Quick question for UK Retro folks - looking through the wiki, it doesn't appear we have scans of this Sonic 3: Exclusive Story of the Year magazine supplement, possibly the only in-depth English-language preview of Sonic 3 prior to its release. Frustratingly I actually had a copy of this back in the day - my brother and I would pore over it in anticipation of the new game's release. However, it's long gone now, and I can't even remember which magazine it came with either (the formatting etc. suggest it's from the same team which made SEGA Magazine, however it's unclear whether it accompanied that magazine or was bundled in with another magazine before the main one launched. Issue #1 of SEGA Magazine would have been on shelves December 1993, so it could possibly have come with their inaugural issue...?). There's a good likelihood that this could be the original reason the November '93 prototype of Sonic 3 was sent out into the wild - the screenshots (and descriptions of stuff not seen in screenshots) all seem to match up with our prototype build, and the labels on the EEPROM chips state they originate from SEGA UK. Who knows why it wasn't returned after this, but despite the warnings on the chips it doesn't seem to have affected SEGA Magazine's access to preview materials for future issues, haha...! Does anyone in the UK still have a copy of this, and if so, are you willing/able to make proper scans for the wiki? It'd be good to have this piece of history properly preserved.
I could have sworn we had a copy of that. And yes it is our build (or as near as makes no difference) - there were loads of comparisons at the time. I am genuinely surprised we don't have a copy floating around. Did I dream it? EDIT: https://segaretro.org/File:SegaMagazin_DE_03_Suppliment.pdf oh it was the German translation. doh.
Ah, should have thought to check SEGA Retro as well as Sonic Retro - since it's specifically Sonic-related I figured it'd be on both if it was uploaded. Good to see it's preserved in some form at least, though if anyone does have the English-language version it'd still be great to get proper high-quality scans of that preserved too! So the question in my first post still stands I guess. Any UK folks have a copy of this to hand? (Also, love that they straight-up forgot to translate the subheading "The Return of Tails" in the German version - guess it got missed due to the slew of untranslated Zone name headings beforehand...!)
I believe I had this many years ago - possibly factors into why I love the Sonic 2 sprite much more in Sonic 3 than the final thing. Also, unless I'm mistaken, this was a cross-promotion issue with Mega Monster Munch and you could win like a years supply. Maybe even a pack came with it. Might be another issue (or Mean Machines Sega) but what a memory sparked.
I have this magazine, but it is in storage. I also don’t have a scanner. And the magazine is considerably bigger than A4. To answer questions: Yes, it was a supplement with issue 1 of the Official Sega Magazine, which was a publication from the same publisher/team as Mean Machines Sega. It’s exactly the same as the German version: Only 5 pages of the supplement focus on Sonic 3. The rest is a history of past Sonic games. The monster munch promotion was separate and nothing to do with this. I think that was part of Mean Machines and occurred around the time of S&K, but I could be wrong. Official Sega Magazine was licensed by Sega, which is why they got early access to items. It was published by Emap and ran for around 23 issues, was then renamed Sega Saturn Magazine and lasted for a long time. It was discontinued shortly after when Sonic Adventure was first revealed. Later, at the UK launch of the Dreamcast, Dennis Publishing released the official Dreamcast magazine, which was cancelled around the release of SA2.
GagaMan did scan some of it after I brought the subject up years ago. https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/the-supreme-topic-of-other-knowledge.8815/page-181
Ah, sounds like it'll be an awkward one to scan if anybody else with access to a scanner does have a copy, then. I did remember it being somewhat larger than A4 size, but thought I might have been misremembering due to being quite young at the time it was published. Glad to know my memory wasn't cheating me at least, haha! Thanks also for clarifying re: where it originated from. = )
