Video Game / Somari

"Don't just sit there and waste your precious time. When you want to do something, do it right away. Do it while you can. It's the only way to live a life without regrets."

— Somari's box art◊ (actually Sonic's Badass Creed from his early days)

Somari is an Unlicensed Game produced by Hummer Team, which attempts to mash up the looks (and the platform) of Mario and the gameplay of Sonic in a (seemingly) quick attempt to cash in. And yet, despite the fact that it wasn't the best game by said team, it still remains their most well-known product up to date, especially in the States (never mind the fact it was originally spread over such countries as China^note Somari's country of origin and Russia^note Imported and sold by Steepler Ltd., who are best known as the guys who got Dendy running there. It was also shown on TV on the show organized and sponsored by Steepler, by no other than Sergei Suponev himself!), alongside Kart Fighter.

Given that it was only the second year of Hummer being on the market not thoroughly explored by Nintendo, the engine wasn't entirely purified, resulting in a decent and mostly playable port which, however, was chock full of glitches, such as loop sections never allowing you to get one out of six rings, and somewhat heavy controls that, for instance, made the already devilish Labyrinth Zone of the original look like a child's game. It, however, featured the Special Zone from the Master System port, complete with its music, and the Spin Dash that haven't made a debut in the actual game. In spite of such omissions and edits, reportedly, it was one of the few Hummer's games to go among the lines of Development Hell.

The end result is generally considered to be one's fun and another's pain, so play it at your own risk.

Originally distributed by JY Company under its first monkier, Somari then got rehashed, rehacked and rereleased as Family Kid^note where Somari gets spriteswapped (although the signposts still show his face), Sonic 3D Blast 5^note Somari replaced with Sonic, the game starting at Spring Yard Zone (despite featuring a couple of mercy edits on Green Hill Zone) and the new title screen; note that this version is more known just as Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic & Knuckles 5^note new title music and the title screen, totally featuring Knuckles, Sonic 3D Blast 6^note new title screen and the mock-up of the original menu screen of Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island, which shows up every time you start a stage, Doraemon^note a complete overhaul of the game by Waixing, which is not afraid to steal some graphics from anywhere else and The Hummer^note the most recent one, featuring the newly-established Hummer Team's mascot; comes in two flavors: one is no different from Sonic 3D Blast 5, while another, with the all-new stage graphics, appeared exclusively on Samuri 60-in-1.

A Fan Remake called Somari 3D Blast 5 (also known as Somari Ikey Ilex) is also available here.

See also the polar opposite of this game, Sonic Jam 6 (no relation), was also made for Sega Genesis.

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Tropes attributed to the original Somari:

• 1-Up: Unlike the original game, getting 100 rings does not grant you an extra life. You can find the occasional 1-up monitor sitting around, though.

• Anti-Frustration Features: While Labyrinth Zone is the longest stage in the game, it is also the only stage that doesn't feature the usual ten minute time limit.
• Auto-Scrolling Level: Labyrinth Zone's boss moves upward automatically, unlike in Sonic 1.
• A Winner Is You: Essentially an extract of the bad ending of the original game, which shows Dr. Robotnik juggling the Chaos Emeralds with the caption "THE END: I WILL BE BACK". Because there's no way to collect the Chaos Emeralds, there is no good ending in this version.
• Bite the Wax Tadpole: Somari is meant to be a mash-up of "Sonic" and "Mario", but it also coincidentally is the Italian word for "donkeys".
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The level select screen misspells Spring Yard Zone as "Spring Yand Zone" and Special Stage as "Spacial Stage". Also, Hummer Team disguised themselves as Somari Team for this game, but the cartridge misspells it as "Someri Team".

