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Project Sonic

From Sonic Retro

Revision as of 06:27, 3 July 2016 by Despatche (talk | contribs)
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Project Sonic (プロジェクトソニック) was a label given to a set Sonic the Hedgehog games by Sega of Japan in the late 1990s.

The idea behind Project Sonic was to boost the awareness of the franchise in Japan, as while the Sega Mega Drive and its set of main Sonic the Hedgehog games (Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles) had been enormously successful in much of the Western world, significantly less attention was given to these games in Sega's home market. Sega's then-current system, the Sega Saturn, had proved to be reasonably popular, however, so an idea was put forward to increase Sonic's presence on this newer system.

Project Sonic was announced at Tokyo Game Show 1997 Spring, alongside the first game to bear the Project Sonic label, Sonic Jam. As "phase 1", Sonic Jam was designed to act as a second introduction to the franchise by containing the aforementioned Mega Drive titles and documentation of Sonic characters and history. This was in preparation for "phase 2", a game which turned out to be Sonic R, which debuted in late 1997. "Phase 3", apparently, was the 1998 release of Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island.

However, the Japanese version of Sonic 3D had been released just after the 1998 Sega Dreamcast game Sonic Adventure, which appeared to have canceled the Project Sonic branding. On the other hand, the 1999 release Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure uses the Project Sonic logo in its title cards.