Interview Reveals No Plans for S3&K SEGA AGES Treatment

12 February, 2020 13 January, 2025

First thing Wednesday morning in Japan, the website Game Watch published a lengthy interview with Sega’s Yosuke Okunari and M2’s Naoki Horii about the upcoming SEGA AGES remaster of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

But it’s not worth burying the lede – the interview confirms there are no plans at this point to give the beloved duo of Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles the same treatment. The two interviewees claim any future plans will largely depend on whether a second wave of SEGA AGES titles is commissioned for the Switch, but more astute observers will be able to point to the games’ precarious legal situation surrounding Sonic 3’s music, largely believed to be fronted by the late Michael Jackson.

The interview does reveal an interesting fact behind the function of Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a feature coming to the AGES remaster. Okunari and Horii allege the original lock-on method was only possible because all the game code was written onto the original S&K cartridge:

instead, they decided to add Knuckles from the S&K lock-on cartridge; one might presume this originally worked in a manner akin to on-the-fly patching but in actuality, the S&K cart basically contains a second ROM chip with all the S2&K game code, so it's more akin to brute force

— GSK | https://cohost.org/gosokkyu (@gosokkyu) February 11, 2020

Horii wants to stress that the work that went into adding S2&K is basically like implementing two games, so think of it as a two-pack

Kodama has fond memories of working on S2 and beyond that, Knuckles is her favourite of the classic Sonic trio, so she's happy he was included

— GSK | https://cohost.org/gosokkyu (@gosokkyu) February 11, 2020

No mention was made in the interview about the mobile remaster of Sonic 2 developed by Taxman and Stealth, which will not be reflected in the upcoming release.

3 Comments

Come on…we have the Beta/PC music now; I don’t care if a majority of the fan base would want the old music; if it gives me an AGES port or finally gives us the Tax and Stealth Remaster, I say DO IT.

Wouldn’t be the first time a game had to change part of its soundtrack due to legal issues.

Eclipse says:

14 February, 2020 at 12:21 AM

Yeah, seriously. Those of us who prefer the old music can easily experience it in one of the numerous past ports of S3&K. At this point we just want a modern revisit, whether that’s in the form of a Taxman-style remaster, a full-on remake, or even a Sega AGES release. We can live with the alternate tracks, especially in light of the revelation that it’s the beta music.