Chaotix Complete (v0.1)
By AdamKempenich
Chaotix needed some love! So I'm trying to complete it.
Introducing, Chaotix Complete!
Chaotix was never finished: this is common knowledge (I think it is, at least). Chaotix also receives so few rom hacks: there are what, five of them, excluding this one? And 2 or 3 of those are just sprite or palette mods. We can do better!
The goals:
- My main goal? To answer the question, what if Sega actually finished the game they intended to build, rather than rushing it to the 32X in an incomplete state?
- The end game should be fun, especially for coop play. I think Chaotix has the best potential for cooperative play from all the classic games, thanks to the tethering.
- I’ve got a lot of thoughts on what a completed Chaotix game would be, and I’m not the only one who's asked that same question. I’ve been sorting through old Sega documents, art, other people’s ideas (pretty much anything I can find) for a year, despite only starting on this project in early 2026.
- Aside from finishing a fun game, I want to make tools that people can use.
- I want to document this game as much as possible.
What is this?
This version is pretty much just some bug fixes, and “What if Chaotix shipped with Sonic and Tails?”. I think the community deserves to play that game.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed (kind of) physics. You can roll down slopes now. It doesn’t feel like characters randomly accelerate with no reason now. What a nightmare. Every now and then I’ll be playing this updated version and think I broke something, and then I’ll go back and realize it’s in the base version too.
- Spin dash: One of the reasons I believe people who say “This game was made by the Sonic CD team” is because of how murked up the spindash was. Between the sound driver side not pitching up the sfx, and the physics side not accelerating, the spindash has been fixed.
- Sonic’s legs have been re-colored in the good ending.
- Heavy’s throw animation has been restored, and he has a couple new sprites to account for him actually holding the other player. Offsets were also added for the walking + hold animation. Let me know if I missed any sprites with him
- Level select: you can choose from any of the base characters. Heavy and bomb are fully playable as P1/P2 for masochists out there.
- SFX:
- Rolling never had a sound effect. That’s been fixed.
- Some general sound driver fixes
New Features
- Sonic and Tails are fully implemented. They have their S3K moves—after all, that’s the precursor to this game. Sonic also has the drop dash, in addition to elemental shields.When Sonic has no shield, or has a neutral shield, he can use the insta-shield (jump, short press jump) or drop dash (jump, long press jump).
- Normal shields give sonic a larger insta-shield! If you feel like that’s OP, please let me know. Everyone in this game feels OP to me, so I find that balance to be fair since he has no vertical traversal abilities.
- When Sonic has elemental shields (more on that below), they behave the same as S3K.
- Tails can fly for 8 seconds. Jump, and press/hold Up to fly. This is how he behaved in the beta. Jumping from the ground while holding Up gives tails a super-jump-fly thingy. This wasn’t intentional, but it does add to the balance of his gameplay and I’m keeping it since Charmy is OP in this game and this helps Tails balance with him a bit.
- Tails does not have his tail overlays while jumping in the bonus/special stages yet.
- Elemental shields have been ported from S3K. Win them in the bonus stage for now.
- I’m still porting elemental damage types over, as Chaotix does not that baked into attacks/enemies.
- Speaking of the bonus stage… the lightning shield attracts rings in the bonus stage if you have it (not the special stage yet). HUD icons also appear for what shield your player has in the bonus stage, since I haven’t gotten overlays working yet.
- Every character is selectable from the player select screen. If you want to beat this game as Heavy, why should I stop you?
- Oh, that little flippy-monitor animation now plays with more items, not just the blue ring.
- I suppose the added splash screen counts as a new feature?
New Art
- Many sprites were provided by @CancerEdition. Some were from other games. Some are new!
- The HUD icons for Knuckles and Espio look good on CRTs due to the way the pixels blend together. They look bad on any other display, so I’ve fixed that and made new sprites.
- HUD icons (while we’re on them) did not have borders for characters. This inconsistency has been fixed.
- Knuckles didn’t used to slide on the ground when he landed. Now he does, and there’s new art for that. I guess that’s also a new feature?
- I made some new art for the instashield when Sonic has a shield power up. I never finished that, but the placeholder works for now.
New Sounds
- A restored Sega sound. Since this sound is still in the game, and the sound went through at least two iterations, I’m guessing it was turned off for development purposes. Believe me, booting this game up hundreds, or thousands of times, would make me shut off that sound too.
- Imported Sounds from S3K, and from Sonic CD.
- FM/PSG jump SFX (this is in the options menu)
- Jump SFX also change pitch when you’re big/little. Isn’t that cute?
