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I was always on the "Sonic 2 is better than 3K" side, but Sonic 3 AIR just clicked for me. I don't know exactly why, since the game is essencialy the same, but I loved it.

 

If it was on Genesis, then it would just be Sonic 3 Complete.

 

It's because AIR is a PC port that it's so good. If it was a ROM hack it wouldn't have things like native mod support, widescreen, custom music support, etc.

 

I believe I've also seen a Switch homebrew port floating on the internet. Of course You'll need a softmod for that.

 

Hi! I made an account just so I could share this here! I tried tagging the Sonic Retro Twitter account on the story, but I wasn't getting any results;

.. So.. any of you remember (or know of..) the Zeebo console? It was Tec-Toy's attempt at their own gaming platform for once and it failed immensely; It was an all-digital system, using 3G technology for downloads, running on BREW operating system, really low hardware specs and had virtually no 3rd Party support; It was released only in Brazil and Mexico and had a lifespan of just 3 years before it got their store closed off (only way to get games for it) and all their official media being shut off.



What it's relevant here it's that SEGA initially promised some interesting titles for the platform, being them Sonic Adventure, Virtua Tennis 3 and Crazy Taxi; But the console launched and died and nothing of sorts materielized and SEGA's mention on the Zeebo site were eventually scrubbed; A really odd thing to happen considering the relation between these companies that still persist to this day. It wasn't even commented on the matter;



Well.. I tried to bring some awareness of the fact the games were promised at first place, Because it was already really poorly documented on the internet.. having some people speculating these were intented to be actually mobile games (as most of Zeebo's games), and that the Sonic game would be Sonic Jump instead; But then me and a collegue got to talk with ex-Tec-Toy testers that clariefied a couple of things;

Firstly.. yes, SEGA did intend to bring those games fully to the Zeebo, but ultimately wasn't possible due the lack of horsepower, of course; But lots of people involved were actually believing the console would have a hardware at least similar to the PS2 (which was the main competiting target here in Brazil, actually), so Dreamcast ports would be feasible; A Tec-Toy tester told us they were surprised when got the final hardware in hands, and from there it was apparent that the SEGA deal wouldn't go any further.. She also mentioned that never tested such games; However... another tester claimed privetely to our collegue that the testing did occur, but draw distance and speed on Sonic in particular were impraticle on the Zeebo hardware; --Meaning that was some effort of porting those games to the system, and the initial listing wasn't a mistake.

I've got more details here on the ResetEra thread I made translating our chat with one of the testers; As well the details on SEGA's envolvement with the Zeebo (Sonic was still used on Tec-Toy's marketing, despite never having any presence on the system);

So yeah.. I'm trying to bring more attention to this, since there's little to no documentation to Zeebo's cancelled ports; I've wanted to update wikis and such myself, but I guess it could always be disputed and further discussed; But I think it's worth bringing up!

 

If anyone out there says the boost formula is dead or something, imma send them here:



Look at what can be done with just a little effort and no 2D

 

Ya look at that an out of fucking nowhere STUNNING custom Generations snow level. I gotta download this at some point.

The formula def has value if applied right. Forces was just peak doing it wrong.

 

It looks nice aesthetically and the second route looks fun, but the first... way too much precision platforming.

 

This certainly looks like an interesting level and applaud the visual creativity of the designer, but this video is a bad showcase because it barely uses the boost. Also I feel like there were too many segments of "homing attack Egg Pawns, then climb the blocky steps to the next section".

 

Yeah, this level looks really fun (I mean it!), but I have my nitpicks. I don't mind homing attack chains as long as they act as a shortcut, but I don't like when the only way to get to the other side is this. It's like Eggman placed his robots to help Sonic or something. Also, I don't like when I must do an air boost so I don't die. It's another case of 'I don't mind as a shortcut, but I don't like if it's mandatory'.

But again, it's just me being a jerk, because the level actually looks good!

 

For a custom Generations level made from the ground up it's quite impressive. I've always thought the boost gameplay is the most versatile style of Sonic game and the level really highlights that imo.

 

I think it's a cool level but would probably be way more fun to play in a better engine. Those aforementioned "homing attack Egg Pawns, then climb the blocky steps to the next section" parts are just begging for a bounce attack to keep the momentum going.

 

We already have quite a bit of Japanese Sonic Adventure coverage, but some more has sprung up in the last couple of days:

https://archive.org/details/saturn-fan-1998-no.-17-9-11/page/70/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/saturn-fan-1998-no.-18-10-2/page/70/mode/2up

From Saturn Fan, coverage from the Tokyo International Forum unveiling. We'd be mirroring copies if the server wasn't screwy.

Don't know if there's anything super interesting left to discover, but you never know.

 

Did you know Sega Saturn emulation doesn't suck anymore? I didn't - last time I checked I had a slower internet connection, far less processing power and the emulation itself had all sorts of issues. But now I'm in a position where it's actually feasible.

To test where things were, I thought I'd check in on Sonic Jam, the compilation that nobody has documented properly. It was the first game I owned in my own right, and while not my first experience with Sonic, it's where I learnt how to finish the games back in the late 1990s. Since then I've become more acquainted with the Mega Drive originals, but now that I can run the two side-by-side, the differences are a lot more obvious.

Sonic Jam has an "easy mode" which changes loads but I had a little play with "normal mode", which is the "slightly updated" experience. Here's a few things I found - I'm not dedicating myself to this task since I have other plans (I haven't even cropped the screenshots) but it might spark some interest:


A recurring theme is helping the player stay above ground. Normal blocks off these pits in Green Hill Zone Act 2.


Chemical Plant Zone also makes an effort to keep the player alive.


The pit of doom... isn't a pit of doom.


Don't want to hang onto those bars in Wing Fortress? There's another route.


