The Sonic 3, 20th Anniversary & Knuckles Thread

At this stage, if you guys can find someone with fluency in Japanese or one of our few Japanese lurkers wants to step up, that'd be the best starting point. Yeah, I was defeatist, but with precedent behind my thoughts. At the very least, I'd like an official statement on why the game is being ignored. Something changed that's causing problems. Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles launched on Wii VC, with the S&K one taking a little longer to release. It can also be purchased on XBLA and Steam, but these are Backbone ports in an emulator shell.

Then there's, curiously, how all the Sonic 3 music in Generations is in MIDI format (along with several other songs) but Sonic 1 and 2 are the remastered versions from Nakamura. And this is taking into account that Sky Sanctuary Classic and Mushroom Hill Classic sample the original Genesis tracks (let alone that both Sonic 3 stages were culled from Sonic and Knuckles.)

 

I love that stationary. Anyone care to write up a draft that basically says that we want this game remade, and if it can't could you at least give us a reason? Then of course it'll need translation but yea.

 

Dear Sega Networks,

Please release Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on mobile.
We've already had remastered versions of Sonic CD, Sonic 1 & Sonic 2 produced by the American Developers Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley.
These two developers have produced a prototype version of a remastered Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for mobile platforms and we would dearly love for it to be finished and released.

Regards,
{Inset your name here}.


I've got some more ideas about this campaign that I am working on, so I will post them shortly.

 

There's always Glitterberri over at #tcrf if he's willing to lend a hand.

I'm all for contacting SoJ directly since, while SoA is, and has always been amazingly responsive (I know you guys follow these forums and will probably see this! <3 ya!) SoJ is the ultimate decision maker. Whatever the problem here is, it clearly goes all the way to the top. As for the logistics of this, this can't simply be a Retro effort. We can certainly organize it - and I have no doubt we're probably the best community out of the bunch to do so - but we'll need the backing of the entire international sonic community and probably the gaming community at large. This should be more like a campaign and not just a one-off petition. We'd need to be sure we're as inclusive as possible, marketing this in such a way that it it can draw in support from as many people as possible "Classic game!" "Gaming history reborn!" that sort of thing. And also we totally need to be sure to get Japanese fan support behind this, drafting not only a Japanese petition, but a page to garner support from Japanese fans as well. I know it sounds like I'm going overboard, but SoJ is going to be a tough nut to crack. If we just send a letter as Sonic Retro, even in understandable in Japanese, we'll just be a wave on a cliff face of rocks. We gotta do this right.

 

Ideally it would be better if a Japanese Sonic fan were to help out here with writing up and promoting this but if no one knows anyone or no one comes forward then I might be able to ask someone I used to talk to on the FL Studio forums who is Japanese. It's a real long shot as I haven't been there for the best part of six years and I don't think he will even remember me but I'll give him a buzz if we're out of options.

 

How popular was the original Sonic trilogy in Japan? Didn't they all play Famicoms and PC Engines?

 

YEah, it was the US and Europe that were the SEGA fans, the UK massively so. Today you still have more people who can recognise Sonic over Mario in Britain. Japan were never big fans of SEGA in general.

 

It not the music either, especially when the musics were in tact in basically all of collections (with the exception of the S3K collection for PC with replacement music). It most likely that for nostalgia, it's possible that they either:

1. sell three games separately
2. sell Sonic 3, with Sonic and Knuckles as a DLC
3. Sell Sonic 3, with the Knuckles portion as an unlockable content

That, and Sonic was never popular in Japan as he is in western nations. In fact, I'm willing to bet that Sega didn't want to hire Stealth and Taxman for future ports of Sonic's classic games to mobile devices.

 

While I don't quite agree with the reasoning, this does bring up a good point...

Has Sonic 3 & Knuckles ever been released on a format such that you cannot play Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles separately? Every compilation that has S3K also has S3 and S&K separately, and the only way you can play S3K on XBL is by purchasing and playing S&K while having S3 downloaded too.