- Skid SFX alternate between PSG and FM, dependent on the option. I’m really wondering why the skid SFX were PSG in this game, when the jump was FM—especially since Chaotix relies so heavily on the SCD sound bank. Find that toggle in the options menu.
- FM/PSG saves to SRAM, so when you reboot the game, it remembers what you chose.
Known Bugs
Sorry everyone, I've run out of time for a few months to work on this, and wasn't able to finish mapping the overlay positions for Sonic and Tails.
- Sonic and Tails' arms are incomplete.
- Tails' tail overlays are incomplete.
- It's still Chaotix.
There’s a lot that I’ve fixed in this game. I don’t remember all of it right now. So this list is not exhaustive. Like I said, September was nuts. I’ve got builds with water, builds where Heavy’s sprites are kind of restored, a build with smooth sprite rotation working. I haven’t had time to review the code on those and implement it into the main build of this project.
I’ve got a lot of plans for this hack in the future.
Enjoy v0.1 of Chaotix Complete, AKA the Sonic and Tails in Chaotix build.
— Adam Kempenich
- A special thanks to CancerEdition for their lovely Sonic and Tails sprites
- A healthy amount of code, and SFX, are ported directly from S3K and Sonic CD
- Other new sprites provided by me
- As noted below, Claude saved a bunch of time for a lot of code work. It also wasted a lot of time.
Who's ready to open this can of worms?
I’m going to be fully transparent with my development of Chaotix Complete: yes, AI was used in the creation of this. I know, I’m a new face to this community, despite having done some Sonic hacking back in the early 2000s. I’ve had a lot of change in my life in the last few years, and this project was a good way for me to use some of my creative energy.
The goal of this project isn’t to be some namesake for me: it’s to give Chaotix some love and life. Nobody else is doing this, so please don’t fault me for using new tools to get this job done. I’m just some guy who really likes running, and I get inspired for ideas with the tether system for this game when I walk my dog on her extendable leash.
I’ll be releasing the source for this hack when different milestones are met. All of my notes (which there are a lot of), art, sound, and code comments/cleanup will be published.
Here’s a nifty checklist that I’ll call “Where was AI used for this project?”
❌ NO AI: Art creation
❌ NO AI: Music/Sound creation
❌ NO AI: Ideation/New feature design/storytelling
❌ NO AI: Writing (I paid for my journalism degree, I’m going to use it)
✅ YES AI: Code writing/Tool-Building
What I do NOT want—and I cannot emphasize this enough—is to give the impression that AI should just pump out thoughtless content. I hope this project is not viewed in that way. For me, this is a product of the love, joy, and most importantly, the feelings, that this game has given me for 30+ years.
Despite the AI work (which, with the exception of the SH2 code, to this point has mostly just been importing code from S3K), I’ve put a ton of effort into this project.
I really enjoy how much I’ve learned from this project: I’m not great at 68k assembly (and guess what, I’m even worse with the SH2), and this has been a great way to get better. I think anyone who’s going to be making hacks should understand the architecture of how these systems operate, and that should be part of the fun of this.
File Type: rom/sega-32x
File Size: 3.81 MB
Sorry but, which emulator did you use? I'm having a bug on kega where it crashes when entering a stage
I tried BlastEm and it works perfectly fine there. You just need the 32X bios files and the game will run.
Thanks for the test in BlastEm! If it works there, I'm curious if it works on real hardware.
Not Kega, but PicoDrive and GENS run it fine. The 32x timing can be finicky in the stage intros, and it sounds like that might be what you're encountering. I'll take a look at Kega. Thank you for the note!
THX ADAM!!! ITS EXTREME PEAK PRO!!
Thanks! <3
Another known issue: When Sonic grabs the second character, his arms were off. Can you fix it? When the plans are for fixing entries, but not too early.
$2A sound test slot PSG is -1 octave lower
Last modified by Mildanner @ 2026-10-22 19:20:29
Thanks for the notes! I've got the arms patched in the newer build, but the PSG was something I didn't catch at all.
I'd love to hear what other issues you might find.
ew vibecoding
I'll take that over ew chaotix!
If you don't like it, SHC already denies a entry that has a lot of AI. Unless you used AI to assist in your work. This entry is expensive but not at all, only impressive thing it is a Chaotix hack with custom assets.
