Sonic Mega Collection

Sonic Mega Collection wasn't the first compilation of Sonic games, but it sold well enough for Sega to produce oh-so-many-more ports of classic games. An updated version was released for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox titled Sonic Mega Collection Plus.

Sub-Pages#

Prototype Info Gekkan Nintendo Tentou DemoIt's Sonic, but with a time limit! Unused GraphicsSonic CD was done dirty.

Early Menu Files#

Two folders titled sonic/test and sonic/test002 are present in the game's files. Both folders were used for testing basic functions and file formats of the game. In particular:

• test seems to have been used for experimenting with a variety of file formats and color options for scanned boxarts and manuals.
• test002 was used for developing assets for the game's (common) window menus.

test#

Included in test are various scanned boxarts and manuals, primarily taken from Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. The two primary formats that were experimented with were .tga and .tm2 (a file format used commonly by PlayStation 2 games), converted to the GameCube's .tpl format, using a mix of colors and compression methods. The only odd one out in this folder is cmnwin.tpl, which is an early variation of the game's menu windows.

test002#

Included in test002 are source assets for these early menus and a batch script. This batch script (mk.bat) converts these files to a format that the GameCube can use, using tools with the titles of es2es, esconvGC (converts the file to a GameCube readable format) and exp_es (generates a text file out of a .tga graphic). This batch script also points to a network drive to pull the files from.

@echo off
@copy /B /Y /Z %EXJ2_NETWORK_DRIVE%\eSTD.es
es2es -i %1 -o ____tmp.es -noa
esconvGC ____tmp.es %2 %3
@del ____tmp.es
@del eSTD.es

Aside from a log file (test002.txt), the rest of the folder contains all the raw assets for these menus, including graphics in various formats (.tpl, .tga and .pvr), and a 3D Studio Max (.max) file for creating a mockup out of these graphics. An output of this file can be found in test002tex/002.bmp.

Pictured here is a mockup of what would become the game selection screen, mostly written in Japanese. A translation is as follows:

GAMES
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Ristar the Shooting Star
Flicky
Monster Lair
Vectorman

The other listings are a series of A's in hiragana. Vectorman was eventually included with Sonic Gems Collection, while Monster Lair (the Mega Drive port of the third Wonder Boy arcade game) was not put in any collection.

Unused Videos#

Three short videos can be found in the game's files. Sega is not credited on any of them, and none are even remotely related to Sonic. It is likely that Sega was testing the Sofdec player and simply didn't take these files out. The movies and songs take up roughly 20% of the data, and even then, there's empty space on the disc. This space (and the space taken by the other unused stuff) could have easily been used for more games - like, say, Sonic CD.

Unused Music#

Unused Sounds#

Three unused sounds are located in sonic/sound/demosound.bin, alongside the aforementioned multiplayer menu theme from Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. This implies that at one point, there may have been an early menu thrown together with assets that the developers had easy access to.

Regional Differences#

Comix Zone and The Ooze are only available in the Japanese version, and even then can only be unlocked with button codes:

• Comix Zone - Press Up, L, Down, R, Up, Z, Down, L, Up, R, Down, Z in the Options menu.
• The Ooze - Press Z, Z, Z, Up, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, L, R, Z in the Manual menu.

Both games were included in all releases of Sonic Mega Collection Plus.

• For some reason, Sonic CD is absent from the Japanese and European versions of the Sonic History Video, instead it jumps from Sonic 2 to 3.
• The title screen music (title_s_adx.bin in the North American version) is shortened in the European and Japanese versions (title_short_adx.bin).
• The cover for issue #8 of the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic book is edited differently between versions. The North American version blacks out all of the copyrighted material, while the Japanese and European versions remove them entirely.

Prototype (8/15/2002)	North America	Japan/Europe

Title Screen#

Japan	International

References#