 

So their method of double-dipping on the consumer remains to this day, eh? I wonder if Sega will ever sell them merged only, would pretty much be a tacit admission of double-dipping all those years prior. Even if it's already obvious that the game was split, they still "officially" get the benefit of the doubt. I wonder if it'd even matter that much to the conscience of their PR department if they sold the merged game for higher than normal.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't really care if Sega goes through with this or not. Taxman and Stealth are both wickedly talented and I'd love to see a Retro engine version but frankly, a remake could not be as good as Sonic 3 Complete in my eyes since the work in it (though much being independently reproduce able) could not be legally brought in without a whole lot of legal costs. While I have no doubt that the game would get polish, I imagine SOJ would want to stay very conservative in design as well as not wanting too much time/money spent of the project so in the end it would still likely feel more "vanilla" than S3C. Of course, there's the issue of music too. There's actually many obstacles, limitations and disadvantages to being an official version because unendorsed fan-works can in practice sort of handwave legal tanglewebs aside as long as they don't get a C&D (and the more they refrain from distributing the raw material itself the better).

What I'd honestly like to see would be something like E02 but with support for true-color graphics (with individually palleted assets) and widescreen. It could be licensed under the GPL engine and extract and convert data from ROMs (assuming you legally own those ROMs) to be run from archives. Think of it like Doom 64 EX but for Sonic.

 

The Steam release is an inseparable Sonic 3 & Knuckles (although I imagine you can glitch into S&K via Mushroom Hill as usual).

According to Steam, that was released early in 2011. Has S3&K or either of the constituent games been released anywhere since then?

I ask because, going on previous posts, Cirocco told Dissident93 in February 2012 that he believed a lawsuit was "going on or about to go on", so if there's been silence on these games since then, it could be related, and could also explain things like Sonic 3's risible showing in Generations and the lack of even emulated mobile versions - even if there isn't anything legally "happening", legal threats may have put Sega off having anything to do with S3&K.

It's just an armchair theory of course - just trying to reconcile the things we've heard with the things that are(n't) happening.

 

Oh god. ...Do you own it?

Then again, presence of the apparently original MIDI tracks versus the Mega Drive recordings for the other two games. I guess they *might* be from S&KC, but they sound a bit too good for that, particularly Marble Garden and Death Egg, IMO. But then again, they also conveniently step over the controversial songs! But, then again, the Advance tracks are obviously being rendered with the exact same synth, so they must have some common access to these old resources...

My head is spinning.

 

They use to have all the games, including Sonic Generations, the 2 Adventure HD titles and the Sonic 4 duology, on Steam for £20. So I'd imagine quite a few people own it.

 

It cost less than a bag of sweets, so I thought I might as well offset the mass piracy I'm contributing to a little. Fired it up to see how it looked, shrugged, closed it, which means it has more playtime than at least 80% of my Steam library. Also, it helped me answer a question, and it didn't give me diabetes, so all in all, a worthwhile purchase.

 

I thought about getting it, but I figured it's just the Backbone version which I already own on Xbox 360.

 

I got every sonic game on steam for about $30, because when I went to get Generations, there was a package which included Generations, the classic sonic games, the 2 HD adventure series, and a ton more sonic games I don't care about for the same price as one copy of Sonic Generations. Like Tiddles, it helps ease my conscience when I hack.

 

I'd be glad to do whatever I can to help! This is my favorite game of my entire life.

Guys, we should probably ask Taxman and Stealth for their advice -- they probably know how and where our efforts and energy would be best directed!

 

No. Somehow, I feel they may already be feeling some heat because of the release of that video and the reception its gotten from the Sonic sites. In that regard, it's better not to potentially throw more fire that way. We know who we have to appeal to (somehow.) It's only a matter if everyone that wants to see this happen can unite and lead an allied push on SoJ and either make them change their minds or act out of force to shut everyone up.

 

I think if the issue is cost, #2 is the best option. Do Sonic 3, only the first six levels, and Sonic/Tails. That would cut down on dev time and cost. If there's demand (and S3K is the best Sonic game ever, there will be demand), then they can continue on to the S&K levels and Knuckles himself.

And I don't think the music is the issue, since changing the necessary tracks allowed them to do S&K Collection no problem. I'd be disappointed, but I'd live with it.