Browsing Tag

Sonic 3

Fan Works, Hacking

Sonic Hacking Contest 2023 Announced, Trophies Listed, New Judges

Looking to introduce your Sonic hack or mod to the public at large? Want to put it to the test to see how it stacks among the rest? Wonder no longer as this year’s Sonic Hacking Contest is on track to arrive later this year in late October. This year introduces new guidelines and judges over last year’s event. Make sure to catch up to speed by taking a look at last year’s winning entries and the 2022 trailer showcase.

This year introduces upload limits, three per person, to address issues the community had raised over last year’s event and to ensure that judges are given time to address the community’s inevitably large output for this year. Entries will remain unlimited for team entries and non-judged Expo entries. To help tackle this workload, new judges have been introduced for the three entry types; ‘Retro’,’ 2DPC’ and ‘3D’ Entries. This is to also help ensure fairer evaluation for unique fan projects such as Sonic 3 A.I.R. mods that were introduced last year. The judges participating are subject to change before this year’s contest begins.

For more information on what to expect this year, head on over to the Hacking Contest’s website. You can also receive up-to-date information following the official Twitter account. Discuss the contest in the Sonic Hacking Contest 2023 thread on our forums as well as on Sonic Stuff Research Group’s own thread.

Fan Works, Hacking

Sonic Hacking Contest 2022 Reveals Trailer, Entries and Trophy Names

Recently revealed is the trailer for this year’s Sonic Hacking Contest of 2022 by BlueVivacity as seen on Twitter. The event goes live next week from October 10th to the 16th. Many ROM hacks, mods and add-ons for your favorite Sonic games will be up for grabs. If you’re not sure what to play, you’ll have a chance to see them in action from streamers as the week goes on. Of course vote for your favorite entries to earn one of several awards.  After the jump you’ll be able to see what trophy awards are up for grabs this year and of course what will even show up at this year’s contest.

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Game News

Early Knuckles the Echidna art and details emerge from newly uncovered internal document

Less than a month before Knuckles’ theatrical debut comes an early document from SEGA Technical Institute dated April 12, 1993. The document, which was shared on a private Sonic the Hedgehog collectors group, was meant to introduce the new antagonist to staffers of SEGA’s American development team. Given Sonic the Hedgehog 3 released on February 2, 1994, this document was seen nearly a full year before making it one of the earliest glimpses of the character.

The document is chock full of interesting tidbits, including a humorous placeholder for his name which is literally “(Name)”. Also, it is stated that Knuckles crates a whirlwind to knock down walls. Of course, in the final game he just sort of walks into walls and “punches” them. But this ability DOES appear in the Sonic 3 Happy Meal which has the Knuckles toy spinning in a dust cloud. Also, Espio does eventually have such abilities.

After the break, read the document for yourself!

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Fan Works, Hacking, Uncategorized

Sonic 3 A.I.R. Full Game Released

This is a more unusual mod, but it’s one that caught our eye: Sonic 3 in 16:9 widescreen, by Eukaryot (@Eukaryot3K), who just announced the release via Twitter.

Interested in giving it a whirl? You’ll need the Steam version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles installed (hence the unusual part!), which Sonic 3 A.I.R. is built upon.
Download via Google Drive (recommended):
Alternative direct download:

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Fan Works, Music

Something For The Weekend: Woofle’s Sonic 3 Alternates

SftWSonic

So it’s been a pretty okay week for news, with the Sonic Runners reveal yesterday (it’s looking fairly good by the way) and forum member Jollyroger managing to get the leaked POV version of Sonic Xtreme to run on Saturn hardware – and while Monday links was packed with cool things to get your teeth into and is always a great start to the week (thanks TimmiT!), I’ve taken it upon myself to give you something to end the week on as well. Usually, this will be something like a mash-up or remix, news of some event going on over the weekend or, you know, generally weekend-y things.

