Recently, Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car finally made its way onto MAME thanks to the work and funds of some pretty cool individuals. I ended the article with a little bit of a rib saying that SegaSonic Popcorn Shop should be the next game dumped.
Now that one can be marked off the list because it too has now been dumped and should be hitting MAME. The main notable note is that this game also operates on MegaDrive-type hardware named the SEGA C2. It also curiously comes with an English switch, meaning there is a possibility the game came to the West in limited numbers, or at least was planned to.
You won’t find much of a game here since this was more a little video demo that played as the “player” waited for the selected popcorn to be finished. The cabinet did have button and a crank to distract the player, but it didn’t particularly matter if you played or not. Naturally, emulating it won’t yield much unless you have a microwave near your general vicinity and some flavoring agents (salt, butter or curry, if you want to keep the authenticity of the machine.)
But this could make for a neat arcade board to setup at home for the more dedicated.
The story is pretty simple: Sonic and Tails want popcorn, Eggman wants to bludgeon Sonic with a hammer (because that’s his way of saying he wants some too or something), Eggman steals popcorn as it pops, Sonic blows up the machine and roasts Eggman, because he’s a jerk and doesn’t share. Enjoy those calories.
So that now makes two of the rare three obscure arcade Sonic titles dumped and preserved on the Internet. That basically leaves the most obscure of them left: SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter Galaxy Patrol.
Much like with Waku Sonic, I encourage those that want to or are interested in arcade game preservation to look into sending in donations to the dumpers (as it’s usually not cheap to do this) or join up communities that specialize in preservation.
Full disclosure: I’m not taking any credit for this happening, but it does amuse me.
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Game News
Sonic Xtreme has been seeing quite the resurgence as of late, but this takes the cake for the most impressive release to date.
Forum member Andrew75 announced the release of never before seen iteration of Xtreme head programmer Ofer Alon’s V037 NV1. This is a PC port created by Jollyroger and it packs a staggering 150 stages to play around with, most of which never before seen. Andrew does mention that a number of these stages are simply just reskins of other stages in the list, but with either new textures or with some setting changed for testing. Most of these are just test levels after all.
For a full breakdown on changes and download links, direct your favorite point and clicking device to this little bit of text.
So while Sonic Lost World coming to PC next month is neat, the news did not stop there. SEGA announced what could be considered bigger news in a single paragraph hidden within the press release: that it’s not the only game they’re porting to PC.
“We’re delighted to be able to bring Sonic Lost World to PC.” Said John Clark, VP of Commercial Publishing for SEGA Europe; “This is the latest in a string of high quality PC ports of past SEGA titles that we will be building on in the coming months and years.”
People have been requesting SEGA to port various games to PC including Vanquish, Resonance of Fate and Skies of Arcadia for quite some time now. It sounds like they may have been listening to those requests. Of course they could also be porting Sonic games like Sonic Colours or the underappreciated Sonic Unleashed.
They should really prioritize porting Jet Set Radio Future though.
[Source: Gamasutra]
The once Wii U exclusive Sonic Lost World is coming to PC through Steam. It’ll be released on November 2nd and you’ll get the excellent Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed if you pre-purchase it. The NiGHTS themed DLC will be included, though it seems doubtful that we’ll be getting the Nintendo-themed DLC as well. Not until it’s inevitably modded in anyway.
You can pre-purchase the game on Steam here for $29.99/£19.99/€27.99. The Steam description touts that it’ll have new features like 60 FPS gameplay (except it already was 60 FPS on Wii U… oops), HD resolution support, full gamepad and keyboard support, and all of the Steam features like achievements and cloud saving.
Really the most exciting potential feature is the one that isn’t listed: mods. Like with Sonic Generations, there’s the potential for various mods like character model swaps or improved graphics. So hopefully people will be making a decent amount of those.
Also Gene wanted me to plug his review of the original Wii U version, so you can read that here.
[Source: Gematsu]
Update: The price that was mentioned in the article used to be incorrect, and Sonic community manager RubyEclipse has since clarified what the actual pricing is supposed to be on our forums. This article has been changed to reflect that.
One of the few remaining Coelacanths in the Sonic series is coming to a PC near you soon. Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car is a relatively obscure arcade title where the player drives in a car booth and assists a police clad Sonic. It’s also one of the earlier instances of a fully voiced Sonic early in the brand’s life, albeit in Japanese.
Sadly, it has been increasingly difficult to find a working machine in public, with one of the most recent reports being that some friends over at Sonic Paradise found the machine in a Spanish mall, albeit with a broken steering wheel.
Starting with the next release of MAME, you can enjoy this odd bit of Sonic history too, thanks to an effort to secure the board and the generous donations of many people. Further documentation about the game can be found here.
