On this episode of SEGA Talk we dive deep into unreleased Sonic the Hedgehog games! We go through 17 unreleased Sonic games and rank them! What could have been and never was.
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This upcoming Saturday California Extreme arcade & pinball event is happening in the Hyatt Regency hotel in Santa Clara, California. The event will last 2 whole days (July 28-29) and feature quite a number of speakers. While all that is nice and fun, one of the biggest surprises is that the long lost SegaSonic Bros. prototype will be playable at this event.
If you didn’t know, SegaSonic Bros. is a 1992 puzzle game for the Sega System C2 designed by Fukio Mitsuji (Bubble Bobble fame), the game never got a full release due to bad location testing in Japan and was considered lost until arcade board collector ShouTime revealed that he had a working board back in 2016. ShouTime will be bringing that working prototype board to California Extreme for arcade enthusiast to play. I sort of wish I had a heads up on SegaSonic Bros. being playable so I could have made plans to go and try it. Are any of you guys going to California Extreme? Check out more info here.
[Via Arcade Heroes]
The SegaSonic Bros. saga continues with a new screen and a detailed description of how the cancelled 1992 arcade game played. First off, it is now abundantly clear that the game was not a prototype of 1993’s SegaSonic the Hedehog. Despite a similar name and title screen, and the appearance of two additional characters colored red and yellow, SegaSonic Bros. was actually a drop down puzzle game from Bubble Bobble creator Fukio Mitsuji – a far cry from SegaSonic the Hedgehog‘s isometric platforming controlled with a trackball. Amazingly, SegaSonic Bros. was revealed as far back as June 2014 when SEGA 3D Classics developer and SEGA legend Yosuke Okunari tweeted a zoomed in screen of the game in action in reply to a tweet from Kenjoh Kohji who had shared a link to a site describing SegaSonic Bros.. Unfortunately, the conversation went unnoticed by fans, likely because Okunari was replying, it was in Japanese, and the screen was not overtly Sonic the Hedgehog.
Yesterday we posted a presumed prototype of 1993’s SegaSonic the Hedgehog arcade entitled SegaSonic Bros.. Today, the Tumblr user It’s ShouTime, who came across the game, has shared a new screen and new details. The screen, seen above, was accompanied by the caption “Play with yourself or against your bro. Designed by the creator of Bubble Bobble, Fukio Mitsuji, this went to location test and failed.”
What is interesting about this latest development is that is moves SegaSonic Bros. away from being a prototype to SegaSonic the Hedgehog and makes it appear to be its own unique title that went as far as location tests and failed. Perhaps this is what EGM’s 1992 magazine rumor writer saw or heard about? Also interesting is that despite apparently being a separate game, there are still similarities between this and SegaSonic the Hedgehog, namely the title and the colors of the additional red and yellow characters. Could this title have at least influenced SegaSonic the Hedgehog?
Keep an eye on the blog for more SegaSonic Bros information as it hits.
Remember when the SegaSonic Popcorn Shop ROM was dumped and playable on MAME? Well that same person who did that is now teasing something else Sonic arcade related! Originally shared on Tumblr is what appears to be a working prototype of SegaSonic The Hedgehog the arcade game. The user tagged the Tumblr post with “#unreleased” and added the caption “…it’s the megaton…”. The megaton indeed. For those not in the know, SegaSonic the Hedgehog was a trackball controlled arcade game released exclusively to Japan and North America in 1993. Given the control scheme, the game has not released outside of arcades as Sonic Team has claimed it is too tricky to make the game playable with standard control pads. The game featured the debut of Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Squirrel, but as this supposed prototype dated 1992 reveals the game was initially known as SegaSonic Bros. and featured blue hedgehog Sonic and a yellow and orange version of our hero (or perhaps two new hedgehogs?). Let’s just hope this hedgehog trio don’t form a band and look for their long lost mother.
We hope to hear more details on this soon, so in the meantime consider this a rumor. Fingers crossed this game gets dumped as well.
Discuss multi-colored Sonics and more in the SEGAbits forums, and after the break check out a small update on this story!