Safety for those disappearing platforms.


Rings in Death Egg Zone.


How does the Saturn handle the 256x224 special stages when the hardware doesn't support that resolution? It uh... stretches them to 320x224. Suppose I should have expected that.

Also:

- Sonic can't out-run the camera in Sonic 2. It just doesn't happen.

- It's well documented that the Sonic Jam handles sound differently, and not always for the better (for example, it doesn't technically speed up the current music when you get power sneakers, it just loads in a faster version of the track (and every time the tempo changes, the music restarts)), however I think I was misled as to what it's actually doing. I thought the sound effects were just sampled at a lower rate so were just a bit muffled in Sonic Jam (and some definitely seem to be), but no - others are fine, and others are just... different. Explosion noises were changed, as was the sound for collecting a blue sphere, and various other things.

- Differences in the way sounds are mixed also produces interesting results - when the bombs are dropping on Sonic and Tails in Angel Island Zone, you can always hear the airship's engines, whereas on the Mega Drive they share a channel with the bomb falling sound effect. I thought for years it was just wonky porting, but I'm starting to think some of this is closer to what was actually intended back in 1994.

- There are performance improvements

- Many actual bugs weren't fixed. For example, you can still run past the Hydrocity Zone Act 2 boss in vanilla Sonic 3.


For the curious, this is from Mednafen, which despite being a multi-platform emulator, has a really quite decent Saturn core.

Full speed Sonic World. What a time to be alive.

 

That's weird how they seemingly ported over Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, AND S3K, rather than just porting over S3K and cutting it down to size for the other two. That way the bug fixes would have been universal.

 

Are they totally separate? I would think they made it like Sonic & Knuckles Collection, where the base code is S3K, but they glued bits of S3 code back in for that mode.

 

While I'm here


Hold A+Start when entering Sonic World and you trigger a special mode, where the buildings are closed, you get a one-minute timer and the time attack "wheel" disappears.

Until a few minutes ago, the wiki read:

Collecting 100 rings in this time is incredibly difficult. Not many people can do it, so what is this "Secret Surprise"? Nobody knows!

Except they do know. Even we know, but nobody had joined the dots. The answer is... nothing happens. It's a myth, probably originating from the gaming press at the time (or Sega Flash Vol. 5 which has this mode enabled by default - I was trying before discovering the internet), because there is no goal to this mode. You can collect as many rings as you want - the game doesn't care, and it will time out and reset after one minute.

So what's the point?

https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:SonicJamOfficialGuide_Book_JP.pdf&page=121

Well according to the Sonic Jam Official Guide, this is "Game Taikai Mode" (ゲーム大会モード), a leftover from Tokyo Game Show 1997 Spring that existed for demonstration purposes. It's been interpreted as "collect as many rings as possible" because that's pretty much all you can do, but you're inventing your own fun here. For owners of the full game, it's a pointless extra feature, nothing more.

 

It seems like it wasn't just for demonstration purposes only as it looks like there was a competition/raffle involved with the mode as well. Twitter user [@vst_koryan] showed off an animation cel from Sonic CD that they claimed they had won at this game show. Here's the tweet with the image included: https://web.archive.org/web/20171227022001/https://xcancel.com/vst_koryan/status/851909630003363840

Translated via Deepl it says:

An additional post was made which goes into further detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20171227022255/https:/xcancel.com/vst_koryan/status/856397502085451778

Translated via Deepl it says:

You'll notice under that archived capture that Tyson Hesse himself even commented on it saying:

Translated via Deepl it says:

Hesse has a penchant for deleting posts for whatever reason so that message is no longer available unless you look at that capture.
This actually isn't the first time they showed the cel off since they first showed it on their website all the way back in 2002. It's under the section Q40:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171227021627/http://www.din.or.jp/~koryan/prf_s80.htm#:~:text=入手するのにいろんな意味で苦労した『ソニック ＣＤ』のセル画。Ｑ７５参照。

For this instance I had to translate each line via Deepl separately [1] - [2] since together it made it lose some info so here is what it says:

For those curious here is what Deepl put out when I put both lines together: [3]

Here is what Q75 says:

Translated via Deepl using the same method for the lines above it says:

These cels along with a few others were publicly shown at the 1992 Yuusei Sega World event: https://segaretro.org/Yuusei_Sega_World

This image comes from a report of the event by the UK Sega Force magazine (No.15 page 8): https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:SegaForce_UK_15.pdf&page=8

One last thing I want to mention is this promo for the Sega World event as seen in Beep Megadrive (November [11] 1992): https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:BeepMD_JP_1992-11.pdf&page=148

It looks like one of the special stages of CD was based off of this:

I know this was a lot but when I came across your post I was immediately reminded of the cels and the person who won them and how they got it. I actually wrote about this a long time ago on Sonic Stadium which is how I managed to get all my sources pretty quickly: https://board.sonicstadium.org/topic/13103-sonic-concept-art/page/23/#comment-1091061

https://board.sonicstadium.org/topi...od-damn-amazing/?tab=comments#comment-1102048

@Black Squirrel you wouldn't happen to know where exactly in that "Mega Drive Fan" magazine is that time attack competition for CD that the person is referring to right? I only ask because it seems you know a lot about these old magazines but it's okay if you don't know either.

 

Nifty - so there was a competition involved. I'm not sure why it's the case, but there's essentially no footage of TGS Spring 1997 - plenty of Autumn 1997 (if you're after juicy shots of Sonic R), but nothing of Sonic Jam.

As for Sonic CD, we don't have a full set of Mega Drive Fans
https://segaretro.org/Mega_Drive_Fan

I haven't the time right now to check each issue, but the Sonic CD launch in Japan was 23rd September 1993, so anything after that date.