Last modified by Mildanner @ 2026-10-23 11:59:07
I agree
why? its not vibecoding.
vibecoding is paying for claude or gpt and saying "ay make me this game"|
which leads to bad results.
here, an actual developer uses it to help developement in small sections, which leads to great results.
not vibecoding btw. he used the ai to help him with coding parts that he had trouble making/figuring out. Vibecoding is just using a claude code or chatgpt subscription to fully automate making the game. The way adam (the author) used it here, i'm actually very supportive of.
I'm very keen on this project! Chaotix is one of the most misunderstood games to me, while it's true that it was rushed, I still the core gameplay is great, and this project could help people see the vision more clearly.
As for AI, it's nothing to be worried about. There's a difference between generating art and code, and AI sucks at the former. Anyone demonizing AI should not be taken seriously.
On another note, I would like to feature this in my Knuckles Chaotix video essay, if you don't mind!
I love Chaotix. I’m really excited to bring the full vision of it to life. I’d love to hear your ideas sometime. Reading what other community members have to say has been monumental in creating this. The public release is just a character hack, but there’s a lot more done than just that.
I’d be honored if you talked about this! DM me or send me a message on Discord if there’s anything I can provide.
i really like it!!!! always liked chaotix but there were a lot of issues, so seeing somebody deciding to fix it is like a blessing from the heavens!!
i liked the new physics, i liked sonic and tails here (although i stil dont know how to make tails fly)
next thing on the list imo is improve level design and add an extending camera so you can see where the f are you going
Thanks a ton for your comment! Level design is something that I think about at least once a day. The art is so beautiful, but I wonder if it should be more like S3K—more of a true environment. I'd love your thoughts there.
To fly as Tails: Jump, and hold Up. (This is how the Chaotix beta had it, so I kept it).
Camera improvements are something I haven't thought of a lot. Thank you for bringing that up.
oh, ok thanks!! :)
I spent some time and was able to bring over the camera from Sonic CD—it'll be in the next public build. Thanks for the suggestion! I wish porting water to the 32x was as simple as the camera was...
I was about to smile, but the first thing I read was that the base Chaotix is somehow bad or can be surpassed...
You’re right: that’s libel on my part.
The controls for Tails' flight are very awkward for me to understand, I would have perferred the normal Tails flight controls from Sonic 3... but the other additons were nice though.
That’s a fair point. I wanted to keep it true to Chaotix and kept the beta control for Tails, but it should be an option and default to the S3K flight control.
I really appreciate your input on that. Not sure why I didn’t consider that as an option, but FM/PSG did.
Ha, no
why? if it's the ai, just know it was used very sparingly to help with some parts of code, it's not like he just said "hey chatgpt make me a shc worthy rom hack"
No offense, but you act like when someone doesnt want to play the hack that has a very small AI code in it, then you always say "if you dont like this then dont play it!" just because its a hack with sparingly that is "worth" playing
Last modified by Apshwa @ 2026-11-02 02:22:30
I really like this version and I even beat recently the knuckles chaotix so this a good rom hack even with assist with AI
Last modified by SailorBR @ 2026-10-23 18:14:39
wait, you're allowed to use AI???
Last modified by Apshwa @ 2026-10-24 00:19:36
Unfortunately
when using it sparingly and only for code, yeah.
This really is a childhood dream come true, finally seeing the game be fully realised to its full potential! Seeing as there's unused Super Sonic sprites in Chaotix, I wonder if it'd be possible to add Super Transformations as a reward for getting all the Chaos Rings, since they don't do anything else other than give the Good Ending. Maybe those original unused sprites can also then be used in the Good Ending with Super Sonic flying about!
Thanks, that means a lot!
In the final game, the plan for the story is essentially this: Sonic and Tails are trapped by Eggman using the Chaos Rings: but they were trapped with all of the chaos emeralds!
Characters are unlocked one at a time. I want to encourage players to use all of them somehow. After getting all the Chaos Rings, Sonic/Tails are playable, and anyone can go super.
I'm glad the Chaotix Super Sonic sprites at least got used in the Sonic 2 movie credits though. They're really nice.
pretty cool ngl
Hell nah AI rom hacks in SHC
ur acting like it was completely made using ai, despite the fact he VERY CLEARLY MENTIONED that he used in a very small portion as assistance to this hack
First of all, congratulations on your work! I once saw a video of a hack where the characters could move without the chains holding them back, making their movements much faster and more like the other games in the franchise. Is there any chance you could implement this in your hack?
That's the plan for the final game! I'd love to hear more about how you'd imagine that would be implemented—like, should there be portions where characters are untethered, and it goes into a split screen if they go outside of each other's camera views? Should the tether system be a punishment for bad gameplay? I've got like 5 or 6 directions that I've been mulling over with that system, and would love to hear any ideas people have here.
