Blue Sphere

by Michael Denathorn (Dabzy)

Run around a rotating chequered planet, turning blue spheres red to win the emerald - a tribute to the Mega Drive's iconic special stage.

Description

Behind the retro looks, the spinning chequered planet is an illusion - there is no real 3D here. The playfield is actually a flat, wrapping tile grid, and a WebGPU screen shader repaints the curved "planet" every frame: it raycasts a sphere and samples the checkerboard in azimuthal coordinates so the tiles stay square instead of pinching at the poles. The blue and red spheres, the rings and Sonic himself are all ordinary 2D sprites, drawn onto a magenta key colour that the shader then composites over the shaded ground. The whole thing is written from scratch in BambooBasic and transpiled to JavaScript and WebGPU to run in your browser.

Unofficial Sonic fan project.
Sonic, Blue Sphere and related IP belong to SEGA and their respective rights holders.
Not affiliated with SEGA.

Genre

Arcade collect-'em-up

Engine

2D with a WebGPU screen shader (the rotating chequered-planet illusion)

Controls

Left / Right - turn 90 degrees Space - jump (click / Space through the menus)