Sonic Spinball now available for iPhone

I remember reading in the Nintendo Official Magazine about Chaotix or on the internet somewhere, as I was looking forward to unlocking Chaotix when I first got GEMS and was pissed off after I found out that the game wasn't included at all.

 

That and the fact there's a ton of artwork for Chaotix in the gallery would suggest it was meant to be included, too.

 

Unlikely - Sega own the games, Apple distributes games through its store and probably gets a share of the profit somewhere down the line (and IIRC the likes of Data East's Road Avenger was ported to the iPhone... though I'm not sure if that was the Mega CD version)

The reasons for not porting Mega CD, 32X or even Saturn games is fairly simple - Sega for whatever reason don't wish to put the money towards emulation projects. They have a Mega Drive emulator, and they have a collection of ROMs. To bring Sonic Spinball to the iPhone costs very little at all. You just combine the two and write a bit of code so that the iPhone understands it.

Sega have not emulated the Mega CD before, so they'd have to invest money and resources into getting it done. Once emulation is complete, they'd use this technology to port... Sonic CD. And then they'd desperately sift through the rest of their library for something worth selling, and probably find nothing. Same with the 32X. The 32X has a horrible software library and I'm struggling to think of another game that could sell. Many good 32X games have superior ports on other consoles or arcade systems.

Emulating two add-ons for two games is not cost effective. Emulating a Mega Drive for potentially hundreds of games, is.

Newer games tend to be written in C or C++, so porting those games over isn't much of a task (hence that Dreamcast collection, or PC ports). Older systems require knowledge in specific assembly languages or whatever. It's not as simple.

 

32X had Virtua Fighter.

 

With the superior version being on Model 1 arcade hardware.

 

Knuckles Chaotix ended up on Gametap, but that's the only instance I can think of where it got an official re-release.

 

Now how did they get that to work?

 

Kolibri was a cute little game that I think would appeal to the iPod fanbase.
But point taken. Why invest the time in a risk when you can just crank out Mega Drive games on the ole reliable Mega Drive emulator?

 

Sonic CD? Knuckles Chaotix? Fat chance

I'm still waiting for my Sonic 2 GG remake :P

What? Add a few shades of colors, a high quality soundtrack... this is starting to give me ideas...

 

I have it on my iPod and it's OK. I bought it mainly because I wanted to play it and I loved the game when it first came out.