The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

I'm not 100% sure that this is from the Sonic 3 promotion. According to this book, there was a similar promotion that ran in Europe, Japan and New Zealand in 1995. The promotion wasn't tied to any specific game, which would explain why the box simply says "Sonic the Hedgehog" with no 3 in sight. The book claims that themed boxes were used in the 1995 promotion (Angel Island, Launch Base, Ice Cap and "Marble", which is probably Marble Garden), whereas the American Sonic 3 promotion used bags (all to one design).

Conveniently, there exists an image of the book online (albeit not in the best quality) that outlines the international promotion:



Given the Sonic 3 theming, however, it may well be that the box designs were intended for the 1994 promotion and went unused for whatever reason.

 

There's a UK based seller on eBay selling the Happy Meal boxes, if anyone's interested.

 

Those are the toys I have. I don't know which promotion it was, but I'm sure the one for these toys is the only one I ever saw. About me taking photos of them or anything else for the wiki, refer to my last post in the kickstarter board game topic, which remains unanswered.

 

No doubt it is strikingly similar, but as much as I would love for it to be true, these objects exist:


It's impossible to know whether or not it's one of these is the object represented in the picture, since the color palette is exactly like that of Sky Sanctuary zone. It almost looks like a combined form of all three, but if one had to be picked SSZ still looks the closest.

 

It's probably not the blue Marble Garden spinner:



In fact it might not even be a platform - the cutout line doesn't seem to suggest something was meant to "stand" on it.


(if we had scans someone could put it together)

 

^ So the Sonic illustration from the S&KC box art was also from this era. This must be the first instance of Sonic being depicted closer to his Japanese design in official Western art.

I think they're indeed from the S3 tie in, as googling "sonic 3 mcdonald's" leads to these. There's also this leaflet.

 

The smallest Sonic cameo in the history of video games (probably):



Sega sponsored the 1993 Williams F1 team. F1 Pole Position 2 is a licensed F1 game for the SNES, and so, in an effort to be accurate, a small handful of pixels are devoted to Sonic's sneakers (just below the cockpit).




Not so lucky for Camel cigarettes.

 

Always amusing when other companies sponsorship shows up in licenced games like that. I remember a F1 game on Dreamcast that had the PlayStation branding on the Prost F1 team's cars intact.

 

Ooh I'll have to look into that - the best I can offer is Ducati World

 

I can confirm that all three officially licensed F1 games for the Dreamcast retain the PlayStation sponsor for the Prost team. Doesn't look like it survived on the Nintendo 64 though!

 

This week on "Akane is a wonderful human being":

https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File%3AMdfan_JP_1992-10.pdf&page=96

A short little preview of Sonic 2 from the October 1992 edition of Mega Drive Fan. It seems to be claiming there are 9 levels in the game - it's the Simon Wai prototype level select minus Wood, Dust Hill and Genocide City - guess they knew those levels were about to be chopped.

No Mystic Cave Zone. Must have been some mixed messages there.

 

So a poster on the Galaxy Sega page mentioned owning a copy of Sonic Compilation with an alternate cart label not featured on the wiki. Back of the cart states it was made in the Philippines. OP said they'd take some more photos for the wiki. They also mentioned some of the Sonic 3D Blast carts were simply relabelled with the Mega Drive Flickies Island sticker.

 

I suppose it's like my PAL Sonic 2 cart having the label that says "Genesis". My game came in a MegaDrive II bundle that mirrored the one with the first MegaDrive plus Sonic 1.

 

Would be nice to also compare:

• Cover
• Manual
• Plastic case

just in case.

 

Yeah the sheer number of possible variants wasn't really understood until many years after our wikis started. Sega had processing plants across the world and stock moved all over to meet demand, particularly when it comes to mid-90s Mega Drive games.


My advice is generally to always scan things. Even if you think there's a great version already on the wiki, it never hurts to have multiple scans of the same thing - even if the cartridge is the same, not all scanners are created equal.l

 

http://web.archive.org/web/19970217175440if_/http://www.sega.co.jp:80/nights/sonic/sonium/debut.html

Do we know anything about this Mega-CD disc, at the bottom?

 

I've not seen this before.


The game was planned to be ported to the Mega-CD for a while, though it seems unusual that they'd come up with a CD label that early. Very interesting.

 

That brings back memories... This is all we know about all that stuff: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=10080

 

Looks like this piece of concept art is missing from the rest on the wiki.



I'm not really familiar with editing the wiki, and can't seem to log in anyway.

 

It's funny how even though that topic mentions it's a Sonic Team site, I completely overlooked that back then.

Years later I can definitely say my translation was accurate, although I interpreted it as an individual rather than being Sonic Team's site. Only other part I got wrong was it doesn't say they made it for "fun," but rather as an "example" or "illustration." So basically as a proof of concept or something I would guess. There's zero indication it's a CD with anything on it.