The video below, recorded by Gavin Hugh, shows one such working booth in Japan in 2012 and features game play. Using the steering wheel, the player drives through the busy city streets and avoids traffic until an encounter with Dr. Eggman happens. Regardless if you do well or nothing at all, you’ll reach the Eggman encounter and even if you beat him or not, the game is soon over.
No tickets are dispensed and the player is only awarded a score and a star ranking. It’s pretty basic as far as arcade games go, but that isn’t a big shock. It’s an attraction ride game for kids after all.
It’s not a unique game as there are many others with similar gameplay that remain undumped, but it is another obscure bit of Sonic history down. That doesn’t leave much left to dump, short of someone going crazy and finding/repairing a SegaSonic Popcorn Shop machine.
That said, if trying to preserve and dump old arcade boards interests you, definitely explore MAMEWorld and other preservation and documentation groups.
Update: Of course right after I put up this article I realize that Sonic 4: Episode 1 was delayed by a few months. Welp. Still, at least this time it wasn’t because there was a public outcry.
What do you get when you mix fire and ice? Apparently SEGA realizing that releasing yet another unfinished Sonic game is a bad idea. For the first time ever (seriously, correct me if I’m wrong on this cause I can’t think of any other time when SEGA’s done this) the company has delayed a Sonic game in order to make sure that it’s polished enough for release, with Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice now releasing in 2016 “when it’s ready”. You know, as opposed to previously released Sonic games that clearly weren’t ready for release.
It’s always been pretty clear that Sonic games are often rushed to make the deadline, even back with Sonic 3 & Knuckles when they split the game into two releases due to time constraints. So SEGA actually letting the developers take their time to finish the game is hopefully not just a one time thing. So it is a little reassuring that SEGA’s blog post mentions that they think that making sure a game is ready for release isn’t just important for Fire & Ice, but also all future Sonic games. We hope that that’s true, cause we really, really don’t want another Sonic 2006 or Rise of Lyric.
Sega has so far released plenty of fine ports of their classic games for the Nintendo 3DS under the 3D Classics label, including a physical collection in Japan called the Sega 3D Fukkoku Archives. And now Famitsu has reported that Sega is going to release another one of those, this time featuring 3D Sonic the Hedgehog.
The cover, drawn once again by Pokémon artist Ken Sugimori, features some nice new art of classic Sonic running alongside a character from a game they clearly didn’t want to reveal yet. While we don’t know the full list of games for the collection yet, we do know that it’ll include:
Aside from that, we may know more about which other 3D Classics Sega is planning on putting out. GBAtemp user ninb found in the RAM of 3D Gunstar Heroes a list of unreleased Sega ports M2 may be working on, including a port of Sonic Spinball. And more importantly: Puyo Puyo Tsuu. You can see the full list of games here, though you should keep in mind that we don’t know for sure if these ports are actually going to be released.
Update (September 9th) – The latest issue of Famitsu revealed more info on the collection including the full cover art for the collection, and that 3D Power Drift and 3D Puyo Puyo Tsuu (yessss) will be included with the collection. The latter of which was found in the leaked list of games by the GBAtemp user. [Source – Nintendo Everything]
So it turns out that Sonic appeared in another game aside from Rad Mobile before he’d star in his own game. Youtube personality Guru Larry found out that his first appearance was actually in the incredibly obscure Amiga game The Adventures of Quik & Silva. The game was developed by Factor 5 under the pseudonym New Bits on the Ram, and included lots of copyrighted characters as enemies. One of those enemies being Sonic, which the developers seemingly based on pre-release screenshots.
The game was first released as a cover disc in the UK with issue #5 of Amiga Fun on May 10th, 1991. Almost a month before Sonic the Hedgehog would be released on the Genesis. Be sure to watch Guru Larry’s video about this if you want to know the full details.
Update: Twitter user @UltimateDSman pointed out that TheTetrahedronVG actually made a video about this. And so he did, back in 2011. That being said, Guru Larry does provide a lot more info, making it still worth watching if you already knew about this.
Game News, Miscellaneous
LakeFeperd (The Sonic After the Sequel Guy) Puts Up a Kickstarter for Spark the Electric Jester
LakeFeperd, a member of our forums who is probably most well known for his fangames Sonic Before the Sequel and After the Sequel, just put up a Kickstarter for his upcoming game Spark the Electric Jester. He’s asking $7,000 as the base goal for the game, which he calls a mix of Sonic (obviously), Mega Man X and Kirby Super Star.
The main reason for the Kickstarter is to raise funds for the soundtrack and sound design, which is mostly being done by people who worked on his past fangames including Falk Au Yeong, James Landino, Andy Tunstall, Pejman Roozbeh, Michael Staple and newcomer Paul Bethers. The planned release window is Spring 2016 for Windows and Mac, with the game coming to Steam Greenlight. They plan to release a DRM free version as well.
Be sure to take a look at the Kickstarter here. And if you want to try out the game, you can try out the demo.