revisionist History

hello, to follow on from issue 182, inside the mega drive article, i am wondering why there were different versions of Sonic The Hedgehog released for the mega drive back in the day?

i have a Sonic cartridge that has moving clouds in the background on Green hill Zone but the same background clouds are static on another version of Sonic featured on a compilation cartridge. also an underwater effect is present in one version of labyrinth Zone but on the other six-game cartridge version it just has a still look (no wobble). Why would that be? i assume changes of this sort would mean more trouble than it’s worth for devs, so why did they bother?

it makes me wonder, do any other games have differences between versions that have gone unnoticed by gamers? if so, it might make a good feature in a future edition of rg. robert mcmillan

unusually for its time, Sonic was released in the us and europe before Japan. with the extra time before the next production run started, sonic team took the opportunity to tidy up the code and add a couple of cool effects with the clouds and ripples. we’re not sure why the older version was used on multigame carts though.

revising games is a pretty common practice, and we’ll always note if there are major changes, – like with Pengo’s ‘Popcorn’ theme a few issues ago.