Sonic: The Lost Ports

[Mike Arcade]

I've been notified how on our unreleased/cancelled games section is rather lacking sadly, which there is no excuse for that, so I'll be making several different topics regarding those lost games, to warm things up I thought it would be best to mention the lost ports of the Sonic games for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. What many of you not know is how Sonic 1 and 2 were attempted at being ported to many other different systems aside from the Genesis, Sonic 1 most of all and in two particular cases for the Amiga and Mega-CD/Sega-CD.

http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(Amiga)

Not only was Sonic 1 developed for the Genesis and a version of it for the Master System and Game Gear, but there were plans to have a version of Sonic 1 for not only the Amiga, but many other PC formats of the time like the Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and Spectrum. However the thing is, and what possibly killed those ports of Sonic 1 was the fact that it was to be developed by U.S. Gold of all companies. While there is nothing innately wrong with US Gold when they existed they weren't the best company around making only ports for other games for Sega and Capcom till they folded in '96. Perhaps their other projects around that time gave them too much of a work load or Sega didn't think it would be profitable to port them on these PCs, which is understandable as Europe got Genesis games much later then other countries and seeing how those ports could have given Sonic earlier recognition in the UK and making some money for such ports. Though I think the ports never came out because they must have found it very difficult to port Sonic's gameplay on these PCs and couldn't make a satisfactory port for Sega under whatever standards they had for it. Still I've seen a fan port sample of Sonic 1 for the Amiga so it's not completely impossible, we'll never know just how it could have ended up but I would say it wouldn't have been much of a game changer.

http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(Mega-CD)
http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2_CD

Now we're talking, what you may not know is that Sonic 1 and later on Sonic 2 we're originally meant to have Sega-CD ports which would be like the Genesis Originals but with even more content. However why these two ports never got made has a rather interesting reasoning behind it, Sonic 1 CD as far as we know never got far into development with proof of it only being some brief footage at a convention in the early 90's, however this port was cancelled early on in order to focus on making an original Sonic title for the Sega CD, as in Sonic CD. All that is known of it is that it would have CD Quality Music...and that's it. It's mentioned in one article that it would have 7 Zones, as in the same levels of Sonic 1 but I'd like to think that they would have added in a few new levels, what that could have been we'll never know, but I like to think that some of the concept art from Sonic 1 and possibly the Master System Ports would have been used as inspiration for a rather similar but unique port of Sonic 1 had it gone further into development, I am glad we got Sonic CD out of it and maybe that's for the best if all they were going to do for Sonic 1's CD port was highly quality music and a few graphical changes here and there.

Sonic 2 CD on the other hand is a another story, and yet may also be connected to Sonic CD. After the release of Sonic 2 it was said in several articles that Sonic 2 would also come out for the Game Gear, Master System, and Sega-CD. While we know of the end result of Sonic 2's 8-bit ports being an entirely different game, it's CD port never came out. It was said by Yuji Naka that it would have Extra Zones and Bonus Rounds in-between Zones, now it's my speculation that these extra zones could none other be then completed versions of the Lost Levels that were cut during development of Sonic 2 such as Hidden Palace, Wood Zone, Winter Zone, Dust Hill, and Cyber City which would make sense as they did have enough cut content to make an enhanced port, no idea what form those Bonus Rounds could have taken though.

As for why this never came out, you see Sonic 2 while being a huge success throughout the world there was an exception to that...in Japan of all places. See it wasn't that big of a hit over there since they had no idea how to market Sonic in Japan, therefore when Sonic 2 unlike everywhere else failed to meet their expectations it was said that they needed to rethink about porting it to the Sega-CD. It's also been said that much like Sonic 1 CD this lead to Sonic CD being developed into it's own game. Which is possible as Sonic CD didn't come out until after Sonic 2 in 1993, though many reports around Sonic CD are said that the game was being developed during Sonic 2's development. It's not really known which version of Sonic CD's beginnings is true, however regardless of the matter what happened was both CD ports of Sonic 1 and 2 were shelved in favor of Sonic CD, I do have another theory regarding this though. That being how the Sega-CD itself didn't end up meeting expectations, at least not compared to in particularly the PC-Engine's Super CD over in Japan, perhaps Sega themselves didn't want to risk making ports of their older Sonic games due to Sonic games not selling well over in Japan and for everywhere else the Sega-CD not selling that well internationally, as after Sonic CD there was no more new Sonic games for it afterwards. I guess it was not meant to be, I mean CD add-ons for 16-bit consoles just ended up failing overall anyway for everybody, so much so that Nintendo's attempt at it ended with them backing out leading to the rise of Sony's Playstation. It would have been nice, honestly I would have preferred Sonic 2 CD at least being made but things happens for a reason.

http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_3_Limited_Edition

While not a lost port technically, this is note worthy. Sonic 3 & Knuckles was originally one complete game before being split into two games, however there we're plans after the split before Sonic & Knuckles came out to have a Limited Edition version of Sonic 3, basically being Sonic 3 & Knuckles without the need to Lock-On both games. It isn't known if it would have had the Lock-On Feature for Sonic 2 and Blue Spheres for other games locking on as it didn't go far into development due to the expense of such a cart being double the amount of other Genesis Games due to the sheer size of Sonic 3 & Knuckles in one cart. There are prototypes of this limited edition version with having most notably a different credits compilation theme having Sonic 3 Music within it. Nowadays Sonic 3 & Knuckles is usually the standard release for Sonic 3 (Except on PC oddly enough and in more recent collections), plus some fans made a hack of the game known as Sonic 3 Complete adding in many options for you to play the game as it was originally intended with a slightly different level layout should you choose to do so.

I hope you guys enjoy this topic and let me know what you think, do you think Sonic 1, 2 CD, 3 Limited Edition would have been a good idea? Till the next topic guys where I look at other lost Sonic games, and go into the LONG history of the most well documented cancelled Sonic game of all time, Sonic X-treme...

[TheRedStranger]

Was there any imagery or audio files recovered pertaining to the PC ports?