I wish I could take a baseball bat to SoJ. They need to get off their damn Japanese high horses unless they seriously want a repeat of the company crashing again.
Someone make an easily spammable Japanese message we can tweet/email en masse to SOJ's accounts. Also someone give us all plastic surgery and falsified records so we can all be Japanese so they'll actually feel like listening to us.
What's the issue with SOJ again? Is it that they don't like foreigners working on their creative works?
That seems to be what it boils down to. They seem to have some sort of disdain for their non-Japanese branches. Since pretty much the beginning the western territories have had to deal with crap from SoJ since they seem focused on their Japanese market despite it always (Saturn aside) being their least successful market by a huge margin. Ironic considering it started out as an American company.
In the same way that SoA got sonic team to changes Miles' name to "Tails", we need a heatwarming kawaii story that brings SoJ to tears, and then they'll let StealthTax do it
I thought the reason Sonic 3 and Knuckles hasn't been ported often is because SEGA frequently had issues with emulating the game due to the sheer size. That and they could also probably want to make you pay 5 dollars for Sonic 3 and then Sonic and Knuckles, so they get 10 dollars and then you can download Sonic 3 and Knuckles DLC for 5 more dollars or something. I wouldn't be surprised, but I'm guessing it's either emulation difficulties or something with the music, which I don't know, the last known public release of Sonic 3 and Knuckles as far as I remember was the DS port on the modified version of Jenesis that SEGA decided to sell on the DS. Unless I missed a re-release. I don't know, I know that SEGA of Japan is all up on their high horse, but a lot of Japanese companies are like that, though it would be nice for SEGA to let this be approved, SoJ is a weird entity. I realize this would require a lot of funding just because it's a large game, but that wouldn't be much different from the original release, would it? Ultimately, SEGA probably knows that this just isn't a feasible thing to fund, unless they decided to pull a Sonic 3 and Knuckles and allow them to release the first half of the game and then a second half later if the funding can be met from "Sonic 3" although the only issue I could think of (besides the fact that it would appear that the Retro Engine version is being made with a single game in mind that has all the content, as "Sonic 3 complete") It would depend on how much it would feasibly cost, as this particular slice did manage to do a lot of the game content, however, recreating effects for each stage would be very time consuming. I know pretty much everyone here wants this to happen, but I don't think it's quite as feasible as it could be at this point. Unless SEGA resorted to crowd funding... which I doubt would ever happen, this would still require a few years at best to be completed, Sonic 3 and Knuckles is a huge game and honestly, if each stage takes a few months to do, about, due to the coding tricks done in the originals and the faithfulness to the originals. I can see this easily taking upwards of 2 years to complete if not longer depending on who would be working on it and what SEGA approves of to be added in. (Unless I read the post incorrectly, I imagine less time could be used, though seeing how Angel Island Zone is done and all of the special stages and bonus stages have been accounted for, I think that they did most of the ground work for free, so perhaps it could be done in under two years) Steatlh's blog post really put in the perspective for me of how massive of a game Sonic 3 and Knuckles truly is, and I wish both of them the best of luck and hope SEGA allows it, I'd pay 10 dollars for a complete Sonic 3 experience, hell I'd buy all of the remade games again on Steam as well. Hope my post isn't woefully ignorant or anything.
What if tax/stealth did this bullshit over-engineered emulation of the genesis' sound driver that was able to play the music from a stripped down version of the Sonic 3 ROM so its technically playing back emulated data as audio, even if the entire game itself is reprogrammed :specialed: Legal issues over the music astound me. Its so bizarre how these are even still in play 20 years after the fact; what gain is there over holding these rights? Honestly. The songs are almost old enough to drink. And I'm still surprised how SEGA managed to get rights to re-release SCD as a remake with BOTH soundtracks fully usable yet cant procure the rights to some songs of one of their most critically acclaimed titles. Ever. Just... my brain X(
They managed to overcome Jet Set Radio licensing issues as well (minus the mysteriously absent Yappie Feet) for the most complete soundtrack to date. Maybe Jackson Estate put their foot down.
Well, what gets me is more the radio silence on the game. Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Sonic CD all got re-releases and soundtrack releases for their 20th Anniversaries, but I haven't seen a single word about what's essentially the pinnacle of the classic series. Now, if I missed SoA mentioning something, then I apologize, but even then... there's a serious lack of care for the title compared to the rest. And if SoJ is upset, then maybe it's time we as a community, not just Retro but all the major Sonic sites light the fire under their asses. I'm not saying this bolstered by Tax or Stealth, but more as a fan of Sonic 3 and it basically being ignored officially. I'm with Skyler in betting that music licensing is behind this and it seems there's no effort to try and resolve it. I'm even so certain it goes beyond just the Michael Jackson estate theory and that other musicians on the game who aren't with the company anymore are holding things up. Or SoJ is exhibiting its patented laziness since they're a bunch of oafs.
