[big smile]

In that Pix'n Love Sonic history book, Iizuka explained that Sonic 3 had to be released in February because of the McDonalds deal.

[Flygon]

Mind if I ask, what McDonalds deal? I'm not too privy on the history of that.

[Skyler]

Flygon, on 05 August 2014 - 02:36 AM, said:

Mind if I ask, what McDonalds deal? I'm not too privy on the history of that.

Happy Meals had Sonic 3-themed toys around late-93/early-94.

This post has been edited by Skyler: 05 August 2014 - 04:23 AM

[Tiddles]

Ah, did that start in late '93? That could be an easy answer - they planned the Happy Meal campaign expecting a Christmas release, but with that not having happened, it still made sense (ish) to release the game soon after to tie in?

Always found it mildly interesting that some of the early promo stuff - I think from the Happy Meal toy promotion - has the correct shape of the Sonic 3 logo, but using a Sonic 2-style colour scheme (blue with orange or yellow borders rather than yellow with blue borders), so I wonder if there was a late change there. That poor logo does seem to get messed up even still - Jam had the colours wrong too as I recall, and possibly Sonic Classic Collection.

[Ashura96]

From what I recall I think the toys came out in the US the same time as the game did.

[XCubed]

Tiddles, on 05 August 2014 - 05:39 AM, said:

Ah, did that start in late '93? That could be an easy answer - they planned the Happy Meal campaign expecting a Christmas release, but with that not having happened, it still made sense (ish) to release the game soon after to tie in?

Always found it mildly interesting that some of the early promo stuff - I think from the Happy Meal toy promotion - has the correct shape of the Sonic 3 logo, but using a Sonic 2-style colour scheme (blue with orange or yellow borders rather than yellow with blue borders), so I wonder if there was a late change there. That poor logo does seem to get messed up even still - Jam had the colours wrong too as I recall, and possibly Sonic Classic Collection.

Found it!



& the fixed logo:

This post has been edited by XCubed: 05 August 2014 - 09:00 PM

[Sodaholic]

Ah, so that's why there was such a severe delay. How stupid.

Also: I think I might like the S2 style logo slightly better than the finalized one.

[big smile]

Also, another issue with Sonic 3 was that it was supposed to be a 3D-like game built using the Sega Virtua Processor (as explained in the Sonic Jam Strategy guide). I imagine that switching from 3D to 2D must have delayed the project.

[Sodaholic]

I don't actually know for sure, but I doubt that any serious work had been started on a 3D version. I imagine that it would've been a proof of concept build at most, but more likely a preproduction idea that never saw any light of day.

Spinball was started because Sonic 3 "hit a snag in production". I wonder if it actually was related to a scrapped attempt at 3D, issues with Michael Jackson, or maybe something far more mundane.

[Uberham]

big smile, on 06 August 2014 - 02:42 AM, said:

Also, another issue with Sonic 3 was that it was supposed to be a 3D-like game built using the Sega Virtua Processor (as explained in the Sonic Jam Strategy guide). I imagine that switching from 3D to 2D must have delayed the project.

Probably explains the "blue balls" debug object.

[big smile]

Uberham, on 06 August 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:

Probably explains the "blue balls" debug object.

Very unlikely. All the 3D stuff was going to be done with SVP chip.

[E-122-Psi]

Sodaholic, on 05 August 2014 - 11:51 PM, said:

Also: I think I might like the S2 style logo slightly better than the finalized one.

It was the finalize one, but US only. Only Europe got the strange box art with the new logo (strange given we often get more Japan-loyal art, eg. Sonic 1 and Chaos).

[Tiddles]

Yeah, the aberrant EU logo is a whole other story; I'd love to know how that came about, given that it seems to be the only use of that style and the only time Europe diverged that far from the standard typography etc., and that we'd fallen back into line as soon as Sonic & Knuckles. Totally unique boxart too, it seems, as well as the hidden "PART ONE" text in the EU font.

I also found it interesting that Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles both canonise the US-style logos in-game, in contrast to previous games, and in contrast to generally thinking of Japan as the primary territory for story and presentation. Pretty irrelevant, but interesting.

[Dark Sonic]

Tiddles, on 08 August 2014 - 11:11 AM, said:

I also found it interesting that Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles both canonise the US-style logos in-game, in contrast to previous games, and in contrast to generally thinking of Japan as the primary territory for story and presentation. Pretty irrelevant, but interesting.

Which is funny too, as I'm pretty sure up until Sonic 4 we never saw that logo treatment again. The Japanese one still kind of existed for a bit longer.

Ya that blue on yellow looks a lot better than the yellow variant. I have to wonder why they chose yellow for Sonic's title treatment throughout the years. Ever since Sonic 06 everything has been yellow.

[Xilla]

I remember all those 3D rumours, infact I remember Sega Power magazine did a special feature in Summer '93 where they asked various developers what they would do if they were given the task of creating Sonic 3 (as at this point, it wasn't even known if the game was even being planned, at least in the UK press)

Suggestions included Robotnik being replaced by Dr Beatnik (whose second hand smoke would kill Sonic IIRC), and a 3D special stage where you played as Robotnik and had to run over Sonic (There was a great mockup of this in the feature)!

This post has been edited by Xilla: 10 August 2014 - 12:08 AM