Slightly off-topic, but: I recently learned that even more than this is possible by using a custom cartridge that maps data to $B00000-$BFFFFF; this gives an additional megabyte. There is no support for this on existing flashcarts, though.
There's been a few hacks on this board where people have thrown recorded music at the Mega Drive and have achieved results (see: Sonic VR, Jester's Challenge, etc.). You could probably brute force the DKC games' music through the Mega Drive that way and achieve something close to parity. Likewise the SNES uses soundfonts - just load it up with samples taken from the Mega Drive games and theoretically it'll sound the same there too. It's all a bit complicated though, which is why you never saw this in the early 90s.
I'm not sure a direct port would be the best way to preserve the experience. I think the art and physics would need to be scaled to roughly 80% to really do that. Maybe port the Ancient-made 8-bit levels in the form of 96x96 chunks representing 2x2 blocks (1.5x scale both axes)? Aspect levels could be left as-is. Under this, the Genesis levels would best be ported by turning the 128x128 chunks to 96x128. Not perfect, but 75% is relatively close to 80%. Better than 100% scale since it'd still be closer to the MD game (240 out of 256 columns is closer in end-user experience than 320 out of 256). Here's what I'd imagine Sonic to look like in such a version: Also, I think it'd be a great opportunity to call it "Super Sonic the Hedgehog" given that it was both the original title and that it'd be a SNES game in keeping with the tradition of appending "super" to the start of it.
We could also go with terrain-based names. There's Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country and Yoshi's Island, so maybe Sonic Land or something.
Okay I'm very interested in this project... Is this all your friend has completed so far? And are they still working on this project? Also does anyone here have a bit of knowledge when it comes to the SNES to make this become a reality someday? :D I'd really love to see that... And if we're talking about names, I really love the name Super Sonic the Hedgehog but then people might expect Super Sonic to show up when it should just be a standard Sonic 1 port. xP
There's a bootleg version of Mega Man X3 for the Genesis floating around - Perhaps this could be used as a base for such a project?
Not all people have a six-button pad, though. But most people will likely be playing such a thing with an emulator, and most emulators have six-button support. @Strife: I see what you mean.
Now that I've been able to stop and think about it, all I can say is... to anyone who tries this... have fun porting that part of GHZ Act 3 where you have the swinging platform AND the spiked log helix together. Standing on that swing is guaranteed slowdown when the log is in view... and lost rings... don't even think about that...
