The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

From the archives: While Sonic CD and Sonic & Knuckles made it to the PC, it appears Sonic Spinball was also planned for a port in 1995!

The folder for this was "SONIC SPINBALL PC 1995", so it piqued my interest :P

 

Just imagine the midi cover of the options theme

 

Interesting! I'd assume it'd be easier to port since it was written in C, and thus less likely to end up on the chopping block. Maybe that's not the case, there were budget or time constraints, or they just didn't think it'd be popular enough. I mean, I'm really glad we got S&K Collection instead if that's what it came down to, since that's the first way I played Sonic 3 lol.

 

I don't suppose there's anything related to the planned PC version of Vectorman is there?

 

What's going on with the top of Sonic's top quill and forehead here?

 

Looks like a cut and paste job, like someone cut out that part of Sonic's head, and put the SEGA PC logo between the layers, which is way sharper than the rest of the artwork. Must have just been a rough mock-up, the Spinball logo looks like it was hastily pasted on in the same manner.

 

The initial choice for the first PC Sonic port was Spinball? Really?

What gives? Was it because it was made by SoA? Early Sega PC titles were all ports of western games, for some reason. What was the deal with that?

 

You mean besides the fact that it was the Western division putting them out in the first place?

Anyone know if the PC = Porn stigma was around in Japan at this time?

 

It was? According to Sega Retro, it was a SoJ division made up of Japanese members.

Edit - Found this old quote from one of the Sonic CD PC devs where he mentions the Spinball port and says he had a copy:

Of course, he could be misremembering. Although he claims to be certain. Maybe there was an unfinished/unreleased build only accessible to Sega PC members?

 

As said above, it was programmed in C, which would make it a prime candidate for porting to PC.

 

If you stop comparing Sonic Spinball to Sonic 2 or 3, and view it against the Mega Drive library as a whole, it's still a good game.


If I had to guess though, I'd say it would have been a bit too old (and small) in 1995/1996 to justify a PC version.

 

Too old? Ecco the Dolphin is an older game and was ported.

 

can’t believe we missed out on this gem. actually upset now.

 

If they had ported Spinball, we could have fixed it by now, and decompiled it. I am legit upset by this.

 

A great issue for any Sonic 3 or S&K fans

 

The actual resolution of the assets are quite small, but the file putting them together is an Adobe Illustrator file which can be any resolution. If you resized it to 72dpi rather than the 300dpi this is, it'd look like what it was made for.

I just chose to use the higher resolution to better support stuff for future reference when posting it :P

 

We don't know that it would have included debug symbols.

 

This is issue 249 of Retro Gamer, and has a ten page feature in which Takashi Iizuka is asked about the making of Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. I wrote the feature, which is - bloody hell - the sixth Sonic cover feature I've written in just under ten years. As always, I hope you enjoy it.

The magazine will go on sale at UK retailers on Thursday 3 August. If you would like to order the magazine online, you can do so at Magazines Direct from Thursday - that's for both UK and international customers. It should arrive at US stores that carry the magazine, such as Barnes & Noble, some time in September. The US artwork cover is exclusively for subscribers - the retail cover is designed to resemble the Japanese box art, and can be seen below.

 

It doesn't have to have debug symbols.

 

It's a great feature mate, really enjoyed the read. Keep up the great work