False Alarm - SONIC 2 HD Fanmake Does Not Host Virus Keylogger

You may or may not have heard about an ongoing S2HD project that designed their own fanmade HD remake of the original Sonic the Hedgehog 2, you may have also heard that its Alpha release was launched last week for everyone to download. Sorry Mac users but it's available exclusively for PC users only.

However, to the dismay of a number of players, yesterday there was widespread news that the game actually was hosting a keylogging virus that would log every single keystroke you put into your system and then send it off for unknown bad people to use it to take over the world or something. 

The original claim went a little like this from site Sonic Retro:

"Earlier today, I was contacted by a professional antivirus employee who was interested in why Sonic 2 HD consistently popped up as a threat by multiple antivirus software programs and did some investigation. His results showed that a keylogger is part of the Sonic 2 HD software. After receiving this notification, we conducted our own independent tests and found that there is indeed a keylogging program as part of the Sonic 2 HD alpha software.

I want to emphasize that at this time, we have found no evidence that the software has been “phoning home” any data—only that we have found the capability exists. Because this vulnerability has been found, we are strongly advising that the software be removed. You will need to delete the files included with the Sonic 2 HD zip, as well as the registry keys hooked at HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/NakaSMK (if you are unfamiliar on how to do this, go to Start->Run.., type regedit, follow the folder path, and then delete the NakaSMK folder.)"

But before you go ahead and start removing this glorious HD remake of a SEGA classic off of your system entirely, you may want to hear about the new information that's come to light. 

From the same Sonic Retro site, a new blog post:

"After some careful examination by forum member Guess_Who, the “keylogger” was confirmed to be benign and a false positive, revealing that it was a result of shoddy DirectInput programming. This is how the program was able to register key presses even when the window was not selected and running in the background. In other words, it’s like how CW Cheat can trigger antiviruses as a trojan horse, despite having no malicious software behind it."

A disclaimer has since been added underneath the download links to the game which reads:

"You may experience a warning message from your antivirus software indicating a trojan is present in our zip file. You can be rest assured if you are downloading it from any of the links above that the file is safe."

If you've been dying for a classic and faithful reimaging of Sonic from SEGA and haven't been happy with the results then be sure to check out the video below of S2HD in action. The new soundtrack and visuals are making me drool right now just thinking about it:

If you're interested in trying out the game, which as of currently only offers the first two stage of Emerald Hill Zone, you can download it right here -- DOWNLOAD SONIC 2 HD

Is there any reason not to download and play Sonic 2 HD? If you have a reason then we'd like to know!