Somari essentially made it impossible to get the Good Ending and lacked these entirely. The layouts are the exact same across all Special Stages, but it adds some nice replay value to go for all the Emeralds. The music improvements are also really nice and some of the covers stand on their own really well, right up there with the official Sega Master System release. It isn’t something I felt the hack needed since the original bootleg covers were pretty serviceable, but I’m glad the authors went through this extra trouble as the end results are pretty great.

Is it a perfect platformer that’s exactly on par with the Genesis original? Eh, nah. Slope physics are still incredibly janky which can make certain Zones such as Spring Yard Zone a bit trickier than necessary to navigate. I found myself confused trying to get out of the first ‘two Spring’ section in Act 1 of that Zone, and feel the bumpers were a more reliable way to escape.

While I do understand that some of the level design was changed to be more fair, I still find myself agreeing with Noid the Bat’s previous review, and felt there are a couple of small sections that feel a bit cheap. Namely some nasty blind spots, enemies being a bit harder ‘to read’ compared to the Genesis original, and some cramped spaces where navigating out of danger is difficult (again, Spring Yard Zone’s small ‘tunnel’ areas).

However, I find that Sonic’s ‘Ring System’ makes these sections more forgivable than other platformers, so it’s not quite the deal-breaker for me. It can just be obnoxious if the player is aiming for all the Chaos Emeralds to lose an opportunity to get access to the Special Stage through an enemy that was difficult to navigate around. The game is otherwise pretty generous with lives and continues for those playing without any emulator tools. You can also access Special Stages by clearing Act 3 with 50 Rings, which is something the original Sonic 1 didn’t offer and eases some of the aforementioned frustration.

The only real suggestions I have to ‘improve’ the title is lowering the hits needed for the Green Hill boss to match the original game. It seems to be higher than 8, which is weird since the other bosses seem to be closer to 8 (but I wasn’t counting there). Checkpoints would also be nice, as a death forces the player to restart from the beginning of an Act. It’s not too bad early on, but the Labyrinth stages being 3 minutes long with some lag can make a full level restart annoying. I also felt the Marble Zone ‘cloud’ animations look a wee bit weird, but I’m not sure if I can provide a nicer alternative outside of simply making the clouds static.

Overall, this almost makes Somari feel like a release Sega officially licensed out to Nintendo back in the 90’s. I think someone who has decent familiarity with how Master System Sonic 1 ‘feels’ might enjoy this. This feels more ‘platforming-focused’ like that release, with level design that tries to emulate Genesis Sonic 1 (with it’s own unique twists to makeup for system limitations/objects not programmed in). Give it a shot if you passed up on the original Somari or didn’t find yourself enjoying that bootleg. It now feels like a platformer that can more snugly fit in with other high quality licensed platformers for the system. Well done to those involved!