I'm all for causing a ruckus, but is there actually anything we as fans can do that will actually get their attention to the point of action? Even when Ruby was around, the furthest his influence could go was SoA while SoJ continued on their merry way. Petitions are crap and never work anyway, but I agree with whoever mentioned it previously, if there's a way to somehow get an easily copy/pastable email and an email address that actually goes to someone who could actually pass the message on in SoJ, I'll jump on in a heartbeat.
It would be an idea for prominent figures in the Sonic community to do videos around the same time to bring awareness to a single petition. The Geek Critique and Somecallmejohnny are a couple of people I can think of off the top of my head that would do well to signal boost it if they're up for it. A dedicated sticky thread in Retro should also help bring more awareness to it. This ain't true, Dark Souls came to the PC because of a petition.
That's the only hang up, even if there was a mass mobilization, we'd likely be ignored purely because we're not Japanese. Look at the Shenmue, PSO, and Yakuza fanbases for prime examples with more at stake than just a mobile or digital remaster of Sonic 3. Something that our own little community has done masterfully with the likes of Sonic 3 Complete anyway. Those guys have been hounding SoA AND SoJ to little effect. I firmly believe SoA isn't the one to target here since they are a slave satellite to the Japanese branch, and those guys have way too much Japanese pride rammed up their asses to even think of listening to western devs. There are a few stories I could tell that draw more light on this, but it just boils down to Japanese company likes Japanese things, doesn't much care for Western interests. This is why SoJ is up to its own business developing a Sonic game while Sonic Boom is still trying to come together and HOPEFULLY give the Western branches a little more pull. I sincerely doubt it will. Sonic Boom taking off like Skylanders seems like a stretch.
Gene you're taking too much of a defeatist attitude here, we have nothing to lose from trying. If being a westerner is a hurdle then let's get the Japanese involved. There are bound to be at least some Japanese speakers and readers in the western forums and we can ask them to spread awareness to these Japanese Sonic fan sites. We could ask them to write a Kanji section in the petition so the Japanese know what they are signing and we can write some other languages in it to try and get more people to sign it.
Have we had actual confirmation that SOJ is the issue? I see lots of talk about them being the problem, but I've never seen a source. I know back in the 16-bit days they had a bitterly rivalry with SoA, but the company has changed significantly since then. For example, in the past few years they've started releasing western developed titles in Japan even though games such as Sonic Chronicles sold poorly over there. It doesn't make much sense either: If SOJ didn't like Taxman and Stealth for being Westerners, then why did they let them release Sonic CD, 1 & 2? (Or why let a western company work on Sonic Boom or the Sonic movie for that matter? Sonic X did fairly well in the West, so the Japanese know how to make content that appeal to foreign markets)
Little Shinji couldnt play Sonikku on his cell phone so he begged otoosan really hard to do something. Otoosan saw the Sonic CD demo and being on the corporate board of Sega of Japan, gave it a go. Sometime later that month, ojiichan Irimajiri returned from his trip and when he learned of this, he was super mad. He was about to disown his own son and strip him of his inheritance and company position, when it came to light that the request came from his favorite grandson Shinji. Now, we couldnt be the bad guys in the face of the favorite grandson, can we? So he took 2 doses of his blood pressure medication, and swallowed his pride for the time. What was done was done. Then a year later an issue of renewing the contract with the gaijins, for re-releasing a game made by a group of members called STI. Irimajiri remembered how he was shamed more than a decade and a half by the same fucking gaijins. Imagine that- they made him flew from Japan to America only to show him a 4 frames per second slideshow. Oh the insolence! This project was not meant to see the light of day.
^ Yeah, but is there a source for any of this? Without a source, it just sounds like someone got a bit too excited after reading Console Wars. From a business point of view, Sega did take a bit of a gamble by letting Taxman work on Sonic CD. While I have the upmost respect for Taxman, looking at his website, it seems Sonic CD was the first major franchise he worked on. Generally, companies are quite inflexible in their way of doing things and normally insist that people prove themselves on other franchises first before letting them work on their important IP. I'm not trying to knock Taxman in the slightest, and clearly the fact the he was able to work on Sonic shows how awesome he is. So after Sonic CD in 2011, they let him and Stealth work on Sonic 1 & 2 in 2013. But when it comes to Sonic 3, they suddenly decide to say no the Westerners, but then give their Western arm full control of the franchise in the form of Sonic Boom with outside 3rd parties directing the project. They then get their key Japanese developer Takashi Iizuka to public indorse the Western efforts, are then impressed by Sonic Boom to the degree that they decide to release in the home market after saying it would never come to Japan and then top it all off by also hiring a western script writer to make the Sonic movie. It doesn't really add up…
This two-faced behavior of Sega of Japan not supporting one thing but supporting something similar is nothing new.
