FAQ

What is "The Sonic 3 Beta Page"?

The Sonic 3 Beta page is a collection of the research done on the prototype images surrounding the release of Sonic 3—"Sonic 3C", Sonic & Knuckles and Knuckles in Sonic 2 internal betas made by Sega.

What is a beta?

The way Sega uses naming terminology is something like the following:

Pre-Alpha: Only used in certain games for very early development

Alpha: All the development up to beta

Beta: All major game modes and features are closed; game is now being heavily tested for bugs by SOA's QA

Final/Gold: Finished and sold product

The much more known Nick Arcade and Simon Wai Sonic 2 prototypes are not betas, as commonly believed—they are indeed alpha ROMs. Most of the prototypes on this site are all betas, meaning they were testing prototypes for Sega of America. The one exception is Sonic 3C 0408, which would be considered a very late alpha, as Doomsday Zone is not finished in it.

How did these prototypes come into being?

drx of Hidden Palace managed to track down a testing CD from Sega of America containing hundreds of prototypes made between 1994 and 1995. Many were originally intended for an EPROM burner and needed to be de-interleaved and recombined in order to produce a working ROM image.

How do you get the thing to work? It isn't an .EXE file!

The file is a ROM image (keyword!) which requires a Genesis/MegaDrive emulator (keyword!) to work. There is an abundance of information on how to use an emulator on the Internet. Do some research and you'll figure it out.

What's "Sonic 3C"? There are multiple versions of Sonic 3?

Sonic 3A: The original release. We've all played this. Also known as "Sonic 3 part 1."

Sonic 3B: The lock-on release. We've also played this. Originally known as "Sonic 3 part 2," and later changed to "Sonic & Knuckles."

Sonic 3C: This. A full, pre-locked on version of Sonic 3 with everything in it. This is what you'd be able to play from locking on both parts of Sonic 3, and was meant to be distributed on a 3MB cartridge along with the other two releases. However, this never saw the light of day—until now, anyway.