The Surprising Origins of Your Favorite Games

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Failed Resident Evils, Master Chief in 3rd person and the Mario game you’ll never play

Just kidding. Too Human’s not one of our favorite games.


Back in the mid-90’s, the Genesis was collapsing on itself like a dying star despite efforts to rejuvenate the system with the Sega CD and 32X attachments. In ’94, Genesis released the massively popular Sonic 3 and later that year, Sonic & Knuckles. But did you know they were once the same game? And what the hell is Sonic Crackers? Read on.


After work began on Sonic 3, it was deemed too large in scope to meet the February 1994 release date. In an interview with former Director of the Sega Technical Institute, Roger Hector said, “The original Sonic 3 game was very aggressive in scope. Massive really. It was decided to split it in half, and spread the design across two games.”

Sonic 3 Part 2 (Sonic & Knuckles) was released in October ’94 as a direct sequel with that crazy “lock-on technology”, enabling you to connect either Sonic 2 or 3 to the S&K cartridge to play as Knuckles in both games. This lock-on tech was mainly developed to appease consumers after having purchased what was essentially half a game.

Sonic Crackers was never really a game per se. Crackers was an in-house demo made up of a few hastily designed levels to test the physics on a new Sonic gameplay idea. The rough demo had Sonic and Tails connected via a rubberbanding ring. By stretching and jumping at the right moment, the ring would snap the second player faster or higher up the level. This got someone’s attention because this idea made up the core gameplay mechanic of the 32X’s Knuckles Chaotix. It was rumored to be incorporated into a supposed Sonic 4, but Sega used a number of terrible ideas for the sequels instead (e.g. guns, making out with humans).


Above: Sega had a problem with this

Nov 20, 2008


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