Author: Natsumi aka (Aurora Fields)
The real Sonic Origins has been available for your Mega Drive/Genesis since 2016. While SEGA were off making endless Sonic compilations year after year for newer consoles, somebody actually made a compilation of the Sonic games to work on it’s original hardware using the original Sonic engines and sound drivers.
Natsumi’s Original Description: ”I am guessing, many of you would remember Vladikcomper’s awesome hack Sonic 3 In 1? I used to think it was something really cool, but it kind of lacked something… Another game maybe? Oh yes, it would have to be Sonic & Knuckles! It’s really a shame since I’ve not played that game too much, so it definitely felt like a big piece missing. So I had a thought, would it actually be possible to fit all the games in? As an added challenge, and because there still is not a completed Sonic 3 disassembly around, I could not exactly do a lot to it. I thought I’d rather try my best to modify the games as little as possible (With few exceptions) and make the games still co-operate in a single ROM.”
This ROM hack/patch is another one of those games where it has kept a low profile in the community despite having many places to get it from, Sonic Retro, SSRG and the Sonic Hacking Contest for 2016. I (Adrian) wanted to share this one but couldn’t quite figure out where and how Natsumi made this ROM and or if she used ”Super Street Fighter II” as a base ROM. I still don’t know this source code or how it works? But looking into the ROM header it reads that it’s using the SSF ROM type from Super Street Fighter II and it even says ”Super Street Fighter II The New Challengers” in the ROM header. This ROM hack/patch is also 6 Megabytes/48 Megabits big! So I turned the original ”Sonic 4 In 1” ROM from Sonic Retro into an IPS patch, I then used the USA version of ”Super Street Fighter II The New Challengers” as a base ROM, (I figured if she were to use a base ROM it would most likely be the USA ROM of ”Super Street Fighter II” seeing as everybody else uses the NTSC one) so that’s what I did, fixed checksum and cleaned up the ROM header and that’s it! Seems to work okay.
According to Natsumi there’s a few problems with running hacks like this; This uses some features of the Mega Drive that are pretty much nonstandard, so not all emulators or hardware will support it. She made a list of things that she knows that will be able to work with this:
Natsumi Tests:
- Mega EverDrive (hw) – Full support
- EverDrive MD (hw) – Full support (Seems like on older models it may not work)
- Carts with no mappers – No support
- Fusion 3.64 – Partial support
- Regen – Works only if LargeROMSpace is set to 1.
- Gens re-recording – No support
- BizHawk – SRAM saving does not work (Issue #695), and has randomizer issues
- Genesis Plus GX – May or may not work, tests done earlier seem to disagree with tests done later. Needs further testing.
Adrian’s Tests in 2025:
I have tested this myself on a Mega EverDrive X7 from Krikzz and a cheap $10 dollar EverDrive from AllyExpress both on original model 1 Sega Mega Drive hardware and they both boot and play the game perfectly!
It also works on Kega Fusion emulator but warns of an incorrect checksum on screen, not sure why it reads this as the E.S.E. Genesis 32X CheckSum tool reads that the checksum is fixed and okay? I also fixed the checksum before I patched it rather than after. (Had I fixed checksum after patching, everybody who downloads the file here would have to do it themselves).
Also works on FPGA devices such as the Analogue Mega SG.
Couldn’t get it to run on gens+, it freezes on the first screen.
Refuses to open at all on Regen emulator.
That’s my findings for you.
The Games:
Sonic 1
Sonic 2
Sonic 3
Sonic & Knuckles
Sonic 2 & Knuckles
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
Blue Sphere
NOTES:
The original 4 games are here including the lock-on specific games.
Couldn’t test if the Sonic 3 save function works or not as my Mega EverDrive X7 cannot use save states on big ROMS over 4 Megabytes/32 Megabits and can’t use battery back-up SRAM on ROM mappers other than Sega-16.
Some unfortunate bugs also exist due to the way this works. Namely, colour artifacts onscreen, that would have been previously hidden. Notably happens in Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, but may occur on other games abnormally too, this will also depend on what console or emulator you’re using.
ROM is 6 Megabytes/48 Megabits large.
Uses the special SSF bank switching ROM mapper much like Neto’s Sonic Delta Reloaded.
To select ”Sonic 2 & Knuckles” or ”Sonic 3 & Knuckles” or ”Blue Sphere” simply press button A on ”Sonic & Knuckles” and it will open a sub collection of the lock-on games.
All games have original behaviour such as playing on a PAL system you get PAL 50Hz speed and music (optimised audio from Sonic 2 onwards) and playing on an NTSC system you get NTSC speed and music at 60Hz.
The Sonic 1 ROM included in this compilation is the (European/USA) ROM with no scrolling clouds or rippling water effects.
Inside the ZIP file you’ll find the IPS patch, it is in Lunar IPS format and it is very important that it gets patched to the USA version of ”Super Street Fighter II The New Challengers”.
Did some more testing with the original Sonic Retro bin file of ”Sonic 4 In 1” without any patching and apparently the bad checksum read on Kega Fusion is also on this ROM file (even after E.S.E. Genesis 32X Fix CheckSum tool says it’s fixed. This means that it has nothing to do with me patching it to the wrong ROM or anything for that matter to do with my edits.
Lastly, Natsumi said that ”apparently trying to make 5 different games co-operate together is basically like trying to bake bread with your penis.”….
CRC-32: 165defbf
SHA-1: 9ce6e69db9d28386f7542dacd3e3ead28eacf2a4
flamewing - gen_scalers (horizontal software scaler program)
GF ThePlayer - Main artist
VAdaPEGA - Helping artist (Sonic 1, Sonic 2)
ValleyBell - Sound driver disassembly
Vladikcomper - Music, SSRG splash screen
Marc - Music, Sonic Retro splash screen
MarkeyJester - Animation and misc help
djohe - Testing
RedHotSonic - Testing (And debugging (tons of it! Thanks man))
Adrian Gauna - Cleaned up the ROM header, fixed checksum and made the patch for RomHack Plaza.
Most of the files you're about to download need to be applied to your game. Here is a list of utilities that allow you to do this:
- Online Patcher: Marc Roblero's online patcher. Works with many different file types.
- Floating IPS: NWell-known patcher for applying IPS and BPS files.
- Delta Patcher: Used to apply xDelta files.
- More Patchers
On most files, you can also press “Patch It”, to apply the patch without downloading the file.
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