S3&K Dumped to Include More Unlockables
There are plenty of Sonic fans upset at the lack of lock-on capability in yesterday’s release of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection–particularly from veterans who remember putting both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles together to create the true, full form of the game.
That hasn’t escaped the attention of Sega officials, and in particular the blog Sega of America runs. In announcing SUGC’s release yesterday, Edward@Sega, in his blog entry, says he tracked down the compilation’s producer, and according to him, the sacrifice was made to fit in more Genesis games:
We’ve gotten comments & questions from die-hard Sonic fans about this collection, and whether Sonic 3 + Knuckles would be included, or just the separate games. For those who don’t know: the original games were intended to be part of the same cart, and Sonic & Knuckles was eventually released as a “lock-on” cartridge, that could be locked-on to Sonic 3 and Sonic 2 so that Knuckles would be playable in those games. Locking Sonic & Knuckles into any other Sega Genesis game allows access to the game Blue Sphere, based on the Sonic bonus levels.
This ‘Sonic 3 + Knuckles’ feature wasn’t included for Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. I spoke with the producer for Sonic’s UGC, Ethan Einhorn, who definitely understands the nature of hard-core Sonic fandom. We had a good conversation about the game, and I got Ethan’s official explanation for why Sonic 3 + Knuckles wasn’t included: “To shore up the development time necessary to get “Lock-On” to work in Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, we would have had to drop all of the bonus games from the disc. Faced with an either/or scenario, we chose to retain our title lineup in its entirety.”
In other words, that would have meant losing the Sega Master System ports (Phantasy Star and Golden Axe Warrior) and all of the arcade ports. Just throwing an old ROM into a game is one thing, but combining lots of different types of ROM technology (arcade, Genesis, Master System) and making them all work together is another, and to get the game out with this lineup, that’s what needed to happen.
We want to know what you think. Should lock-on have taken priority over the additional games you can’t even boot up from the onset of play? Sound off in the comments below.
Loading ...
Are they fucking joking? LITERALLY the only thing they had to do was either pre-combine the ROMs and make them available separately or write some sort of routine that stacks the contents of two ROMs on top of each other. The idea that such a thing requires development time that would eliminate the possibility of bonus videos is not only the biggest lie I have ever seen, but such bullshit that I’m dumbfounded that it was actually played off as a real public statement.
SEGA’s PR confirmed as dirty fucking liars, indeed.
If the lock-on is so hard, couldn’t they at least had put the S3+K ROM instead of the S3 and S&K ones? There would’t be more blue sphere stages, and no Knuckles on Sonic 2, but then it would contain the “full game” (as he says himself, it was meant to be one full game).
I just hope that when (if) they launch S&K on the Wii Virtual Console, at least the lock-on feature for Sonic 3 be available!
That doesn’t make sense. There are ROMs on the internet of the games combined. It’s nothing different if treated as one game.
Ugh, whatever. Pretty stupid though.
sigh winge winge winge! Stupid fanboys
BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT U GET! geez!
guys there are MANY other ways to play Sonic 3 and Knuckles! this is not just a sonic compilation it is for the genesis to so quit whinning. im thinkin of gettin to beacuse the genesis that are not sonic. plus i have sonic mega coleection anyway
well if they wanted to out S3andK they could have just got rid of shittty games like spinball and mean bean machine (srsly Why the fuck are they in there)
I don’t really mind. Nobody’s buying this for the Sonic games anyway…especcially when Mega collection for the XBox is so cheap($10 at places?). I’m purchasing for Phantasy Star and Streets of Rage, mostly.
But Tweaker’s right. The Sonic 3&K ROM wouldn’t have to be any different than the Sonic 3 Rom. This isn’t rocket science. Unprofessionals even mixed S&K with Sonic 1 where Sega couldn’t. We’re not talking the exclusion of Sonic CD, which is valid.
It’s still a good deal, price wise.
“sigh winge winge winge! Stupid fanboys
BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT U GET! geez!”
And this is the entire problem with the Sonic series today. People like you who don’t care about the quality of the games, and will buy anything that has Sonic slapped onto it.
Hey, Sega: Want 5 months of development done in 5 minutes? Here you go!
/* Super amazing lock-on ROM functionality!
* This would take Sega over 9,000 hours to write,
* but any half-decent programmer could do it in 5 minutes! */
unsigned char ROM[0x400000]; // 4 MB ROM buffer.
