Mega Collection Oddities

I have recently acquired Sonic Mega Collection, for the Gamecube. Upon loading Sonic 3D, I realized that although the menu displayed "Sonic 3D Flickies? Island", the title screen had a different opinion: "Sonic 3D Blast". Now, I?ll assume that you know about the localized titles for Sonic 3D. (In the US the subtitle was "Blast" while in Europe and Japan it was "Flickies? Island".) Do keep in mind that I am in Europe, and the game is straight from the GB. (According to that information, the title should be "Flickies? Island".) I was surprised, because although I knew that the Japanese version had both menu and title texts saying "Blast", in contrary of what would be expected, I heard no such thing as the different references in the European version. But I decided to let it slide as an honest mistake by Sega. I couldn?t be "wronger".

A few days after acquiring the Mega Collection, I decided to try the old PAL50 mode for a laugh. Every thing went slower, brighter and damn more "flickerier". But I thought "what the hay" and went and tried S&K. To my surprise, instead of a "60 fps trying to run on 50 fps" frame skip, the emulator actually clocked down to the normal European Mega Drive speed. Moonjump everywhere. Then, just to make sure if what I was seeing was correct, I opened up Sonic 1. I then inputted the US code (since v00 would be the only to run in an European system) - Up, Z, down, Z, left, Z, right, Z. Nothing. I inputted it again. Nada. Zilch. I then inputted the JP2 code - Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, up, down, left, right. (Yes, only 6 ?Z?s suffice.) Again, nothing. I inputted both codes once more, just to make sure. Nope. Well, I launched Sonic 1 anyway. As soon as the Title Screen appeared, I started listening: Pow? pow? pow? dun? de, duh? duh, de? doh? and so on the music played - really slow. And Green Hill Zone had no moving clouds. Now, a normal homo-sapiens would stop and say that the region had changed to Europe(PAL). But not me - I launched Sonic 3D just to see "Flickies? Island" on the Title Screen.


Text for the lazy:

While under PAL60, the European Mega Collection Region is set to U.S.A.(NTSC) and is the same as the US one, except for the "Sonic 3D Flickies? Island" button. Under PAL50, it changes the region to Europe(PAL) and therefore all games behave like they would on an European Mega Drive.

So, Sonic Mega Collection (at least the European version) can be set to both U.S.A.(NTSC) and Europe(PAL). But no Japan. Ah well.


And this marks my first original topic on S2B. Hurray for me