Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Developer:

Sega Technical Institute

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn, PC

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm wondering why Sonic 3 & Knuckles has you selecting menu options with a shoe. That's not normal.

You might be wondering why this beautiful looping GIF is missing the horrifying slowdown when the 3D Sonic swoops in. The answer is: it bothered me and I wanted it gone. I did my best to make it true to what the designers intended it to look like though. The game's later releases on more powerful consoles tend to come with authentic emulated slowdown, but the Saturn version included with with Sonic Jam is a proper port, so I used that as a reference to fix the timing. Now the only thing wrong with my GIF is that it's not a video, so I can't hear it say "SEGA!"

Anyway, I'm playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the fourth (and fifth) of the 16-bit Mega Drive/Genesis Sonic platformers! I already covered the first Sonic the Hedgehog back in 2011, but I decided to skip Sonic 2 because it's too similar, and Sonic CD frightens and confuses me. Also, it's Sonic 3's 30th birthday today... in the EU (it came out a few weeks earlier in the US).

Sonic 3 & Knuckles came in two parts released 8 months apart, with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 featuring the first set of levels and the save RAM, and Sonic & Knuckles featuring the second half of the levels and a connector to (optionally) join the two cartridges together. It's like plugging in a Game Genie, except instead of getting cheats you get an expansion pack. It's not the first time two standalone games could be combined like this, DOS game Might and Magic: World of Xeen got there first, but this did it with hardware. And then basically nothing copied it. It remains pretty much unique as far as I'm aware.

The reason it was released in such a weird way is because they had a Happy Meal promotion and TV ad campaign deadline and they were only going to get half the game finished in time. They still charged full price for it though! Personally, I think the lock-on feature was a genius move, as it gave the game some novelty, especially when people learned that it could be combined with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as well! Plus it turned out to be a crucial part of any serious collector's Tower of Power, along with the 32X... another piece of add-on hardware that didn't catch on.

Right, I'm going to give the game an hour or so and write about it. I have played it before, but honestly I think an hour is going to take me well further than anything I've seen before.

Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Rocket Science Games

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Release Date:

1995 (Sega CD 1994)

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Systems:

DOS, Sega Mega CD

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm checking out Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, by the infamous Rocket Science Games.

Rocket Science was founded in 1993 with the goal to bring together some of the most talented people in the fields of video games and films to make some video games that are also films. With actors and everything. They were all-in on the idea of making FMV-based games and they thought that theirs could be the most visually impressive on the market. Not just because of the content, but because of the codec; their compression was among the best in the business, meaning more production value survived the process.

People took notice of how many high-profile designers and engineers were being hired, and investors began lining up to throw money at them. Interactive movies were sure to be the next big thing and Rocket Science had the talent and the funding to bring digital entertainment to the next level. But then all six of their games bombed, leading to them going out of business after just four years. And I mean really bombed, not just 'failed to meet sales expectations'. Loadstar released around the same time as their second game, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm, and it seems like by 1996 the two games still hadn't reached 8000 copies. With their sales combined. On all systems.

How is even possible that they made a dinosaur game in 1994 and failed to get anyone to buy it? That was the peak of Jurassic Park hype! Even Trespasser shifted 50,000 copies and that was straight-up broken!

Anyway, I'm playing the spaceship game, not the dinosaur game, and I'm curious now about why it didn't appeal to people at the time. Is it really that bad or were people just not into FMV? Am I going to be into the FMV? Will I be able to endure the amount of cheese I'm about to be exposed to?

WARNING: There will be a surprisingly graphic death sequence at some point. Also, I'm going to spoil the game's entire story.

Super Adventures 'Next Game' Challenge

This week on Super Adventures, no one was able to identify what game's coming up next from the tiny cropped clue at the bottom of the last article, and that almost never happens. Someone always seems to figure out what it is and I don't know how you do it.

I mean look at this microscopic image. How did anyone identify the game from this? I mean I know what it is, it's from Mortal Kombat, but I have a massive unfair advantage seeing as I'm the one who played the games, took the screenshots and made the clues. Then again, there are about 1300 games on the site right now and it's been ten years since I played some of them, so maybe it won't be quite so easy for me to go back to the older clues and work out what game they're hinting at.

You know what? I'm going to put the next game on hold for a bit, seeing as no one even knows what it is, and I'm going to see how many of these tiny pictures I can get myself. Just to make it trickier I'm replacing the filenames with random numbers so there will be no clues for me there. In fact, it's probably going to take me a bit of work to look up what the games are after I'm done guessing. But I once I find the correct answers I'll go back through and hide them underneath each clue, to be revealed with a click. I'll also hide my guesses in spoiler text, so you can play along yourself and see how well you do.