FILE *sk = f open(“sonic_and_knuckles.bin”, “rb”); // open the Sonic & Knuckles ROM
fread(&ROM[0], 1, 0×200000, sk);
fclose(sk);
FILE *s3 = f open(“sonic_3.bin”, “rb”); // open the Sonic 3 ROM
fread(&ROM[0x200000], 1, 0×200000, s3);
fclose(s3);
Wow! I did in 5 minutes what Sega can’t seem to manage to do because of “time constraints!” Amazing!
It’s nonsense. He’s trying to explain an issue that shouldn’t have been an issue. Sonic 3 & Knuckles has been fully emulatable for years now and it would have taken all of ten minutes of research to figure out how it works and how to put the game in this collection. Space-wise, including the game would be 2 megabytes of space extra.
The thing is, Backbone Entertainment is lazy. With the exception of Street Fighter 2 HD, everything Backbone Entertainment has ever done has been to one quality standard: “good enough”. They put the bare minimum of effort required in to a product and call it a done deal.
Unfortunately, for Sega, a collection like this is viewed as cheap, easy money. “Good enough” is right up their alley for something like this.
I actually agree with Blaze!
i want the lock on games of knuckles in sonic 2 and sonic 3 and knuckles as downloadable content.
jonny
This is bullshit. IIRC, S3&K does not take up more than 5MB of memory. And with the massive amounts of space on discs these days, there is no reason to exclude games due to lack of disc space. They put S3&K on Sonic Mega Collection for the last-gen systems: GameCube, PS2, and Xbox, but they couldn’t do it for this game?! So what if it’d take more developement time? It’d be well worth it to have S3&K, KiS2, and Blue Spheres. Screw this compilation, I’d much rather play Sonic Mega Collection and emulate the other ROMs of my favorite Genesis games on my Wii via homebrew. And screw that faux-HD splotchy filter garbage. Sega won’t be getting my money on this one.
And I agree with you, GerbilSoft. Well spoken.
Why does anyone care? Most of you have it on sonic megam collection or some crap like that, does it matter?
Hey 56145 – you don’t work for Sega America, perchance? You too, blueblur.
“Why does anyone care? Most of you have it on sonic megam collection or some crap like that, does it matter?”
Because it shows that Sega doesn’t care anymore. They’ll keep re-releasing rehashes of collections again and again, removing functionality in each new version (lock-on) and replacing it with something completely useless (3x upscaling).
Coming 2010: Sonic Collection Collection! Featuring Sonic Compilation, Sonic Jam, Sonic Mega Collection, Sonic Mega Collection+, Sonic Gems Collection, and Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection, all on one disc! But there won’t actually be any Sonic games, because their development time was limited to either adding the games, or including useless “unlockables”.
It’s better to have it all on one disc, on one system. Plus, having Sonic’s name on the game title suggests his Genesis titles would be complete.
Personally, I don’t see why they couldn’t of, oh say, got rid of all the Sonic games that were not part of the original four, and just shove on Sonic 3 and Knuckles instead.
Does anyone really like Spinball? And is DRMBM even a Sonic game?
Are you guys fucking serious? You’re getting worked up about this when you can play Sonic 3 and Knuckles basically anywhere? Besides, this collection isn’t focused towards Sonic so blueblur is right. BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU GET FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
iwh :”Are you guys fucking serious? You’re getting worked up about this when you can play Sonic 3 and Knuckles basically anywhere? Besides, this collection isn’t focused towards Sonic so blueblur is right. BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU GET FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!”
Grateful of what?, a shoddy emulation, a sloppy job, o wait I should be “grateful” of playing my games I already played elsewhere on “HD”. Why the fuck should I be grateful, this isn’t a fucking gift, they are selling this piece of shit, that you could get elsewhere for free. Is because of fucking dumb-asses like you that bad sonic games still generate profit, just because YOU are “GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU GET”.
@ Epsilonsama
WHOA! Hold on a minute!
This is a collection we’re talking about (which, I repeat does not focus on Sonic), not Sonic games in general, but since you mentioned the Sonic franchise….
I can like any Sonic game I want and if they’re so bad, why do they generate profit?
Hahahaha, lazy assholes. Oh man.
iwh: No, it’s not entirely a Sonic collection. But exclusion of it seems so half-assed.
