Stealth Has Made Announcements On What The Future Holds For Sonic Megamix

Stealth has published a Tumblr post talking about the future of Sonic Megamix, which is perhaps one of the most infamous hacks made.

There was bad news given to start things off:

Contrary to popular belief and long stretches of no public updates, and disregarding one extremely short-lived mishap, the project never was cancelled, until now. There is no “I knew this was going to happen”/”I saw this coming”/etc; there was no possible way for the public to actually know what the project’s fate would be because there was no truly solid information to indicate one thing or the other. We intended to see it through, we tried, and, incidentally, it eventually became unworkable

Over time, the whole team seemed to just move apart. Lots of stuff has been happening in the lives of each individual member, and the game project Sonic Megamix as it came to be envisioned just sort of crumbled under its own weight. To make the point directly, the team no longer has active graphic artists, level designers, additional programmers, nothing; there’s just me. The unfortunate truth is that there is no longer a “Team Megamix”

I won’t be looking for any other “members”. The essence of what would have been “Sonic Megamix” can’t be completely replaced, so to be perfectly honest, I just can’t justify holding on to it any longer. That’s why the “new game” will never be finished. As much as I would have wanted for it to be, completion of the project was never under my personal control, and it was never a promise that I could keep by myself

However, there is good news:

It’s not all going to waste. I do, in fact, have plans of my own for what’s already been done, provided I have the time to devote to it

First of all, I plan to stick with the cleanup of the original “Sonic 1 Megamix” for a final and not-so-sloppy release. It’s not a light task, but it does seem like something I can do by myself

Second, I plan to attempt to make existing new content “presentable” in any way that I can. Some sprites will most likely still be missing, for one, but you should end up with a little something to play with. I don’t know in what form this will come, whether some/all of it will be used to augment “Sonic 1 Megamix”, presented as bonus content, or released separately altogether

Third, and biggest of all, I plan to continue the engine modification that I described a while back, which restructures the code to run primarily from the SegaCD/MegaCD’s SUB-CPU to take better advantage of the platform by using it to improve primary gameplay performance. I will freely release the source code for this engine to the public. This includes some enhanced Megamix core engine code, all Megamix-specific character abilities, and all related debugging and hardware transfer utilities. Anyone who wants to create a game functionally-similar to Megamix will be able to use this to do it. This, however, will not happen until I am prepared to present the engine and its code to the public in its then-current state. It’s a project that I have chosen for myself and that I intend to attempt alone until I’m satisfied with what I’ve done; everyone will have the opportunity to “continue”/expand/modify/use/research it after that point.

When will that happen? It won’t be anytime soon:

Unfortunately, it’s going to be a while. As I’ve said several times previously, I’m currently occupied with a contract project that’s still going to take a good bit of time to complete. None of my personal projects are currently moving ahead, and even if there were still a “Team Megamix”, I wouldn’t be able to contribute to the project for now anyway.

This post was originally written by the author for TSSZ News.