Fan Fridays: Stealth

This week, we’re spotlighting the work of a very prolific and influential Sonic fan. Simon “Stealth” Thomley has contributed to the Sonic community in many impressive ways; among these contributions were the first implementation of Knuckles in Sonic 1 and the first complete disassembly of Sonic & Knuckles. Also, just to prove it could be done properly, he made a much more functional port of Sonic 1 to the Game Boy Advance. Additionally, he has created tools that thousands of people have used to fuel their own creativity; these tools include SonED and SonED2, which are popular level editors for Sonic games on the Genesis. This also includes E02, a full-fledged 2D game engine available for personal and commercial use. Most recently, he turned his attention to a commercial project by collaborating on the remastered mobile port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog.

Stealth’s experience with the Sonic franchise has directly fueled his career aspirations; aside from the Sonic 1 port, he is the founder and head of Headcannon, his own software development business. You can find a more complete list of his community contributions on his page at Sonic Retro, and you can see much more of his work on his YouTube channel. We sat down with Stealth and talked at length about his projects and his history with the Sonic franchise, and the result of that interview will be posted in two parts over the course of this weekend. As always, we’re on the lookout for fan works to spotlight, so if you have a project you want the world to know about, send us a link at fansonfriday@tssznews.com!