Only reason I bought this collection anyways was so that I could play the Genesis games I’d never feel like going out of my way to get for my actual Genesis. Since I have all the Sonic games, lack of S3&K isn’t a problem. It’s just the principle really. I mean, this collection could have taken about 3 days to make if they felt so inclined. Yet it took this long and they exclude what is basically the full Sonic 3 (They even say it themselves in S&K’s history)? Doesn’t seem right.
What’s also annoying about this now is that you know what they’re going to do next of course. Release it over Xbox live. So they can get more profit. For a company that’s reputation is in the tanks and is only continuing to sink, they’re doing little to fix that, other then to release collections reminding people “Hey, remember when we made good games?”
Also the emulator seems worse then the one’s they’ve used in past Sonic collections. I’m not a huge fan of Backbone entertainment when it comes to making these ports. They’re generally shoddily made and use some crappy filter so they can call it HD, despite the fact that you can put all the “HD” into the game you want, but at the end of the day it’ll still look as pixely as it was the day it was made. Honestly I think this would have been better if it was an in house development.
@ PJMan
No, it doesn’t seem right. So, then what is the reason they excluded it? I was thinking it was because it’s not focused on Sonic (but you’ve convinced me otherwise), then Sega gives their reason which seems illogical, but I’ve come across something. Remember, Digital Eclipse? They were famous for screwin’ up emulations and know they fused with another company to make Backbone. I think they did something terribly wrong and “don’t have the time to fix it” and probably lied to Sega about the reason.
BTW, I don’t think putting this on Xbox Live will earn them profit at all.
iwh:
“@ Epsilonsama
WHOA! Hold on a minute!
This is a collection we’re talking about (which, I repeat does not focus on Sonic), not Sonic games in general, but since you mentioned the Sonic franchise….
I can like any Sonic game I want and if they’re so bad, why do they generate profit?”
Oh boy, just because a game generates profit doesn’t mean the game is good.
@PJMan
Sonic Team never screwed up collections but they screwed up Zero Gravity, Rivals 2, Shadow the Hedgehog and I think NiGHTS: JOD could’ve been better but we all know who’s fault that is (for the record I blame Hajime Saitomi, CEO of Sega).
I’m not a fan of Backbone either.
@ Epsilonsama
Whether you think a game is good or not is an opinion. For example, I thought Unleashed was good though some people didn’t. I had fun. To be honest, how much profit it earns isn’t one of my primary concerns; I only care if I have fun with the game.
Its kinda stupid that they left out lock on in my opinion, I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of ways around this issue…but I don’t really get why such is so important now, I mean how many other collections have been released so far by Sega? I’m content with my copy of Mega Collection, Sonic Gems, and what I still have from the olden days.
No deliberate disrespect BlurBlur, but if we did it that way, we’d have to suck up every ’06, Shadow or Heroes that came along and quite frankly, I am not game for that.
BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT!
This is just typical SEGA PR. Anybody who has any experience in emulating Sonic games knows that S3&K can be a stand-alone ROM image. They did it for Sonic Mega Collection. Fuck you SEGA, you aren’t going to baaaawwww your way into getting my $30.
I think what most people here are missing is the fact that these don’t sound like they are rom dumps, like in the Mega Collections. They sound like they are being reprogramed and coded into the game, similar to the Sega Mega Drive Collection on PS2/PSP. In that case, that would mean having to somehow dump the combined cartridges and reprogram everything to match, or something. I’m not an expert, but I think that would be the reason why it’s not being included.
“They sound like they are being reprogramed and coded into the game, similar to the Sega Mega Drive Collection on PS2/PSP.”
Sega Mega Drive Collection is emulated.
For fuck’s sake…
Lack of Lock-On for more unlockables? Even I could get the coding for lock-on on an emulator done in less than 2 hours – and I fail at coding.
Besides, this shit isn’t “HD”, it’s filtering on an emulator. Oh noes, I might not be able to find the H4QX filter on my emulator, even though it’s on the File menu!
Seriously, what the fuck happened to SEGA of 1991? Up until Shadow the Hedgehog (IMO) everything was running smoothly.
Sigh.
Couldn’t they just download the S3&K rom from the internet, like everybody’s been doing since last Century? How lame.
I call shenanigans on that. There’s no way a GC mini-disk can hold that but a XB360 HD-DVD can’t hold the entire mega collection and more. Let alone a PS3 Blu-ray Disc.