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Sonic 3D Blast

Game Secrets

Sonic 3D Blast Music Demos Uploaded to YouTube

Back in 2017, Traveller’s Tales co-founder Jon Burton created the YouTube channel GameHut, a behind the scenes look at his time as a video game developer. From Puggsy to Lego Star Wars, Jon has dived into the history and development of the games that has made Traveller’s Tales a household name.

For Sonic fans, the channel has been of particular interest, as TT worked on both Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R, two spin-offs from the 90’s that helped carry the torch as Sonic Team focused on non-hedgehog properties. A number of videos have been uploaded over the last couple years regarding 3D Blast and R, showing early prototypes and explaining the coding tricks that maximized the hardware they were made for. Heck, Jon even released a Director’s Cut of 3D Blast not all that long ago! However, there has been one item that he mentioned having that he held back on – the demo recordings of 3D Blast’s soundtrack.

Well, until now.

Though only three songs are featured in the video, the fact that it’s marked as “#1” implies that more are on the way. Of particular interest is the the second track, an extended version of the theme song. Sure, it’s only slightly longer, but hey! It’s still neat. Hopefully we won’t have to wait long to hear the rest of those songs.

Fan Works, Hacking

Sonic Hacking Contest 2017 Results


After a turnaround from last year’s showing, the Sonic Hacking Contest 2017 draws to a close with the winners of this year’s showing for trophies rewarded by both Hacking Contest judges and the community. The contest celebrated big this year for it’s 15th anniversary with a brand new website, a public showing at this year’s Fan Jam and featured a game industry participant, Jon Burton of Traveller’s Tales, with Sonic 3D Blast Director’s Cut. There’s plenty to be excited for this year’s showing of ROM hacks and mods for Sonic RSonic Heroes, Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Mania and Sonic Lost World. You can discuss the results of the hacking contest after the jump or via the forum here. You can also watch the first part of the results show from MegaGWolf’s Twitch channel at the top of this post. You can then watch part 2 of the show here.
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Game News, Game Secrets, Hacking

Sonic 3D Director’s Cut ROM Hack Announced by Traveller’s Tales Founder


How’s this for a little role reversal? Where Sonic Mania features fan game developers work in a commercial Sonic game, a Sonic game developer makes works on a ROM hack?
GameHut is the YouTube channel run by Traveller’s Tales founder Jon Burton which recently celebrated his achievement of 25,000 subscribers. The channel provides a constant stream of video material showcasing old prototypes, special builds and insight on coding techniques of Traveller’s Tales’ work over the years. There’s a greater focus on Mega Drive material and more recently a focus on their work on Sonic R and Sonic 3D Blast / Sonic 3D Flickies’ Island. As an example I reported on videos on SEGAbits that covered a prototype for Sonic R and unseen footage of an unannounced sequel to Mickey Mania. 
In a surprise announcement for achieving 25,000 subscribers on the channel Jon announced that he is working on releasing an unofficial patch for Sonic 3D titled Sonic 3D Director’s Cut that focuses on restoring content and adding enhancements to the game. This has no involvement with SEGA or any other company and is only being developed by Jon himself in his spare time. Details about the hack can be seen in the jump.
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Opinion, Sega Retro

Hit Reset: Why Sonic 3D Blast deserves another chance


Everyone tends to think that Sonic has been dead for an undisclosed amount of time, and generally seem to miss out on or dismiss a lot of interesting games along the way. One of the first games to start the march of “Sonic hasn’t been good since…” was Sonic 3D Blast. So, on this episode of Hit Reset, will take a look at why this game was not the beginning of all our problems, and why you may actually be missing out on something pretty cool.
Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel.

Humor, Podcasts, Sega Consoles

SEGA Channel Retro Highlights: Sonic Lost World Zelda DLC and Sonic on your PC


On our most recent SEGA Channel Retro stream, we got to check out the DLC for the recently released Legend of Zelda Zone for Sonic Lost World. If you think that’s old news, then how about going old school? We also took a look back at SEGA’s attempts at bringing the blue blur to PC with sister site SEGAbits during their Genesis month with a look at Sonic & Knuckles Collection and Sonic 3D Blast (Or Flickies Island if you’re THAT guy…) complete with the awkward bonus stages. We even got a look at SEGA Smash Pack 1 and 2 on PC that features an interesting, exclusive screen resolution for the 2 Player VS. mode in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. All this and more is currently rehosted on our YouTube channel. You can also watch the original, uncut stream on our Twitch page here.
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Comics

How Archie Played The Games, Part 7: Of FLiCKIES and Remote Atolls

SonicBlastCoverBlue is Back!
Or at least, that’s how Sega of America wanted you to think back in 1996. Five years after the release of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, the western branches of the company were scrambling to celebrate Sonic’s first semi-prominent anniversary. The original plan was to release Sonic X-treme, the first true 3D game featuring everyone’s favorite hedgehog. The story behind that title’s cancellation has become the stuff of legend, not just infamous in this here part of the world but in the general gaming community. Without that title, Sega decided to heavily promote Sonic’s swan song on the Mega DriveSonic 3D: Flickies’ Island, also known as Sonic 3D Blast in the United States. With a port of the game hastily developed for the Sega Saturn, along with a similarly titled Game Gear game that was otherwise unrelated, the marketing blitz began.
It was only natural for Archie Comics to craft a comic adaptation of the newest game in the franchise. Not since issue thirteen’s “This Island Hedgehog” had Archie released a comic at around the same time as the source material it was promoting, SEGA’s huge push filtering into the otherwise left alone plotlines of Archie. Did this unique timing help the 48-page special become a masterpiece? Well, that would be giving it away, wouldn’t it? Either way, let’s strap ourselves in and experience the very last of Archie’s stand-alone specials. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I present to you our seventh piece of evidence…Sonic Blast.
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Game News

Sonic 3D Blast on Steam: $5 of pure sadness and tears

While I was recording the Sonic Retro podcast with the rest of the crew here (it may quite possibly be our fourth attempt on getting an acceptable fourth podcast), the issue of SEGA Genesis & Mega Drive Classics pack now being available on Steam came up, along with the issue of the game’s filesize (reported on the pre-purchase page to be 50MB, but in actuality… 107MB.) In the interest of SCIENCE (and proving that I have no issue with spending $5 of my own money on pointless purchases), I bit the bullet and bought a Steam copy of Sonic 3D Blast.

Why they’re pairing the Sonic 3D: Flickies’ island wordmark and horrendous Sonic render I’ll never know.

I went ahead and installed the game, and I must say–I’m incredibly underwhelmed. Now, given that this is basically a glorified emulator frontend, I had low expectations to begin with, but as I played it became clear why Sega never released any promotional screenshots for this game–and no, I don’t know why that one screenshot shows up oddly in gallery; it’s correct in full-size.

Needless to say, this has been a pretty large disappointment and I would recommend you spend your hard-earned 5bux on a used copy of Sonic Mega Collection Plus for the PC instead.