I'm curious as up until recently Wikipedia listed an entirely different release date for the games versus Sonic Retro of NA: May 15, 1997, EU: December 15, 1997. Retro, Giant Bomb, and Mobygames lists both release dates as March 20th 1997, which is odd as it's a Thursday. if I recall correctly games were only released back then on Tuesdays in the US, and Fridays in Europe. I tried googling around for any press releases on the game but couldn't find anything. I can confirm that the JP release date on the Retro wiki is correct as the old Sega JP site shows it. The earliest that it shows up on Sega of America's old website was on March 10th, where it also had a demo, so a release date around that time may hold some weight, but it just seems weird to me that this release date is hidden away. The news page also never mentions Sonic & Knuckles Collection, but I'm going to guess that it was a little less important than Edutainment and Sega Rally on PC.
Bumping this thread. I'm generally curious if anyone else has any more information now that the forums are a lot more active after the software change, and S3&K is the topic of discussion right now.
Right next to the US release date (also the price) on the Sonic & Knuckles Collection page is a reference that leads to a US press release on Sega Retro: Press release: 1997-03-18: Sega Entertainment brings three enhanced Sonic classics to the PC for the price of one
My bad. I didn't realize that the Wiki page had been updated by Black Squirrel with the date, price and a press release a mere week after I posted this thread. Should have checked that before I bumped it. Still, neat to discover that it did actually launch on a different date to what was originally listed.
FWIW, here's the "trailer" for the PC port, which would've been seen at E3 1997 in mid-June that year. Is the arrangements in that video a little different or just the midi tech at the time?
Those sound like some broken Geocities MIDIs in that trailer. I really hope that was just a fault with the hardware. Then again, looking at that Nickelodeon-esque text makes me think maybe quality control wasn't on point for that vid... Also damn, trying to sell it as 3 Sonic Games in 1? I mean, I know they're different selections on the Mega Collection and all but still, don't be tricking people, SEGA!
Nah, must be the midi driver from those old Windows OSs on some old hardware. It even sounds quite similar when I tried to play it on an emulated Win98.
Sounds like a genuine SoundBlaster 16 playing the FM MIDI set. It's how those MIDIs (FM set) are supposed to sound.
Interestingly, in the US it seems SEGA was really pushing this narrative of 3-games-in-1 as seen with the US PC box: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:SKC_PC_US_Box_Back_Expert.jpg But the European box, the box I am most familar with, they actually say it's 2 games, not 3: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:SKC_PC_EU_Box_Back.jpg (Also, 120 levels? Did they fuck up and put a 0 after 12? And that typo got translated out into every language. Wow. These boxes are great. You know, seeing the marketing and the boxes for the PC release it really wouldn't surprise me a bit they used a goddamn prototype as the basis of this game and that's how those prototype tracks ended up in the PC release.)
The 108+ other levels are Blue Sphere. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Could be, that's what happened with the Final Fantasy 7 PC port. The porting team was given a bunch of prototype builds and had to get it back up to par with the PS1 version manually.
The music sounds like the sound blaster sound driver. I got to admit, I actually like the way it sounds. there's like a warm feeling to it.
They certainly had the source code for Sonic 3 & Knuckles as well as Sonic 3 Alone (there are two entire copies of the code for the S3 title screen, one from S3A and one from S3K), but no, the code is too close to the MD version for it to be based on a prototype, IMO. It's possible that they were given the prototype music data by mistake, or maybe on purpose due to legal issues, or they took the prototype music because the final music relied too heavily on samples that MIDI couldn't replicate.
This may have some merit, on the PC SEGA Smash Pack released a couple of years after the S&K Collection, a prototype version of Revenge of Shinobi was included by mistake. Dev: I need a copy of Sonic 3 to do the music for the PC version 2nd day on the job intern: Um...*searches desk, finds cartridge labelled "Sonic 3 P"*...uhh...yeah there you go.
This reminds me, I was meant to bring this up a while back since a few YT videos have mentioned this as well. Going off on a side note - I never agreed with the "They used only the different music because samples" idea, since those tracks have sounded perfectly fine (okay, rephrase: Useable, muchlike the other S3KC MIDI arrangements) when fans have replicated them in MIDI form. Especially ones like Ice Cap Zone, which is a lot more melodic. Example Here - (again, not saying "This is good", more "This is about as servicable as the rest of the S3KC MIDI arrangements" ) - any shortcomings in the MIDI aren't down to lack of samples, anyway. Carnival Night would have definiely still been Carnival Night without the glass breaking SFX, so to completely change that one leads me to believe it's 99% an MJ Team rights issue. tl;dr: I feel samples are a red herring and most of the tracks can still work fine without them.
Time for some dumb math: Sonic 3 has six zones, two acts each. Seven special stages, one bonus stage, and five 2-player levels. Gets you 25. Sonic & Knuckles has eight zones, three of those are only single acts. Seven more special stages, two new bonus stages. Gets you 22. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is all of that, so 47. 47 + 25 + 22 = 94. Not quite there yet. But! If you consider Knuckles as a separate campaign, then you could add 22 more. 116. Four away from that 120 number. Guess you could get there any random way. The 8th special stage in Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles? Playing as Tails counting as its own number of levels? Saying Doomsday Zone is different if you're playing as Super Sonic instead of Hyper Sonic? Regardless, I don't think it's a typo. It's just spicy ad copy. It reminds me of those adds that would say Sonic CD that had "over sixty levels," because of the time travel.