Hi there. Just wanted to throw a comment in about how there's nothing wrong with using AI as a tool to help you along. Most programmers I know will use AI to help double check things, it's perfectly fine. I think that if SHC is going to allow people to use AI as a tool, they should delete rude comments about it.
Having said that, Chaotix isn't that fun of a game for me but, it's cool to see Sonic and Tails added. Will look out for the full build.
AI can still make mistakes tho
oh sure, that's where real programming knowledge comes into play. I'm just saying there's nothing wrong when using it as an assit when needed
Oh man does it ever. It has no idea how the shadow/highlight feature works either lol.
JGenesis emulator runs smooth!
One thing: on Special Stage 3, Sonic ran and jumped right but fell through the ground causing a loss. Not sure if that's original behavior or a collision glitch, but otherwise feels pretty playable.
Tails flying by holding Up feels way more natural than double-jumping.
Oh and the AI discussion? This doesn't feel like slop at all. We barely get 32x entries, plus he's transparent about what AI helped with (code/tools only, no art/music/story). That honesty matters.
Solid entry!
Interesting, I'll take a look, but I wouldn't be surprised if that bug was in the stock game. I haven't touched the Special Stage outside of adding two extra character banks. But maybe some of the other SH2 changes messed it up. Thank you!
I appreciate your feedback on Tails' flight too. I agree that holding up feels better. I think it'll still be an option in the end game though. Makes me wonder why they changed it during the development of Crackers/Chaotix.
Thank you for the kind words :)
This is a great submission! I love Tails' sprites and how Sonic can use the elemental shields, making it feel like a true sequel to Sonic 3. However, Sonic is at a major disadvantage here, as he's the only character (besides Heavy and Bomb) who can't fly or climb walls.
Thanks! And I completely agree. I'd be interested in hearing how you think that could be balanced out. I've made Sonic a little faster too internally to give him a litte better buff.
I feel like different paths (and better level design) could help with that a lot as well.
[list=1]
[*]Thank you! I love Knuckles Chaotix. I absolutely love this.
[*]There's been one thing that has bothered me about Knuckles' Chaotix and it's only with Mighty (and Sonic in this hack). His walking animation. The mappings of his arms make him look like he's trying to replicate a train. Can you fix that in future versions of this wonderful hack?
[*]I recognize the sprites that you used for Sonic. Can you use the beta swirl running animation to distinguish him from Mighty?
[/list]
Oh my gosh... I can't unsee that train look now.
My plan is definitely to distinguish the sprites more—it's really weird when they're standing next to each other. I'm working on peelout too.
There's a sprite someone made online that has a hybrid Chaotix/S3K sprite ... I really feel like if Chaotix would have been released, the sprites would have been different, like Knuckles' sprites were. I think CancerEdition nailed it with Tails and with their shading, so I need to work on that same thing for Sonic.
is there a chance that we could get ray in Chaotix
Oh ... I'd say there's a chance. And also maybe Amy? I've got some other characters I want to put in the music test screen, after all...
Hi Adam, I found your room hack really cool, and I'm also a fan of Chaotix. I'd especially like to participate in this project by contributing some sprites, If you have any contacts like Discord or etc., we could talk.
Thanks for the kind words! Feel free to reach out to me on the SHC Discord ... I'm not hard to find.
Thank you, I would really like to be able to help and contribute to this project, it caught my attention.
Thank you so much Mr Adam I appreciate how you stylized our heroes to the classic 32X abstract look wonder what are you making next for your endeavors
Thanks! Gotta give that credit to CancerEdition for the most part. I've made a number of sprites, but they did a great job with their Sonic and Tails sprites.
awesome hack! i don't get why people are acting like this is fully ai, it's fine to use ai to help you with some parts you don't know. love the hack, keep up the good work! :)
Cool hack, but it can't be competed on pico drive as any character, game freeze after beating final boss, just white screen of death, can you improve this?
well, I'm sad AI was used, but at least it was used as a tool
great hack, didn't play that much but I see potential in this
Can you add the unused tails to the character select, I know it's useless since tails and mighty are already in the game but I think it would be funny
Hey folks, first of all, I hope you enjoy this hack.
I'd like to apologize—Sonic's legs are NOT properly colored in this build for the Good Ending. I forgot to merge that fix into my main build.
Once the contest is over, I'll push the latest version out with correct arm/tail sprites, and the correct leg colors. Everything else should be as expected, but if it's not, let me know and I'll add it to the fix list!