Today, in keeping with the Sonic 3 Remastered campaign (it was featured on the Daily Star website of all things!), here’s some fantastic musical work courtesy of Leila ‘Woofle’ Wilson. This is a fantastic playlist of alternate takes on famous Sonic 3 tracks, noticeably different from their counterparts in the original game, but still fitting with the mood of each stage. I’m getting some Death Egg vibes from the Launch Base Zone track – which, considering the background of the stage, is only appropriate I guess.

Anyway, to cut this short – if you’ve finished work or school for the week, put your feet up, unwind, crack open a favored beverage and have a listen. Enjoy your weekend.

Uncategorized

Watch Sonic 3 & Knuckles Get Destroyed In 27 Minutes


Tool Assisted Speedruns, or TAS, are quite a fun thing to see. Taking advantage of the very coding of the game, players are able to perform some incredibly hilarious and insane tricks to blaze through games. So when it comes to Sonic 3, a game most of us still hold highly as the pinnacle of Sonic, being burned right through in a staggering time of 26’53”, you know things are going to get interesting.
Using our own disassembly of the game, runners Aglar and marzojr performed a run that resulted in a three-minute time improvement over the previous record set four years ago, and the first time in seven years the two ran through the whole game in such a manner. The video above features a modification that keeps Sonic on screen at all times, even when not on camera, so we can see what sort of nonsense he’s up to. A video without Sonic being omnipresent can be found here.
The authors published commentaries on the run can be found here as well, detailing the parameters of their run. If you’re hungry for something a little more insane, look below for a Hyper Sonic version of the run.
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Fan Works, Game News

Taxman and Stealth celebrate Sonic & Knuckles’ 20th anniversary with a Sonic 3 & Knuckles proof of concept


Today marks the 20th anniversary of SEGA’s Sonic & Knuckles, and to celebrate, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 remastered developer Christian Whitehead shared a proof of concept prototype from the Taxman & Stealth personal vaults featuring Sonic 3 & Knuckles running on the Retro Engine. Of course, this is presented unofficially, so don’t jump to the conclusion that a Sonic 3 & Knuckles remastered is on the way anytime soon. Still, awesome to see that they’ve done work on the much requested title, even in an unofficial capacity. The Taxman himself shared this link in our forums, stating that “this isn’t an official announcement of any Sega project, nor to we intend to work on this as a fan-project. It’s simply a proof of concept from our vaults that has been kept to our chests for some time.”
You can learn more about the technical side of the project in Stealth’s latest blog post!

Comics, Humor

How Fleetway Played The Games, Part 6: Of Master Emeralds and Death Eggs

part6-001So the new Sonic titles for the year have come and gone; namely Sonic Lost World, Sonic 2 (2013 remake) by Retro’s very own Stealth & The Taxman, and Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. These all out of the way (and indeed 2013), we’ve not got too much new for a while until information about the next games starts coming out. As such, I think it’s a good time to look back on some earlier titles, and finally finish off the 4-part extravaganza that has been our look at how Fleetway‘s Sonic the Comic covered the Sonic 3 & Knuckles storyline. So, let’s get started!

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Comics

How Fleetway Played The Games, Part 5: Of Ice and Repairing

Welcome back to the second half of our look at the interim arcs of the Sonic 3 & Knuckles adaptation! Last time we travelled with Sonic and Amy Rose to the Marble Garden Zone, escaped the newly-revealed secret headquarters of Sonic & company as Big Arms smashed the place to pieces, and did some gambling with the Mario Marxio Brothers in the Carnival Night Zone. However we’ve got much more ground to cover, so let’s get started!

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Comics

How Fleetway Played The Games, Part 4: Of Evacuating and Electricians

 

You’ve waited over a year for it, but it’s here: the second part of possibly Sonic the Comic’s best story arc, that of Sonic 3 and Knuckles. However, I’m teasing a bit, sorry! The build-up to the final conclusion to the game’s story (which by 16-bit Sonic standards, was quite involved) took a couple of months, presumably to stretch out the material as much as possible before the next game came out. As such, we got a few shorter arcs before the final main story started, and that’s what we’ll be looking at today & next week, covering the final conclusion in Part 6 – simply as you miss things otherwise. Hey, don’t look so sad, you there at the back – there’s some fun stuff here. Think of these as an early Christmas present!

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