Released in 2002, Sonic QTE 3 is a fan-made Sonic game exclusive to Windows. I have no idea what QTE stands for – Quite Terrible Errors? Quality That Escaped? Who knows. What I do know is that it was never completed, leaving behind a fascinating relic of Sonic history that still runs on modern machines. Kind of. Barely.

What are the system requirements? No clue. I got it running on a Windows 98 machine (flex), but through sheer witchcraft and the power of Steam Deck’s Proton, I managed to play it in full screen in all its 640x480 glory. On Windows 11, though? Enjoy squinting at a Sonic adventure the size of a postage stamp.

So why talk about a fan-made Sonic game when there’s dozens of “official” Sonic titles? Because unlike most projects ranging from “well-meaning disaster” to “I need therapy now” – this one is actually decent. It’s got the essentials: speed, alternative paths, and power-ups galore. There’s no Dr. Robotnik fight, which feels like cheating, but hey, it’s unfinished, and at least it doesn’t end with Sonic being weirdly pervy. If you know, you know. (And if you don’t, keep it that way.)

The 2D graphics are quite nice. If you look at screenshots, they look damn similar to a Genesis Sonic game. There’s some noticeable jank, especially in terms of sprite movement. But it’s mostly good.

The music, believe it or not, is the big highlight. We got some jazzy synth tunes, and they decidedly hold up. The sound effects, on the other hand, have some artifacts in them – and I think some were swiped from Windows MIDI files. Nevertheless, good job!

The controls, surprisingly, ain’t bad! The arrow keys are for movement, <Space> is for jump, holding <Space> grinds you on some rails, and <Ctrl> helps to a homing attack after you jump. And one again, the value of the Steam Deck is that you can map all this to its gamepad.

For a moment, let’s talk about that mid-2000s Sonic fandom. You know the one: infamous, bizarre, and occasionally not-safe-for-anything. People blame autism for the weirder corners of it (as if autism bio-engineers “Sonic obsession”), but as an autistic Sonic fan myself, I can confidently say, nope, that ain’t most of us. Some people are just… weird. Thankfully, Sonic QTE 3 keeps things strictly PG and focuses on what Sonic does best: running, smashing robots, and hoarding shiny rings.

TGF Team made Sonic QTE 3 along with other fan-made games in the QTE series. I don’t know what else they made, but they clearly had talent with the Multimedia Fusion.

Do I recommend Sonic QTE 3? Absolutely, if you have a vintage PC and the patience of a saint. It’s a time capsule from the Wild West of fan-made games, with moments of brilliance buried underneath its many flaws. Just don’t expect SEGA-level polish. Still, for a buggy, unfinished, fan-made Sonic game from 2002? Surprisingly a good ride.

So much of my past lives on fecebook. People who believe in more than 2 sexes; the same “scientific” and “compassionate” articles on this subject keep getting re-shared by my former friends and acquaintances. Also denunciations of Twitter and declarations of moving to Bluesky. I have done plenty of denouncing and declaring on fecebook myself, and for what?

I feel so disconnected from my past now. Who even am I? Young me might be aghast. Every article about policy responses to “climate change” makes me scoff. You’re 20 years too late, I think. NOW you’re trying to fix it? We knew back then it would be unfixable by now, but here you are insisting you can stuff the apocalyptic horse back into the barn. You’re only making it worse now, accelerating environmental destruction, mining for costly and short-lived batteries, building wind farms on my prairie, all this subsidized “green tech” becoming obsolete waste faster and faster. This, after you reduced all environmental impacts to a single vector, “climate.”

Have I grown callous? Conservative? Uninformed? No, I have merely given up and wish to use my remaining years on this planet to accept Reality instead of imposing my bright (read: stupid) ideas on it. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; electric cars will just drive us there faster.

Oh, and nuclear power is the new “clean energy” to save us and the planet. I don’t know if this is wrong. I don’t know if my passionate anti-nukes activism from the 1980’s was wrong. I only know, from living this long, that all these save-the-world virtuous environmentalist ideas are folly. Humans are gonna human. We’re idiots. Just look at fecebook.