That was a different situation. S3&K has been ported to almost every system under the sun. CD only had 3 releases: Original Sega CD, Windows 95/98 port, and Gems Collection. It was difficult to port, and when they saw Taxman's PoC, they realized he had saved him the work of doing it themselves. S3&K doesn't have those things going for it. Genesis/MD emulation is a walk in the park nowadays, 1/2/3 have saturated the market before, with the added misfortune of S3&K selling significantly less than the other two. Not saying any of these reasons are good reasons for Sega not to take the plunge, but they have a myriad of rationales they could employ as to why they won't. On the plus side, Taxman's work has provided the best iterations of 3 classic Sonic games, and has opened up doors for him to work on his own IP's and non-Sonic projects, which has me pretty pumped. I'd say that's a pretty good consolation at the end of the day.
I was hesitant to post this as the campaign has quite clearly ground to a halt now but I thought it was worth noting we finally surpassed 10K signatures. Not that it matters now in this campaign's twilight but it's still a remarkable achievement. Reading back over this thread I think Gene's theory is the most probable - that Sega failed to respond to this initiative (that did genuinely make some waves; we were featured on IGN amongst a plethora of other sites and Sega would have noticed) because they have their own plans for the classics for Sonic's 25th. There just has to be some kind of Mega Collection-style announcement planned or at least the games being re-released for current generation platforms for Sonic's anniversary via digital services. Sonic remains absent on the new platforms and Sega would likely be interested in remedying that. That would explain Sega's silence. If they already had plans in the pipeline why would they need to respond to us when a response is planned and forthcoming? This is all pure speculation of course but I think the classics are destined to hit digital services on the likes of the Xbox One and PS4 eventually. It's almost inevitable. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is extremely likely to be among them. Also what little we have heard about their anniversary plans is that classic Sonic is supposedly a focus. Re-releases of the classics would make sense with that ethos. At the very least at least we made it known to Sega that there's love and demand for this. Hopefully it at least fortified and assured whatever future plans they do have in store.
It would be much appreciated if we got a mega-collection for current-gen consoles which included all classic Sonic games for the 25th anniversary. Even if I have my doubts this could even happen with SEGA's obsession with mobile games and focusing more on PC gaming right now. I wouldn't be surprised if a collection didn't feature StealthTax's remasters, because, well.......SEGA make weird decisions. That said, as for a collection featuring Sonic 3&K (or the games separately)? Not bloody likely. I'd love to be the optimist, but I don't think SEGA give a shit about 3&K, and even if they do they've already had chance after chance to re-release it and haven't.
Jan 2016: Sega announce Sonic 25th Collection: All 4 Mega Drive games remastered with enhancements. Mar 2016: First screenshots released showing new features. Sonic & Knuckles battling Eggman together in Mushroom Hill. May 2016: Classification report from the Australian Film board reveals 2 hours of bonus footage. Jun 2016: The game is released on Sonic 25th Anniversary. It's just ROMs of the original games with a pixel blur filter to enhance the graphics. The 2 hour video is a slideshow of Archie comic covers. The new features (of Sonic & Knuckles battling together) are just screens for the menu and not actual features. ^ I hope that doesn't happen.
Lol Classic Collection was trash. Don't know how they even ended up with that bullshot of the MHZ boss. Another menu picture for S2K is incredibly blurry and low res compared to the others for absolutely no reason beyond laziness. And S3K is called "Knuckles in Sonic 3".
SEGA definitely does care about 3&K, they reference it quite allot on social media. I'm predicting a remaster or re-release either end of 2015 or 2016.
The closest they get to acknowledging Sonic 3 these days is with solely Sonic & Knuckles. If the lawsuit hasn't been settled by next year, I expect them to keep doing that outside of emulation.
Apologies for the mini bump. Just noticed the Sonic 3 remastered petition has been closed. It reached just over 11,700 signatures. I guess closure was inevitable. Just want to say thanks to all the effort from the guys who worked on the petition. Who knows, maybe SEGA will release Sonic 3&K again some day. On another note; I replayed Sonic 3&K recently due to hedgehog day (Sonic 3's 22nd anniversary) and I still adore it. Such a fun game.
