Anyone who enjoys old-school games will most likely have experienced the crushing disappointment of finding a favorite title in the App Store — only to discover that whichever company ported the game to iOS took no care whatsoever in doing so.
Fortunately, one game series you could absolutely never throw that accusation at is the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, thanks to the remastering efforts of fans Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley. For anyone interested in game restoration and porting, their story is kind of inspirational.
Having seen the first stab at bringing the Sonic titles to iOS, and witnessed the sound problems, awful virtual controls, windowed play area and slowdown issues, they created their own ports and posted the videos online. Sega took notice, released the remastered editions, and they became iOS best-sellers.
So far, we’ve gotten remastered ports of Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Sonic CD, although as of yet no Sonic 3, which may be my favorite episode of the series. With Sega recently falling on hard times, as seen by the shutting of its San Francisco office, it may stay that way, too.
Unless you help, that is.
As you can see in the above video, Whitehead and Thomley have put together a proof-of-concept for an iOS version of Sonic 3 featuring all the gorgeous widescreen action and bonus features we’ve come to expect from the remastered games.
Sega hasn’t shown any interest in releasing them, but Whitehead and Thomley hope that an online Change.org petition will help. Not only can you sign the petition, but they’ve gone one step further, by putting up a letter in Japanese that you can print, sign and send to Sega’s headquarters in Japan.
In an age of Twitter and Facebook, where hashtags and shared statuses are often the furthest we’ll go to support a cause, mailing a physical letter is a definite demonstration of how seriously you’re willing to take something. If enough people send in letters, the hope is that Sega will see the existing audience for Sonic 3 and greenlight the project.
Hey, it’s worth trying!
Via: Touch Arcade