• Cheat Code: The level select cheat was carried over from the original game, albeit with a different set of commands to unlock it; left, down, b, a, right, up, a, b, up, down, up, down at the title screen.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Unlike the original game, Somari contains no checkpoint poles, so each stage must be completed in one complete run.
• Copycat Cover: The original release's box art is based off the Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog box art, with Mario in Sonic's pose against the same background.
• Covers Always Lie: Ka-Sheng's latter prints of the cartridge art feature Sonic and Tails, which were more like the sources for Somari, but not the playable characters here.
• Crossover: What happens if Mario gets put in a Sonic game? The result is this.
• Cut and Paste Environments: It gets painfully obvious in the Labyrinth Zone that Hummer Team reused the same few environments.
• Detail-Hogging Cover: Green Hill Zone is a lot more detailed on the title screen than it is in the rest of the game. Enforced, given the limitations of the Famicom.
• Down the Drain: Like in Sonic 1, Labyrinth Zone takes place in a flooded shrine.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The only ending in the game is modeled after Sonic 1's bad ending, implying this.
• Fake Longevity: Labyrinth Zone, repeats the same sections several times and makes the underwater parts even slower than in the original game.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game can crash on Labyrinth Zone Act 2 if you ride a rising platform into some spikes.
• The Goomba: Lots, just like in the original version, except that they tend to get back to their spawn points whenever the camera scrolls out of them.
• Goomba Stomp: Most enemies are defeated by merely jumping onto them.
• Gratuitous English: The box art falls into this, quoting the above slogan of the first Sonic game.
• Gratuitous Japanese: The box art copied this as well.
• Green Hill Zone: The trope namer appears as the first zone.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Most of the bosses are intact from the original game, and while they're harder than the original (especially in regards to Star Light and Final Zone) they're comparatively easy compared to the rest of the game.
• Jump Physics: The physics are similar to the original Sonic game, but much stiffer.
• Lethal Lava Land: Marble Zone, like Sonic 1, takes place in ruins with lava everywhere.
• Marathon Level: Labyrinth Zone just doesn't seem to end. They were nice enough to remove the Time Over for this act only.
• Officially Shortened Title: The game's full title is Somari the Adventurer, but the title screen just says Somari.
• Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: Oddly, some of them don't work.
• Pinball Zone: This is where Spring Yard Zone and the Special Stage take place.
• Portmanteau: Somari, of Sonic and Mario, of course.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: Unlike the original game, this one generally gets easier as the game progresses:
  • Green Hill Zone is a lot harder than the original, and features many inescapable pits. These were fixed in some hacked versions, but those that do skip this zone entirely.
  • Marble Zone is especially bad with the enemy placement and seems to have been designed to be as inconvenient as possible. Acts 2 and 3 are also noticeably longer than most of the other levels.
  • Spring Yard Zone act 1 has a tunnel which is nearly impossible to get through without getting hit due to the poor controls but is relatively easy aside from that. ("Relatively" being the important word, as the bad controls make it harder than necessary)
  • Labyrinth Zone takes a ridiculously long time to beat (expect to spend about half of the game here) but the time over rule seems to have been thrown out of the window in this zone. Also, the lack of oxygen is pretty much the only real threat this level has.
  • Star Light Zone, like its 16-bit counterpart, is noticeably easier than the previous zones and is probably the only time you can run for more than 3 seconds at a decent speed. However, it does also have some of the most schizophrenic level design and one of the hardest bosses in the game. (It's also the only original boss as the seesaws aren't in this version)
  • Final Zone is about as accurate to the source material as it gets, being slightly more difficult than the original due to the controls.
• Sequel Hook: "I WILL BE BACK."
• Scoring Points: The game has a point system that tallies up your score after you complete a level, but won't display it during regular gameplay. And unlike the original Sonic, getting a large number of points will never net you a continue.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: It's a Sonic game with Mario's sprite/likeliness added to it.
• Springs, Springs Everywhere: Spring Yard Zone, the third zone, takes place in this setting.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Oh look, it's Mario running like... well, you get the joke.
• Super-Speed: Somari can run fast, but not as fast as Sonic. He also has terrible acceleration in contrast, and its very hard to even take advantage of his speed, since the sloppy controls and physics make it impossible to negate Somari's momentum when spinning, and the very cheap enemy placement and sloppy level design can easily get you killed by doing it—the game practically forces you to work at a snails pace, lest you risk getting blindsided and set back to square one.
• Title Theme Drop: Just like the original game, this is used for the invincibility powerup.
  • Averted with the hacks which Replaced the Theme Tune.
• Wheel o' Feet: When Somari is running, his feet turns into this.

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Tropes attributed to the hacks:

• Capcom Sequel Stagnation: Among the lines of its native market, it's not just expectable, it's natural. The rehacked versions (save for Doraemon) don't differ much, apart from several details.
• Covers Always Lie: True for the Sonic hacks, also true for about 95 percent of Famicom bootleg cartridges, whether they've got this game or not.
• Dolled-Up Installment
• Fan Remake:
  • Somari 3D Blast 5 by Caverns 4. It uses Sonic Worlds physics, features Sonic, Somari and Hummer and also has a couple additions such as bubble shields in Labyrinth Zone and collectable Chaos Emeralds that can enable Super Sonic. Scrap Brain remains absent.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (NES): Improvement: A Game Mod of Sonic 3D Blast 5 with a restored Green Hill Zone and improved sprites, music, and palettes. The rest of the game remains unchanged, however.
• Never Trust a Title: In Sonic & Knuckles 5, the latter only appears on the title screen and Sonic 3D Blast 5/6 is most certainly not in 3D. Not to mention that they're named after completely different games in the series.
• No Ending: Doraemon replaces the ending with a credits screen in Chinese.
• One-Word Title: Family Kid is an arguable example, as the title screen just says Family.
• Punny Name: The name "Hummer" sounds pretty close to "brave horse" in Chinese. Now guess what species the new guy is.
• Rearrange the Song: The songs in the Samuri 60-in-1 version of the The Hummer do sound slightly different (or, to be more precise, off) compared to Somari. That might have happened because Samuri uses a slightly modified sound engine, but with the same old Somari sound data.
• Recycled Title: Two different hacks star the Hummer, both of which have the same name.
• Replaced the Theme Tune: Averted for Family Kid and Sonic 3D Blast 5. Any other hacks, which appear to be produced by Hummer Team itself, replace the title screen song with its' Sonic 3 & Knuckles counterpart. Doraemon, being a Waixing hack, replaces the entire soundtrack.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: In The Hummer, Marble Zone is probably supposed to be this.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • Family Kid goes along with this for Somari.
  • ...and then this trope goes full-circle with Sonic replacing the titular character who was intended to replace Sonic.
  • On to the present. Hummer, the all-new mascot, is now going to replace Somari for a very long while. Not that it's gonna be his only appearance, though.
• Wackyland: Green Hill Zone ends up becoming this in The Hummer.
• Wolverine Publicity: Knuckles in Sonic & Knuckles 5.

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