When discussing the greatest games in the Sonic franchise, Sonic 3D Blast is seldom mentioned by anyone, and for rather good reason. The foray into exploring 3D platforming for the ‘hog was slow and strange; not really capturing the magic of those first few games in the series. Even so, it’s an enduring piece of gaming history, one filled with many secrets, some of which haven’t been widely known until recent times. Evidently, there’s an “Easter Egg” in the game that lets you see a hidden level select screen, which is bizarrely activated by physically smacking the cartridge, though it wasn’t necessarily put in the game intentionally.
Jon Burt of Traveller’s Tales recently posted a video explaining the story behind this feature, and it’s a bit humorous in nature. SEGA was known for being particularly heinous with its certification process; it would take weeks to approve games, and if any bugs or glitches were present, the whole process had to be started over. To get around this, Burt would disguise error messages as secrets in-game, in order to fool SEGA management into thinking the glitches were an intended part of the game. Thus, he created a spreadsheet that accounted for every possible error the game could run into, and programmed the game to default to the hidden level select screen when something went wrong. Here’s the video he made on it:
What do you think? Have you discovered this before? What’s your favorite, easily reproducible gltich in games? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[source polygon.com]
Comments 32
Ooookay then. Pretty fascinating stuff though, I like hearing lil stories on what developers do to get around issues or to make games more interesting.
That's hilarious. Also terrible coding practice. But mostly hilarious.
Ok...I just want to say 3D Blast is one of my favorite Sonic games and has been for a long time.
C’mon, you can’t beat that Rusty Ruins stage music.
Well, today's practices involve 'ignoring' any bugs and just releasing the game anyway... Downloadable 'updates' are seen as a feature these days... but back then, assuming it was a reputable dev, it worked properly, or it wasn't released until it did.
You guys oughta see the rest of Jon Burton's Youtube channel. There are loads of interesting details regarding Traveler's Tales's older works!
O_o !!!
Sega’s process might have been onerous to the developer, but it protected the consumer from buying a broken game. It looks like this game select “feature” was designed to circumvent hard to reproduce bugs, so I guess it’s not a bad solution. As long as the developers made sure you could finish the game 99% of the time by playing it correctly, I guess this is okay.
But I’m not hitting my Saturn to see if it works with that version of the game.
I wonder what hitting the Switch would unlock?
This is great
I liked that game. I remember playing it at a friend's house. This is really interesting though. I'd like to try it sometime.
I remember reading about this a while ago. It's certainly much better than the game freezing while making hellish noises.
So I first played this on the GameCube in... which collection was it in? Sonic Gems Collection? And I played for awhile until I got to some snow/ice world. All going good (was a bit bored with it but it had no save files so I figured I'd just play through it) when... I accidentally move into some jet of air that freezes Sonic. The thing is, I hit it from the direction where the frozen hedgehog slid towards it and stopped right up against it. Stuck. In the freezing air. Unable to unfreeze, basically permanently stuck there because his body didnt slid out of the trap. I tried everything, every button... no way out. No timer in game so I couldn't die from a time out. It was horrible. I would've had to start the whole game over. I never played it again.
Pure genius! What a legend thing to do!
@ShadJV you might be talking about Sonic Mega Collection. I think that's what it's called, 7 games in 1 disc. It actually had a few other games like Ristar, good times.
Anyways, I actually liked Sonic 3D Blast. It must be the music that draws me in. Never played the Saturn version though.
I quite liked that game to be fair, good ole flickies island, but never seen that before, hilarious!
I'm subbed to his channel. Always interesting stuff!
I haven't played this in 23 years, or something like that.If I had discovered this glitch my old brain has long forgotten about it. As for the game itself, it wasn't as bad as many made out. It was bloody difficult though,I remember that much.
Reminds me of the Chris Houlihan room in Zelda ALTTP.
"Jon Burt of Traveler’s Tales"
It's Traveller's Tales.
@GameOtaku Your wallet.
"Thus, he created a spreadsheet that accounted for every possible error the game could run into, and programmed the game to default to the hidden level select screen when something went wrong. Here’s the video he made on it:"
"PUNCH CONSOLE FOR LEVEL SELECT"
The mere juxtaposition made my day.
@Akropolon
Same goes for your reply, you made my day too.
So, it's not really smacking, but just wiggling the cartridge. It seems that certain people in the NLife crew are displaying a tendency of being more violent with their consoles than necessary...
What about when you smacked it in frustration because it was a horrible game?
@SwitchVogel You have been busy lately: I read three articles today and every one was made by you, including the Axiom Verge review. Keep it up!
Sonic 3D Blast was pretty good. It was so different as a Sonic game and was a little tough to get into at first, but I like it.
LOL not surprised. Considering X-Men's infamous Reset Code, this goes a step beyond that.
Per the article, good story, fun to learn the background of this 'bug' and why the players mistook it for an actual secret.
Sonic 3D Blast is a pretty fun and great game, though I have to say the Sega Saturn version was way better because the special stages rocked (and the genesis version of it...well, I couldn't figure out what was going on the first few times, and comparatively it's quite terrible).
Sadly, my Sega Saturn broke and the only other version I have is on the Gamecube collection that for some reason is the Sega Genesis version (with imo, terrible special stages). Makes the game a lot less fun, but hopefully the Sega Saturn version will come out again someday (pretty sure the Steam version is also the lesser version).
I really enjoy Sonic 3D Blast, one of my favorites on the Genesis.
Must every NL article that mentions any Sonic game that doesn't scroll from left to right act like it's a bad, or mediocre game? "3D Blast" wasn't that bad, seems alot of people here actually like it.
The only real bad thing about it was, the first few levels take a long time to play, so the lack of a save/password feature can be annoying. Especially, when trying to get all the emeralds. (Which thankfully, the bonus levels aren't ridiculously-hard like other old Sonic games.)
The graphics and the music are the only good things about this game. We all know that 3D Sonic games are usually......not good (not all the time though) but this doesn’t even qualify as 3D. It’s just an asymmetric view to make it seem like it’s 3D, but it’s not. It it were the case, then games like Super Mario RPG would also be 3D. Except that game has better controls. My god, the controls in Sonic 3D Blast are it’s weakest point. You would have better luck playing Superman 64 in the dark, using an Atari 2600 controller. Sonic doesn’t gain speed as you run, no, he starts running fast immediately. And trying to get him to turn is the worst. Jumping on enemies isn’t a thrill either, you often miss them! I kind of went too harsh on the game since it’s still kind of nostalgic to me, and some parts of the game are good, but at the end of the day it’s flaws make it only deserve a 5/10.
Never heard about this easter-egg.
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