Sonic races through Wave Ocean in P-06.

Moris has packed some fan-centric extras into the options, too. A TGS Sonic toggle, for instance, revives the character animations that were shown in an early Tokyo Game Show demo. You can also switch Sonic's jump ball to the cleaner sphere seen in Sonic Adventure, alternate between a straight and curved jump-dash and add a lock-on reticule for homing attacks. "I've seen a lot of people say they've seen the homing attack do 'things out of this world' [in the original game] and they are kinda right," he said. "The homing attack radius can be somewhat of a pain in Sonic games. A lock-on makes it easier to deal with the uncertainty."

P-06 will even let you change various UI elements as well as the appearance of dialog boxes, loading screens and the pause menu.

The remake is being built for PC, so, of course, there are graphical settings. Lots and lots of graphical settings. You can adjust draw distance, texture quality, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, color grading, bloom, volumetric lighting and countless other visual options to your liking. None of these settings will radically change the game -- P-06 can't and will never match Death Stranding for visual fidelity -- but they make a difference if you own a high-end PC.

It's a phenomenal achievement. Moris isn't the first person to attempt a Sonic 06 remake, though. Developers Gistix and Mefiresu led a group that presented two demos, covering the game's Dusty Desert and Crisis City levels, at the Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE) in 2017 and 2018. A group is still working on the project, though without Gistix's leadership and at a slower pace than before, according to Moris. "The steam [around the remake] has noticeably died down, unfortunately," he said.

With five playable stages, Moris appears to have made the most progress among the Sonic fan community. It's a remarkable feat that's made even more remarkable by one simple fact: Moris has never played Sonic 06.

A video of the demo Gistix and Mefiresu's team submitted to Sage 2017.

The 20-year-old developer grew up in Argentina, where "gaming is not that commonplace." He received a Sega Genesis as a toddler, though, and quickly fell in love with the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Moris later acquired Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which he thought was fun but "incomplete" and "broken in places." (He later found out that his copy was an early prototype of the game.) The youngster then moved on to Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which he thought was the "ultimate [Sonic] experience" and its direct sequel, Sonic & Knuckles.

Around 2010, four years after the PlayStation 3 was released in Japan, Moris was given a PlayStation 2. The pre-adolescent tore into the system's deep library, which included Sonic titles such as the Gems Collection -- a retro compilation that included Sonic CD, Sonic the Fighters and Sonic R -- and racing spin-off Sonic Riders. "I was just madly addicted to Sonic the Hedgehog and gaming overall by that point," he said.

A couple of years later, Moris got his first PC. While low end, it allowed him to experience a slice of PC gaming, including the Sonic Adventure titles, which started as Dreamcast exclusives but were later ported to the Nintendo Gamecube, PC and, in the case of Sonic Adventure 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The platform also exposed Moris to a variety of retro games that weren't available for the Sega Genesis or PlayStation 2. "I discovered new worlds everywhere I went," he said.

"I was just madly addicted to Sonic the Hedgehog."

He would later upgrade his PC and play some Sonic games that were released during the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era, including the well-received Sonic Generations and excellent kart racer Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. But there was one game that Moris could never play: Sonic 06. The adventure-platformer had come out years before, but the Argentinian had only discovered it after gaining access to the internet. "Its advertisements, atmosphere, tone and sound, CGI, graphics... everything resonated with me," he said. "It grabbed my attention like crazy."

At first, Moris didn't know that the game was only available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. He visited local game stores and asked if they had any PlayStation 2 copies. "I was bummed out [when I] found out it was either out of stock or not available for PS2," he said. He was aware that the game had reviewed poorly and upset parts of the Sonic community. "I didn't care really," he said. "I loved what I saw and binge-watched videos of the game, learning about its story and development. It just became the game I've been most obsessed with ever."

An early trailer for Sonic 06.

The PC wasn't just a way for Moris to discover and play video games, though. Through the internet, he also discovered game development and the small but passionate communities that mod existing titles or create fangames -- unofficial titles based on existing characters and franchises -- from scratch. Moris started a couple of projects with Blitz Sonic, a fan-made engine based on Blitz 3D, an old but easy-to-learn programming language derived from BASIC and created by Blitz Research. These included the open-world platformer Sonic Dash and Sonic Blue Runner, his own take on the Blitz3D engine. "I was very young and very new to everything," he said. "I dread those memories [of] the early years."

Moris slowly abandoned these projects and switched to Unity in 2014. After a brief engine experiment, he tried to make an HD version of Sonic Unleashed -- a 2008 title that transformed Sonic into a 'Werehog' at night -- called World Adventure Project. Like Sonic 06, it was a game that had never been released on PC and, as a consequence, Moris had no experience playing. "I was committed to [doing] it and full of energy," he explained. According to the developer, he abandoned this project after finding "better things to do on Unity."

One of those "things," clearly, was P-06. Moris took on the project because he'd admired the game for so many years and never had a chance to play it. "Since I had the tools to make games, why not take on the challenge?" he explained. "If I can't play the game, then I'll experience it through making a recreation of it."

Moris also saw the project as an opportunity to fix some of Sonic 06's glaring faults and add unused material hidden in the game's code. "This was a chance to make use of it all," he said. "I could add my own touches to the game and give it a second chance."

In April 2017, Moris uploaded his first P-06 "dev clip" to YouTube. It was supposed to be a private post, but he accidentally set the video to public and only realized his mistake an hour later. In the description, he emphasized that it was a separate project to the one led by Gistix but could be considered a "parallel" attempt at remaking Sonic 06 in Unity.